Northern Loop

Day 1

Left Grants Pass after a nice and informational tree lecture at So OR Extension.

I headed for Crater Lake with the intention to drive around half the crater and exit on the North side to get up to Bend. The closer I got, the worse smoke there was. They were having another huge fire around there and you couldn't even see the other side of the lake.

I picked up a $5 hat pin at the gift shop and then found out the North exit was closed. I had to drive back down route 62 the way I came. That was a nice 50 mile detour for a hat pin.

I am at the Bend Motel6 and had a very fine meal at Chan's of Bend . Tomorrow I head East to the Snake river and Hell's Canyon.

Days 2 & 3

Oregon is big! It took the better part of the day to cross East on US20, the Lewis & Clark trail. I saw some gazelle by the roadside. What a thrill, but it was an awkward place to stop or turn around. I did take a detour and checked out the painted hills 

at the John Fay Fossil beds in the central Oregon high desert. Its very scenic,but you don’t get to see actual fossils.

 Took a one exit jaunt on I-84, then headed up to Halfway. Halfway to what? Halfway from the interstate to Halfway, some wag has posted a roadside sign announcing 'Halfway to Halfway'. Country chuckles. The East side of Hell's Canyon has a nice forest road that skirts the rim and passes many lovely campgrounds. It reminds me of the Happy Camp - O'Brian road. I bunked down in a site with a hand crank water well and snugged into a spot out of sight of the few others, but next to the creek. It got chilly. In the morning, the storm fly of the tent was frosty and so was the truck.

Next day, the road North goes up and down spectacular canyons to Joseph and there was a distinct new white dusting in the higher elevations.

  Had breakfast at the one and only Cheyenne Cafe in Joseph. The walls are decorated with burnt in cattle brands and the town sports a rodeo office. The waitress was blubbery and what folks around there would call 'slow'. The omelette was good, the coffee lousy. A sign on the wall says "Say No to Pot and to Hillary too". The FM radio band picks up one station only and they play both kinds of music: Country and Western. No six foot pot grow fences anywhere, just grain silos and range cattle. The place was full of local folks chewing the cud. This must be fly-over country where locals are kind to each other and the coastal elites have forgotten exists. It's a long but lovely drive up route 3 to the Washington line, then as 128 it cuts across the extreme Southeastern corner of Washington and into Idaho at Lewiston.  I took US 12 across the Northern panhandle of Idaho. Again, spectacular country.

 This road definitely shuts down in winter. I crossed two sets of gates. From Lowell it slowly rises alongside a fly-fishing river to LoLo pass at over 8000 feet and into Montana. I was tempted to stop near the summit at LoLo hot springs, but the day was getting on. There was a 'Caution, Moose Crossing" sign, though. On the Idaho side they try to make people drive better by needlessly posting a 50 MPH limit, where it is mostly nonsense. Just over the state line, Montana cheerfully announces a 70 MPH limit, but the highway department carefully plants white crosses where fatalities have happened. I like their system better.  I crossed I-90 in Missoula, last traversed during my hippie hitch-hiking days and skirted Flat Head Lake to Kalispell where I had mediocre Mexican food next door to the Motel6, advertised as the best in the region. Where can I get some fresh trout? Tomorrow it's into Glacier. Maybe I should have brought the snow chains.

Days 4 & 5

Snookered again by fire. The road through Glacier is closed due to fire. Well, at least I picked up another cool hat pin. There are alternatives, though. I headed across the Continental Divide on US 20. There is a neat obelisk at the pass.

  Lots of snow in the high elevations and its getting colder. I stopped in St. Mary's and picked up some really delicious wild huckleberries. What a treat! Eventually, I work my way all the way around to the East side of the park and enter on a six mile dirt road

 to a gorgeous campground with one other camper in it when I arrive. It's a trailhead into the wilderness and there are notices of recent brown bear activity along the trails. The ranger tells me, though, that no bears have bothered the campground all summer. It clouded over during the night, so it was actually not as cold as in the Hell's Canyon forest.
  By morning I got some sprinkles.


