Pacific Northwest - Days 6 & 7

On Saturday morning, Janda and I woke up in a comfortable bed in a nice hotel room.  Probably not Janda's favorite morning.  ;)  Since we didn't have to be on the wedding bus until 3pm, we figured that we would head into Portland in the morning.  We started at the Saturday market, which was full of handmade objects of all kinds.  There were food trucks getting set up, but nothing that seemed like breakfast food, so we kept going.  We walked past the Oregon Brew Fest set up right on the river and then headed into the city.  While Portland was well-maintained and clean, I have to say that it wasn't my favorite city ever.  Maybe we were in the wrong section, but all that we saw on our hour long walk were stores and restaurants.  There were endless places to shop and eat, but not much to see, so to speak.  I guess coming from Boston and having visited Europe that past two summers, I'm used to a different kind of city.  Not to say that there wasn't anything interesting in Portland, it just didn't appeal to me much.  Because of that, I didn't take any pictures.  Oops.

After we walked by all the stores and restaurants, we strolled through Chinatown and a couple of blocks later we were back to the Saturday Market.  Now all of the food trucks were in full effect and Janda and I grabbed lunch and ate by a fountain on the river.   Janda had a taco salad in a huge tortilla bowl and I had teriyaki chicken with rice and noddles.  It really hit the spot.  Janda and I relaxed and did some people watching by the fountain- the kids playing in the fountain we really enjoying themselves.  After lunch we headed back to the hotel to get ready for the wedding.

Ignore the weird squinty look on my face! I made this dress earlier this spring.

The wedding was lovely.  It was held at the bride's parents' house and they did an amazing job planning, etc...  The ceremony location was a clearing that they had cut in the forest and the reception was on an old tennis/basketball court.  It was a great vibe and there were great local beers and of course great food.  After all of the eating, cake cutting and toasts, there was a lot of dancing!   We didn't leave until almost 1:30, which is way past our usual bedtime!

Our table - sitting with another of Janda's former athletes

Our table after dark

Janda and I 

Our table neighbor tried to take a picture of me dancing, but the settings weren't cooperating

The morning we slept in a little bit and then headed out on the road to Seattle, via Mount Rainier.  We decided to take a scenic route that would afford us views of Mount Rainier, so you could say that we took the long way.  I would say that it was almost 2 hours longer than a direct trip, but we got to see a lot.  We ended up on another windy mountain road, but at least this on was paved.

Mount Rainier 

Mount Rainier again 

Janda documenting 

See how dirty our car got on that dirt road! 

 After we saw Mount Rainier, we headed straight to Seattle to meet my high school best friend and her husband.  It was the first time that I got to see their house, which they scrupulously remodeled themselves.  They took us on a tour that included a really cool park called Gas Works Park.  I'm totally bummed that I didn't bring my camera- I didn't want to lug my huge camera to dinner- because the views were amazing.  A little later we went to dinner at a local pizza place, Ballard Pizza, which my friend's architectural firm designed.  After a little digestive walk to see a couple of other places that she had designed, it was time to get to the airport.  Our flight left at 11:30pm and we arrived home around 7:30am the next day.  No big surprise that I took a nap and fell asleep super early that night.

Pacific Northwest - Day 5

The next morning we woke up a little early and took our time getting ready to meet the group, which of course meant that we were rushing at the end anyway!  We had camped at the campsite above the Eagle Creek trail head, so we just had to drive down the hill to meet the group.  I would guess that there was somewhere between 20 and 30 people on the hike, but I could be completely wrong.  It was my first time doing a large group hike and it was a lot of fun.

We hiked up the Eagle Creek Trail a couple of miles along a path that was right on the edge of the hill.  It was a very cool hike but not too hard since we were with a large group and there was a time limit so that we could make it too lunch.  About 2 miles up the trail we all stopped at a pebble river bed where there were a couple of waterfalls and pools.  It was a really beautiful trail and if we hadn't been with a group, Janda and I would have loved to hike up further.  You can apparently go to other waterfalls, some of which you can hike behind.  Sounded cool.

This particular hike was chosen by the groom who had hiked it in the past.  The reason that he chose this trail and this waterfall was that one can jump off the top of the waterfall into the pool below.  I, of course, did not jump.  I can swim but I'm not big on tall dives.  It takes me 5 minutes to get up the courage to jump off a 3 foot rock at Flatrocks!  Anyhow, Janda, of course, did jump off.  It was chilly as every other morning had been and the water was a little cold, but he couldn't resist.  When he hit the water, he discovered that it was actually a lot cold, but luckily we had the hike back to the car to warm up.

Some of the group on the Eagle Creek trail

The trail was lovely- as with every other trail we saw, it was green and mossy

Some parts were right on the edge of the hill

The waterfall

The pebble river bed

There was a second waterfall right around the corner

Of course he's going to do it- but from where?

