Northwest Adventure - Oregon

After a few days in the mountains we headed back to the city, this time into Oregon to visit Portland. I have to say that it was not as pretty as I imagined it would be, very industrial as you come into it and the worst traffic we've hit since leaving England. Anyway we decided to head to a park and happened on their famous Rose garden.







Then, in a vague attempt to experience a little of what it is like in the city we abandoned the car in favour of a bus and headed into downtown Oregon. This was much nicer and they have some excellent public transport as well as some novel concepts for cyclists, such as bicycle shaped shells which are hinged into the pavement so that you can put your bike under one, lock it and then is can't be seen or rained on etc.. sadly no photo though.
What you can't really see in this photo is just how pink the building above and between Dan and Andy is, you also can't see just how wet the kids got a short while after this was taken.
The city was not bad, they actually have really good and fre public transport around the city center.
Then back to our hotel, which although it was out of Oregon, in Vancouver (Vancouver, Washington as opposed to the slightly more famous Vancouver a few hundred miles north) was the biggest bargain of the holiday so far as Andy found it for $48/night for the 4 of us, including breakfast, Wi-Fi, pool etc.. You can barely camp for that, and it was a really nice hotel - result.

Northwest Adventure - A Closer view of Mt Rainier

Headed for a place called Paradise today, which is at the foot of Mt Rainier and thought we'd head on a bit of a hike.
We stopped at the information center before heading up where we discovered the reason Packwood is fairly run down.

you might need to zoom in on this picture but it shows that Paradise (and this region) often get the most snow of anywhere in the lower 48 states, over 50 feet of snow in an average year and a record of more than 90 feet of snow. They don't even bother thinking about ploughing the roads with that level of snowfall and so for several months of the year the region is pretty much cut of to all but snowmobiles.

In the summer though....

well, in the summer it is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been, check out this picture and quote from John Muir, the most vocal advocate for the American national parks.

Even though this was the end of Summer we were up high enough and enough snow falls in the Winter so that there was still snow on the ground.
Which was a great way to cool off my feet
Becky with Mt Hood in the background
Spot the marmot

Top of the climb, at least as far as we were concerned, at about 6,600 ft. We'd dragged the kids up 1,000ft of elevation so they'd done really well. Dan wanted to go to the top until I explained that there was still 8,000 ft more to climb - pretty deceptive as we felt we were more than half way up.
Although the pictures don't really capture it the flowers were amazing (even for a boy)
And the kids got a physics lessons from a bag of crisps (pV=nRT)

An alpine lake on the way down
Everyone was a little too tired to do another long walk the same day and annoyingly there were lots of flies around which made it uncomfortable to sit and read so we just had a short walk and headed back to the car.
Quick stop at one of the waterfalls on the Stephen's Canyon Road
We also found a playground that we so brand new it looked as though it hadn't even been played in yet, there wasn't even any dirt on it
Then back to Packwood for dinner, at the same place we ate the night before - just because it was edible. We've learned not to expect too much from small town restaurants and then they don't disappoint - this one was pretty good.

And as a binus they had a few Elk around the back of the restaurant tooAnd finally an ice-cream when we made it back to the hotel

Happy Birthday Becky

Northwest Adventure - Big Trees and Sunrise

After 3 days in Seattle it was time to up sticks and head to Packwood in Snoqualmie National Forest. This is at Point B on the map below which shows the route we took over the course of the holiday.

A little worried at this point that I'm going to run out of books somewhere in the wilderness so we stop at a bookshop before heading too far off of the beaten track and I end up getting (you should feel free to skip to the section that says AND SKIP TO THE END to skip past the superfluous information on which books I boought and what I thought).

The Collector by John Fowles (good but suffers from being the book that started a couple of genres which take away the shock of the original - unlike The Magus which he also wrote which is probably the most disturbing book I've read)
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (which I also saw in the children's section of Barnes and Noble the other day, which seemed a little ambitious in terms of placement or may have been a clerical error - a good book though I didn't feel I wanted to recommend it above a lot of the other books I've read recently such as When Will There Be Good News by Kate Atkinson).

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson on the other hand not only passes the 'how many pages per pound (or dollar)' test, which is important when on holiday but also completely restored my faith in Science Fiction writers (even though it's really a mix of historic and contemporary fiction - sort of like Iain Banks would be if he was a better writer).

AND SKIP TO THE END

On the way we stopped off at one of the smaller national parks on the way where there were the most enormous Douglas Firs. There are pictures below but to see these properly you really need to pivot your monitor vertically and set your screen resolution to 512 x 65,536



This was the first time I really couldn't see the tops of the trees. The forest was also more like a jungle in many ways where you really couldn't imagine how you could walk through it unless there was a pre-existing path or you were wielding a machete, lightsaber or bulldozer, and even then you'd have to avoid the big trees.

We also stopped off at a place called Sunrise which is the highest point you can drive to in the Mt Rainier national park at 6,400 ft. WE stopped off for a wander around and some views of Mt Rainier.




Then on to Packwood, which is a small, run down town in the middle of nowhere, so far in fact that there is no mobile phone reception and tthere hasn't been any for most of the journey either. The motel we're in is also a small run down motel in the middle of the run down town in the middle of nowhere. The motel and the town both look as though they almost made it and ran out of steam and are just hanging on. We got an idea of why this was the next day...

Becky turns 5

Becky turned 5 today, here is some evidence...



The poor child even had to make her own birthday cake
With all of her princess friends, apart from the girl in the white dress who is a couple of school years older than Becky the others are all the same age which gives you some idea of how tall she is.
Fairy dancing