Next day I enter Canada. The guy asked me a bunch of questions and looked real buff. These remote outposts breed pettiness. The road into the Canadian section of the park was, you guessed it, closed due to fire. I inquired with a real official Royal Mountie, complete with handlebar mustouche, and he routed me along some side roads back to the Eastern route leading North toward Banff. Lots of beaver ponds. Moose, elk and mountain goat caution signs, but all I saw were lots of range cattle. The weather got worse. Going up BC route 93, rain came in heavy bursts and by the time I got close to Banff NP, it wanted to hail and definitely came down as almost slush.  I had already decided to camp in a hotel. In Radium Hot Springs I found a 12 room hotel with a great view

 and a fine Hungarian restaurant. I enjoyed an appetizer of smoked salmon with capers and dark European bread, then Sauerbraten, smothered with madeira gravy with red cabbage cooked with wine. Let it snow! There are hockey pre-season games on TV. Tomorrow, up into Banff. The weather is said to be improving. I am planning to see at least a moose, maybe meese.

Days 5 & 6

On the way up into Banff NP, the weather got worse. Snow flurries, overcast and cold.

Despite frequent warning signs for moose, mountain goats and elk, there's little chance I'd see one. Up at Lake Louise, it was inexplicably busy. Bumper to bumper traffic. Shuttle buses to the sights and hordes of tourists. Who are these people? The campgrounds were closed already. I decided to look for a room for the night, only to find out everything is booked already and what is left costs an astronomical amount. I asked the woman at the information kiosk what's up and she cheerfully informed me this was still their 'high' season. So, why close all the campgrounds? I give up on Banff  and can't even find a nice hat pin. I drove up a tight switchback road, so snug even I had to back up in the turn. The picture of the falls  I took from the roadside

 was fortuitous, because when I got to the parking lot, it was jammed with cars, RV's and even tour buses, along with the requisite hordes of properly equipped hikers and 'backpackers'. I didn't even stop and headed back. There is an interesting turnout about the double spiral railroad loops and I watched several CP freights negotiate this amazing grade.

  Further down there is another closed campground, but the entrance is left open and I had a peaceful pic-nic in the cook shelter. Pesky,smart and aggressive birds akin to large blue jays almost stole my food while I stepped away to clean the dishes. There is a lovely creek swollen with that characteristic light blue-green milky meltwater  of the high mountains.

 I decided to head down kicking horse pass out of the park, looking for a place to stay. Not too far down highway 1 is the Great Divide Lodge.  Not much 'great' about it but they have rooms and they are still pricey, but about half of the in park usury. I had a thick chowder made with canned cream and a carpaccio that was nice, but inexplicably included potatoe chips. The room thankfully faced away from the highway, but a bunch of yahoos kept the place noisy and I slept very little. At least their gift shop had a nice hat pin.

The next morning there was icy snow on the truck.   Jasper got 22mm of snow and the ice fields road is, appropriately, icy. I didn't like the look of this and besides a woman at dinner told me Jasper was just as stupidly crowded as Banff. I headed down the Western slopes. Canada is about 60 or more years behind in highway infrastructure. The entire route is one extended construction site. They are finally working on turning their one and only transcontinental highway into a freeway. It'll still take a decade or so, from the looks of it. I stopped at a lovely old growth cedar grove

and at another learn about the Canadian concentration camps in the Rockies during WWI ( ! ) for Germans and Austrians. Slowly the mountains back off,  the rivers widen and a more benign countryside appears. The drive West on route 1 is lovely and the rainforest alpine setting changes to valleys, farms, fruit orchards, even vineyards. I picked up some lovely local peaches and plums, including the rare green ones, at a roadside stand. The highway skirts Crescent Lake and there is a fine rest stop

  with a view of the canyon and the Canadian Pacific line below.In Kamloops I stayed in one of the few Motel6's in Canada. For dinner, I searched for quality oriental food. I found  a really great Japanese Ramen noodle house. Extremely authentic, very busy with ethnic customers and even cheap. No more Jasper for me. The next day I headed for Vancouver.