The highest point he can find of course

It would have been a perfect 10 except for that splash

We got back to the parking lot and then started off to the Full Sail Brewery for lunch.  Janda and I were following the bus, which was very interesting.  We had to follow it into a weigh station!  We got to Hood River a little after noon and the whole group had lunch at the Brewery.  We were lucky enough to sit with the bride and groom, who Janda used to coach, and another of their friends who worked with Janda also.  It was great to catch up and here what everyone had been doing- since that's hard to do at the wedding.  The food and beer at the Brewery were excellent.  I had a burger and Janda had a pulled pork sandwich, which kept us full for at least 8 hours.

After lunch the bus went back to Portland and we took advantage of having our own car to check out hood River more and then drive out to Mount Hood.  Hood River was the place to be if you were interested in water sports.  We walked down to the Columbia River to watch people windsurfing, kitesurfing, jet skiing and more.  The water must have been cold though, b/c everyone was wearing wetsuits.

We then headed out towards Mount Hood, not to climb up, but to get a good view.  The road we took was lovely and we spent a half and hour or so driving by orchards and vineyards.  We popped into a ranger station to take some pictures and the ranger told us about a scenic route to get great views of not only Mount Hood, but also Mount Adams and Mount Rainier.  It was about 10 miles of country road and then about 10 of dirt road.  Even though we were driving a crappy Hyundai Elantra (which I specifically tried not to get!), we figured we could make it.

Mount Hood from the ranger station

The 10 miles of country road were no problem.  It was windy and hilly and apparently I was driving too slow b/c some Suburu flew by us.  The 10 miles of dirt road, on the other hand, were white knuckle the whole way.  The road was narrow and had major divets and going up the drop-off was on the right, so right on our shoulder.  I was going pretty slow at this point- I don't think that I broke 25mph the whole way.  All I could think of was the car hurtling off the cliffs.  I was a nervous wreck, but luckily we didn't really come upon any other cars.  That Suburu though, did come back down while we were still going up.  I don't know how much they appreciated the views.  The good news is that we made it.  The only thing damaged were my nerves- so much so that I refused to drive down, which annoyingly wasn't half as scary b/c we didn't have to drive on the edge.

The views from the top were phenomenal and totally worth the drive- just don't take an Elantra if you go!  There was a house at the top that a local mountaineering club uses and from which any rescues on Mount Hood are staged.  The views of Mount Hood and Mount Adams were great, sadly it was too hazy to really see Mount Rainier.  There had been a fire recently on that road, so everything was sparse except the wild flowers which were all over.  

Wildflowers everywhere

Most of the trees looked like this one

Mount Hood

 Mount Adams in the distance

After we made it down safely, we drove back to Portland via Washington and checked into our hotel.  It was pretty late at this point and after our showers we had a little trouble finding dinner.  Luckily we found a pizza place right before closing time and grabbed a half price pizza to bring back to the hotel.  We scarfed it down while watching the Opening Ceremonies of the Olypmics and then promptly fell asleep.

Pacific Northwest - Day 4

As with every other day of our trip, we woke up to cool temperatures and fog.  Basically every day we (me especially) would layer on tons of clothes and then sometime during the day we would get far enough away from the coast to not be freezing and lose all the layers since it was suddenly 80 degrees.  We had a nice warm breakfast, packed up our camp and headed towards Oregon.  We took the scenic route, which in the Pacific Northwest means lots of tall trees, winding and undulating roads and rugged coastline.

Janda making egg sandwiches

Foggy again- you can't even see the mountains across the lake

As we were following the Washington coast down, we stopped at a little rest stop which turned out to have a short nature hike and which promised wildlife sitings-including elk.  The nature walk went up a steep hill and then it continued up and down for a mile or so.  This was another beautiful green forest draped with  much flora and fauna but sad to say we saw no elks.  Since this was a spontaneous hike, we didn't have a camera anyway, so there would have been no proof of elks.  Oh well, it was really lovely and peaceful.

Back on the road, we soon came to a huge bridge that connects Washington and Oregon.  As we saw over the course of the weekend, there are many of those!   This particular bridge brought us to Astoria, Oregon.  It was quite a big city compared to the ones that we had been driving through in Washington.  We drove through downtown Astoria and then wound our way up the steep and narrow hills to the Astoria Column. I can't say that I really know the significance of the Column, but it did afford us panoramic views of Astoria, the Oregon countryside, the bridge and river, and Washington state across the river.  The view was slightly obscured by fog, but we could still see for miles and miles.  After we climbed to the top of the Column (that was quite a workout for our quads) we had a picnic lunch on the sprawling lawn.

The bridge from Washington that we crossed to get to Oregon

View of the city of Astoria from the top of the Column

Looking towards the rest of Oregon

The Astoria Column

Next stop was a couple of miles down the road on a quiet dead end.  Tucked away at the top of a short hill is the house from the movie The Goonies.  It must be a little strange to live in that house, but the current owners seem to embrace it!  There was a constant, slow stream of people parking up the street and making their way to this house.  I guess that there was a beach prominently featured in the movie that we could have checked out too, but we didn't know about it until later.