Vancouver

Getting close to Vancouver is easy, getting in, not so much. A colossal traffic jam during early rush clogged up the inadequate road and kept me from reaching my cousin's place for over an hour. I checked into a small hotel on Kingsway where the signs in Chinese predominate and there are kilometers of noodle shops, oriental eateries and mom and pop businesses. Priscilla and Neto at first wanted to go to a Pizza place, arrgh, but I persuaded them to chose another. We went to some hip and noisy sports bar place where they consumed hamburgers. I had the oriental cod salad.

Victoria Island and Butchard Gardens

I did some research and thought the round trip ferry ride to the island was cheaper than parking the car at the terminal. The ferries leave for the islands quite a ways from Vancouver. A lot of cars fit on, but I missed the first one by five cars and, no, it is pricey. The ride itself was very nice

and probably better than what followed. I saw at least three sea otters while the multitude of far Eastern tourists were busy taking selfies on the sunny and windy side of the deck. For many years Butchard Gardens maintained a billboard on the side of I-5 near Yreka. It's been in my bucket since. The place is nice, overrun, naturally, but nice.

 The thing is, most half-decent botanical gardens, like say at UCR , have a better plant collection, more serenity and a much lower price. Not everything that goes into the bucket is worth doing. The traffic nightmare getting back into Vancouver was redoubled when the route from the terminal into town literally merged eight lanes into one!

Back in the USA

I had called Gary Hakela about my predicament with the firewood. Everywhere I went, the row of firewood I had brought from Oregon was prohibited. So now I was faced with taking that laboriously felled, bucked, split and dried camp wood back to Oregon after a 2000+ mile loop trip; No way! Besides, I wanted to see the Olympic peninsula, something placed in the bucket years ago after a quick visit to Hak's place when I did not have the leisure. I told him I'd like to deliver the wood to his place. I am sure he thought I was angling for an invitation to use his place in his absence. Actually, no, but he did offer to get me the combo for the shed and I could sleep in there. Then he mentioned the shower and wi-fi at the clubhouse. Now I was getting warmer. I took the ferry across the Fuco strait,

 another fun trip, and found my way back to Hak's mobile home estates. I actually camped out on his back porch, nicely level, under cover and dark and, yes, the shower and wi-fi were welcome amenities. Gary has put a lot of loving detail work into his place. I have somewhat of an eye for this and I can appreciate the amount of sweat and time that went into making his place a private paradise. I left my extraneous Canadian coins in his change basket by the door. I hope he finally comes and visits Fort Hay. I got some fresh cod at a roadside oyster house and cooked a nice starlight fish soup on the pic-nic bench overlooking the strait.

Olympic Pools

I drove up into the NP and hiked a long trail to some hot springs. It crosses a couple of rustic pedestrian bridges

 and follows a rushing creek.  Fall had arrived  and I got to stretch out my legs, finally. There were a bunch of other hikers, but I was blissfully alone most of the time. The river has a couple of dismantled dams that used to serve Port Angeles and the displays are all full of how great this is for the salmon and the river. Somehow, I have to ask, does Port Angeles still have electric power and if so, how is it generated? The hot springs are sulfurous and muddy. There was some predictable nudity, but, alas, the wrong kind. Still, the trail was worth it.

 Driving around the peninsula takes time. I took a quick jaunt up to one of the rainforest sites, mostly to pick up the ubiquitous hat pin, but I did see a large bull elk alongside one of the plank walks. There was a sign advising the happy campers that several elk had charged hikers there recently and to stay at least 100 feet away. It was the rutting season, after all. Some clueless guy saw the antlers with me and asked me if I thought it wise to approach. I pointed to the sign and stayed distant. He, naturally went right up to the animal. Getting gored by an elk would be a tough lesson. Another stop was at a couple of Lewis and Clark NP sites by the sea.  One overlooks the Columbia river entrance

  and has the remnants of shore batteries dating back to the civil war era. There are some cool lighthouses  as well and at one of them, one can rent the keepers house.

 On the South side of the river, I happened on a roadside fresh fish place and had truly outstanding chowder and snacked on fine smoked cod. It took until after dark to reach Tumwater and I-5.

Homeward

I trundled down US 101 and eventually cut back over to the interstate near Roseburg. Again, a nice drive, but too busy. There was a myrtlewood shop, but they had little of interest. It was good to get home. The Chetco Bar fire has been contained and the smoke has cleared. Four deer, two does, each with a grown fawn, just crossed past my back window, then came back 20 minutes later. Rain is in the forecast. I think, I'll start planning the next trip.

Smokin' trip to navigating the Potomac

The South and the regular South

The South Carolina countryside is attractive. We drove past miles and miles of peanut fields, dotted with tidy small country houses and punctuated with Baptist churches every couple of miles. Each church has its graveyard right next to it. Occasionally some graves are separately fenced off and I suppose this is to keep the Southern Baptists from associating with the regular Baptists, but I don’t know that for sure. People here are friendly, hospitable and gracious. Along the back roads we saw fewer confederate flags than in California and while we came across a couple of county race tracks, there really were no redneck yards of the week to be admired. Certainly, Oregon sports more “emporiums” and fixer upper cars displayed on concrete blocks than the heart of the South.

In Augusta, GA we enjoyed the Green Jackets (http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/index.jsp?sid=t478) beat the Charleston Riverdogs (http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/index.jsp?sid=t233 )

 5:1

Our goal was to get to the Smokey Mountain National Park (http://www.nps.gov/grsm/index.htm).  On crossing into North Carolina along a curvy mountain road in the forest, things did suddenly turn backwoodsy. We came past a bunch of stereotypical shacks with moonshiner type characters lounging on the sloping porch and an assortment of rusting trucks along the highway that dated back to the great depression. We had lunch at a roadhouse and were asked a question I had not heard for some time: “Smoking or Non-Smoking?” Bless the Tar Heels.  They had a bucket of peanuts on each table and the catfish is real good.

As we got close to the park entrance, heavy thunderstorm developed that would last well into the next day. We turned back and my ambition to visit this famous park will remain unfulfilled.

Eventually we paused in Fredericksburg, VA and saw the Potomac Nationals (mascot: “Uncle Slam”) (http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/index.jsp?sid=t436 ) play the Winston-Salem Dash (http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/index.jsp?sid=t580  ) .

I like the way a lot of minor league teams bring a lot of kids onto the field and really engage the fans.

My nephew Mark came down and joined us and Ferdinand scored a souvenir T-shirt

We cheered with uncle slam, celebrating the win  with a tenth inning walk-off.

In DC we were treated to a fine afternoon of sailing on the Potomac.

Ferdinand did an outstanding job skippering

 Now I’ll have to get a boat.

We also made a pilgrimage to Camden Yards.

 What an iconic ballpark! What great food options ! I had some pulled pork, but would also have liked the BBQ chicken with corn on the cob. What good fans ! Unfortunately, the birds

stink and have stunk for some time. Attendance is way down. We did enjoy seeing ole Vladi swat

 and we held up our end by cheering for the ex-Angel. His average is way down and the birds lost to the Cardinals, but Ferdinand bagged a promotional T-shirt.

.

It’s easy to get in and out of DC and Baltimore. They have multiple mass transit

systems, albeit incompatible light rail lines that do not connect

, so we parked our truck at the station and took the tram into town and to the games. Unfortunately, the Greenbelt, MD transit police are dimwits and gave me a tickets for expired Oregon plates (yeah, they do stand out), while I had a valid California permit displayed at the same time.

 They were pretty nice over the phone, though,  and I assume its all good by now.

We also saw the surging “Natinals”

 take on the surging Pirates.

The stadium is fine, but lacks character. The team makes up for it with fine play.

We were treated to a walk-off in the ninth.