Cute sign at the bottom of the hill

The Goonies house

The Astoria neighborhood where the Goonies house is located

Our final destination was Portland, Oregon.  The wedding was in two days and we had plans to stay in Portland Friday and Saturday nights.  Since we had made plans to meet a group of wedding revelers for a hike in the Columbia River Gorge the following morning and the bus to take us all to the hike was leaving from that hotel at 8am, we figured we should find the hotel and check out the situation. It took us a couple of hours to reach Portland and then the fun started.  All we had for the hotel was an address and when we called them on the phone they were too busy to give us directions- but they did tell us that they were across the street from the Lloyd Center mall.  That helped a lot.  If you have never driven in a planned city, (that would be us) the planning doesn't actually make any sense to you!  The city is divided into quadrants- north, south, east and west, and then roads are either numbered or named depending on whether they are parallel or perpendicular to the river.  Not that we knew that then.  Anyway, we had to stop many times to either turn around or ask for directions.  After an hour or so, we found the hotel and inquired as to whether we could extend our reservation and stay an extra night.  We could- for $200!  Not in our budget!

We figured that we could just camp somewhere out near the hike and meet everyone there in the morning.  We ended up camping at the campsite right at the trail head- so we couldn't have been closer.  This was our least favorite campsite though, because it was very crowded and there was a lot of road noise from the highway below.  Luckily we had ear plugs!  After another delicious dinner of Chinese stirfry, we got a good night's sleep.

 Janda cooking up some orange chicken

Slightly less exciting campsite, but it got the job done

Pacific Northwest - Day 3

The next morning we woke up to a cool and foggy day at the beach.  We had some oatmeal to warm up and then packed up the campsite.  We humped our stuff back to the car and got on the road.  We were driving through some small towns on the northern part of the peninsula, back the way we had come the previous day.  On the way to the beach I had noticed a sign about vampires, which I thought was very strange, but I didn't give it a second thought since I was very tired.  On the way back I could see that the other side of that sign said "Welcome Twilight fans."  Apparently we were driving through the region where the Twilight books were set.  We got to a bigger city, Forks, and Twilight was everywhere!  There were silhouettes of the actors, signs for tours, etc...  We stopped at a grocery store to stock up and the cashier told us that since those books, and especially movies, came out, there have been tons of visitors from all over the world.  Even though I am not a fan of Twilight, it's good to see this town is getting an economic boost from it.  And also funny.

Our first destination was the Hoh temperate rain forest.  One of the lower campsites had showers, so for 25 cents, we got a 2 minute shower.  What a difference two minutes can make!  We then headed to a visitor center up on one of the higher peaks.  Again the road followed a river up the mountain, so we stopped  couple of times to check it out and rinse out a couple of things.

The river was aqua and also grey due to the "Glacier flour" - powdered rock ground down by the glaciers

The river  bed was all pebbles

When we got to the top of the road, which we had hoped would have scenic views of the peaks we had seen from the main road, we stopped for a quick picnic.  The campsite and picnic spots were plentiful in all of Olympic National Park, I have to say.  After a quick ham and cheese, we decided to do one of the short hikes from the visitor center.  The 3ish mile hike through the rain forest was very cool.  Unfortunately, we didn't get the views that we were hoping for, it seems that those were a much longer hike up the mountain.  The tall trees and moss were even more beautiful on this trail than the others we were on the previous day.  Compared to an East coast forest, the trees are absolutely enormous.  They are not only much bigger around, they are also way taller.  It was quite a site to see.

The tree roots are really shallow and lots of them are actually exposed

The trees grow in lots of funny ways and the deciduous ones all seem good for climbing

Tall tall tall

The view from the top was good, but not quite what we had hoped

The forest was very dense

Some of the trees were growing together, either attached at the base like this one or coming up out of a downed tree

Two fallen trees make a tunnel on the trail

After that short hike, we continued on the road south, following the Washington coast.  Even though it had been sunny on the mountain, it was back to foggy and chilly right along the shore.  We stopped at a scenic view to have a look at the beaches and we were shivering.  Not surprisingly, we decided that camping on the beach for a second night wasn't our best option.

High up on the cliffs; there was lots of driftwood on all of the beaches

Not exactly inviting

We kept driving all the way to Lake Willapa, where there were three campsites to choose from.  It was a little bit like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the first site was too crowded, the second site was too far from the lake, but the third site- it was perfect.  Only four campsites and directly on the lake.  The campsite that we chose was literally feet from he lake, but it was adjoining to another site, with the other two being around the corner and full already.  We figured that since it was late, if we were lucky we would basically get two campsites to ourselves.  One lady did come check it out, but that was it.  It was by far the most private official campsite that we found.  Well, except for the random college kids that kept walking through our site to go through a hole in the bushes to get to the non-official campsite that they had found.  They were cool though, one of them was from Great Britain and visiting/working in Washington for the summer.

The pebble beach at our campsite overlooking the mountains

 Janda strikes a pose with some mountains far off in the distance

Why we chose to stay on Lake Willapa 

 Our own little beach at our campsite

We made dinner and watched the sun set over the mountains on the other side of the lake.  No campfire this evening to keep us up, so we hit the sack (literally) pretty early.

 Janda getting dinner ready  at our campsite

Day is done 

View from the tent