  They don’t do fireworks when this happens. I suppose the tight restrictions on anything that goes ‘bang’ in DC have something to do with national security, or maybe with nervous dogs. Good thing I didn’t bring a bunch of “Ill Eagle” rockets to Marks house and launch them over the White House. A fine time was had by all, despite the lack of some big bangs after the big bang.

A better mascot would have been a eledonkey or an asslephant

Fresh Squeezed to the last Shuttle

The Trip Turns North

The sunshine state greets you with a cup of fresh orange juice. It’s a long haul across the panhandle and I was surprised how extensive and dense the pine woods are. We made an impromptu stop at a roadside turnout that provided some shady benches and a boat ramp. There was our first gator. Our goal was Tampa, where we planned to take in the Clearwater Threshers (http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/index.jsp?sid=t566 ), but on the way into town we saw a billboard for a churrascaria (http://www.texasdebrazil.com/ )

and, well, you can only do one thing at a time. The food was great. The price was not, but, hey, you go into debt with your credit cards only once.

South we went, around Lake Okeechobee. We entered the Seminole reservation and went to see Billies Swamp Safari (http://www.billieswamp.com/rates.html ) Another disappointment. They had non-native birds on display and want you to take the full day package at $50, when all we wanted to do is ride an airboat.  We had a mediocre lunch and left. The Seminoles sport the national colors of Germany and seem to have some sort of real good source of income. Unlike on many reservations I’ve gone through, here the houses are lavish, two big fat SUV’s in every car port and a palm thatched picnic roof next to every mansion. There is a casino, but it does not appear very busy. The staff at Billies Seminole Safari were all white guys.

To make up for the missed game, we headed to the East coast and catch the Marlins take on the Mariners, with some hope to get Shaun Figgins’ attention. Turns out, the Marlins now play their home games in Seattle ! Yes, the series was moved to Safeco field to make room for some U2 concert; seems that was a financial decision. The franchise will make more money that way and we were left holding the bag (screw the fans at home, too). Is this some strategy by the owner to reduce fan attendance below a threshold, get out of the contract with the city and move to Cleveland? (sounds like a movie plot to me)

Tropical showers, sometimes heavy, had moved in, but we resolved to drive an hour North and take in a game hosted by the Jupiter Hammerheads. It was all you can eat night. Man, were they going to make a loss on us ! (http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/index.jsp?sid=t479 ). It was drizzling when we got to the stadium and they were bravely pretending the game would go on. We hung around a while, but eventually left, because the inevitable did happen; it was rained out. We did not have much baseball success in Florida.

I asked the motel clerk about a good Cuban place to have dinner at, She promptly suggested “Las Vegas”. I informed her that wasn’t funny and we’d just come from there. There are no Cuban restaurants in Las Vegas. No, the place is called Las Vegas and it was a cross between fast food and real dining. The food was outstanding and the service very genteel, gracious and attentive. A bunch of old men kept coming in for meals and it was clear they were feeding their homesick souls. The music matched the flavors.

Off to the Everglades. I had the brilliant idea to sneak in on a spur road that leads to a campground North of the main entrance and picnic there. After quite a bit of a drive, we got there, only to discover that the place was closed for the summer season. Those national park nit-wits didn’t have the wherewithal to post that useful bit of information on their sign out on highway 997. I finally located a couple of guys cooling their heels inside a lavish and well air-conditioned fire station and they confirmed the fact. Seems only foreigners (mostly Germans and Swiss) and country bumpkins from Oregon are foolish enough to enter the glades in June. The park is nice, but Big Bend was better. We only saw a couple of gators, but the mosquitoes are oppressive. I didn’t know mahogany trees were once prevalent in the swamps. We tried our picnic at another site

, but the intense heat and the bugs drove us away. Unless you have a boat and one of those beekeeper type bug suits, the park is not that interesting.

The East side of the glades is a region full of tropical nurseries and fruit plantations. I had no idea so much exotic fruit was grown here; papayas, bananas, lychee, mangoes, avocado (the big, Brazilian kind), coconuts, etc … I loaded up on some big mangoes + a bag full of lychees.

I had never had a fresh lychee (small red fruit)  The shells pops open with a slight squeeze and the white meat surrounding the pit is sweet and delicious. The taste lingers. I am saving the seeds. Maybe I can raise some in Morro Pintado.
 (https://picasaweb.google.com/MorroPintado/MorroPintado2010#  ) Speaking of which, we have some papayas there.

Cape Canaveral is another expensive tour, but this one we didn’t skip.

It’s still a very lavish operation, despite being fairly obsolete. Due to ‘security concerns’ you can no longer approach the interesting sites, nor enter the assembly building. HSA type security is in full bureaucratic  bloom here and must have added a nice layer of make believe work to the federal payroll. If terrorists want to damage a working space program, they’ll  go to Baikonur. In fact, they’re building a new port in Russia: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10698433

We should turn ours into a nature preserve. That’s partially already true. Cape Canaveral sports 21 eagle’s nests, lots of gators and wild pigs, all three of which of which we saw during the bus ride. The last shuttle is sitting on its pad

 and only a few of the launch sites are still operational, but there is a fleet of a hundred or so air-conditioned buses ferrying tourists around, plus all the attendant staff, displays, I-Max shows, space burgers, etc.  And they’re not very nice, either; when we were in the queue for the bus

 I asked the attendant if we could have the handicap seats because Ferdinand is an amputee, giving Ferdinand more space to accommodate his leg.  She actually asked, “Are you kidding me?”. She then had the temerity to suggest he be placed in a wheelchair like the fat lazy ass self-disabled and be hoisted up a hydraulic ramp into the bus;  more about Florida hospitality later.

NASA drones on about the Apollo program. It’s all you see and hear about.

I guess that’s their only shot at keeping funding. Not a word, nary a display, from Voyager, the Mars rover or any of the other truly interesting things they have done in the last few decades. That’s way too scientific, I guess. Four, count ‘em, four times,  the tour guide pointed out viewing stands and locations where only “VIP invitees” would see the last shuttle launch. Seems to me, the most important folks would be those who paid for it. Where is the free admission and hot dogs for the unwashed crowds of tax payers?  Yeah, turn this into a nature preserve and leave some relics of the space program standing around, with a self-guided (free) tour  and we’d have a good thing there. I was once pretty pumped up by all that moon shot stuff and Kennedy did inspire the nation to do something truly difficult. All we have is nostalgia now. We need an inspiring national aspiration. The war on drugs is not it. The wars to force democracy on medieval societies is also not going so well. The green jobs initiative will inspire legions of spongers and corporate welfare tricksters.  Great societies have great dreams. All we’re now getting is nightmares.

Lunch was at a nice Mexican/Cuban place in Titusville that had a wonderful poison green plastic coconut out front.

 It was raining pretty good and that added to the atmosphere of decay and abandonment. Titusville, like most of the towns we drove through, bore the hallmarks of decay and retreat; boarded up businesses, shuttered shops and houses for sale. All that a few miles up the road from a place where the tour guide tells the marks that cell phones were a byproduct of the space program. How do I know that this is BS? The key components of all that digital wireless stuff are the narrow bandwidth frequency filters developed by Rockwell Radio (the Cadillac of radios), a division of Rockwell. I know , because they offered me a job on the team back when I finished my BS.

Now just North of the Kennedy moon shot nostalgia center is a very good National Wildlife Refuge and we went there to take a dip in the North (ok, North to us) Atlantic. We saw more gators there than anywhere else on the trip, including this sweetheart who was blocking the dirt road we explored.

Green camo gators, too

The beach was great (and it’s cheap to enter). The shuttle is visible just down the coast. This is the place to be to see the launch.

They have hundreds of yellow stakes marking sea turtle nests. You can see them if you enlarge the picture here:

 We both had a very nice swim. Our best experience in Florida, I’d say. So far, the state had the rudest, pushiest and aggressive drivers along the route (I know, wait ‘til New York) and the service attitude in a bunch of places like motels and restaurants is terrible. Seems like the wrong coast version of California (but with better fruit and better Latin food.)