Thursday 25 September 2014

More Washington





Did we take a break from our North American trip to pop over to Germany for a bit of beer and schnitzel?
Nope! This is Leavenworth WA, a small town tucked on the edge of the Okanagan-Wenatchee National Forest, that designed its downtown to look like a Bavarian village. It's quite cute, in a cheesy kind of way.

Bavarian Starbucks
Local bike shop--Das Rad Haus

Statue in town

When we got to town there was a forest fire part way up one of the mountains, just outside of town. For the entire first day there were non-stop helicopters flying over to dump water on the fire to contain it. After our first day it was under control so the helicopter became much less frequent. We saw smoke for two more days coming from the area though. The fire was man made (even though there's been fire bans because of their hot dry summer)--which made watching the effort and expense needed to put it out all the more upsetting.

if you look closely, you can see the helicopter dumping water

We stayed at a retired campground that is still used unofficially about 15 minutes outside of town. It was a great site with an outhouse strangely decorated with candleholders, small flags and a glass picture of Neuschwanstein Castle (it was the first time I've seen an outhouse decorated at all, now that I think about it).
The unfortunate feature of the site was that there was a whole lot mice running around at night. Normally I think mice are quite cute (even with having mice in our apartment for a few months in Hamilton) but I don't feel that way at night, when they get into the truck while we're sleeping in it.  They got both into the back and front (as seen by the poops that they left behind, that I had to clean the next day). The worst part of it was when they ran on top of us--one ran across Luke's arm over his sleeping bag, while one CRAWLED ONTO MY HEAD. I don't think it'll come as a surprise that I didn't get much sleep that night, nor did Luke (although the mice don't bother him like they bother me).
Luckily we still have a sheet that we used to block the spaces in the gate (the only place they can get in) from when we were sleeping in swarming mosquito country. The subsequent nights we used the sheet and remained mouse-free. We could still hear them running around and on top of the truck, but that I can handle.

beach down the road from campsite

Luke met a super nice guy named Paul and they went for a bike ride together on one of the trails on the ski hill. Paul is a freelance journalist who also works for a bike part company (that makes a belt-drive for bikes instead of using a chain) and recently moved to Leavenworth from Tahoe. He lived for a few years in Colorado before that, so he had lots of advice of what to do when we get there at the beginning of October. He also invited us for beer and vegetarian bratwurst after their ride--wunderbar!

We drove back to Seattle that night and did some chores before going back to Duthie bike park for some fun. I decided I wanted to learn how to jump my bike and there is a area of progressive jumps at Duthie. So, Luke coached me through it and it went really well! I was learning how to do a manual jump and not only was I getting it but I wasn't feeling scared or freaked out about it either (I'm not the bravest biker). We went off to ride some of the other stuff and at the end Luke told me to do one last jump on the way out. So I enthusiastically launch off and....crash hard. Ironically, Luke had just been telling me how usually if people are going to crash it tends to be at the end of a ride. Luckily I was wearing padding so I didn't have a scratch on me. However, I landed on my hip and I now have a large bruise and had to take a few days off to recover. It was worth learning to jump though!

The next day we met up with our good friend Leena's friends Jim and Michael. They have a company repairing and building organs and we were invited to see their shop. Their shop is on Camano Island on a property that has horses and a **llama**. Two of the horses were super sweet and friendly and came over to be pet. They also have an amazing dog named Sara. She was a rescue from Spain, where her breed (padenco) is used as a hunting dog and frequently abused and abandoned by their owners. Sara narrowly escaped being destroyed and is now happy in her new home. She has such a sweet, fun disposition and she was made to run.
The most exciting part of Sara is that Luke loved her as much as I did! I've been teasing/nagging Luke about getting a trail dog (at some point) and up until meeting Sara Luke would only frown at me. However, Luke gets a big smile on his face when Sara is mentioned and he admitted the other day that he'd looked up information on her breed (as had I!).  When I mentioned that there isn't really room in the truck for a dog, Luke said 'then we'll have to get a puppy' (!!!!!). I doubt we'll get one while on the road, but this bodes well for a trail dog at some point in the future :)
Anyway, Jim and Michael did a wonderful job of showing us their shop and filling us in on many of the detailed details of organs and how they are repaired. It's amazingly complicated! (at least it seems that way to me). They also shared some of Michael's delicious homemade pickles with us. It was a great visit!

We then traveled down the 410 highway into the Mt.Rainier National Park. My hip was still a bit messed up from the fall, so Luke did a bike ride while I did a hike. We had some great views of Mt.Rainier.



The next morning ended up being rainy and cooler, so we decided to keep driving through, past Yakima and over to Boise Idaho. We stopped at a little lake to make breakfast and while we were there large clouds/mist blew through and covered the area in clouds. I'd never seen clouds move that fast and low to the ground like that before.

Boise is an interesting place! Most of the city is on pretty flat ground, but there are foothills and then mountains that begin at the edge of town and go really far back! It's particularly interesting because the foothills begin as desert with no trees and only little sage shrubs, but as you go up all of a sudden trees start appearing and it's forested. There's a ski hill partway up called Bogus Basin and there's trails all over.
Luke did a ride in the lower desert area yesterday while I took one last day of recovery (today will be my first day back on the bike). It was super hot though (33 degrees). Luckily it's not humid...but I still found the heat oppressive.

desert blue skies, yellow grass and a small Luke on his bike


Monday 15 September 2014

North Central Washington

Once the truck was repaired we drove to Nelson BC, just down the road from Castlegar, and wandered around a little bit.  It's a pretty cute little town.  We are even less into shopping than we were before we left, but we puttered around the downtown for an hour and browsed some of the stores.
Nelson is considered to be a big mountain bike destination in Canada, so Luke was keen to get on the trails. The trails are supposed to be pretty gnarly advanced downhill stuff, so I didn't expect to get onto any of them. It ended up being a disappointment all the same however. We had a hard time getting to the trails (bad roads) and after two aborted attempts at two different areas we ended up in an area near town. Luke's ride ended up being over 90% dirt road and the one (famous) trail he rode didn't seem to be maintained--there were big trees down that you couldn't ride over and, given you're going fast downhill, are kind of dangerous. Perhaps we just had bad luck and it's a better scene if you know the local ins and outs...

One of the highlights was seeing this itty bitty pirate ship in their harbour:


 We drove to Rossland later evening and when we woke up the next morning the weather was **cold**. It had gone below zero overnight and the high was going to be 11 degrees that day, so we decided to drive to warmer places. So we drove to Spokane.

Spokane is actually pretty cool. They have a number of one way streets (which made me feel right at home coming from Hamilton) and a number of interesting neighbourhoods (also like Hamilton). It's a large city with sprawl--which could be really awful but luckily it's really quite eclectic.

We visited a Japanese Garden in one of the city parks. Here's some photos:


 Details of one of the stone ornaments


 Koi blurred by the water

They have a super fun bike park and number of trail areas. There are some super interesting basalt formations, including the Bowl and Pitcher in Riverside State Park. I love volcanos, so volcanic rock makes me happy.

We drove to Wenatchee next. There are many, many apple and pear orchards in the area. There is also a large Mexican population and consequently a very pleasing amount of Mexican restaurants. Strangely, we haven't gone to any of them yet. We are still in the general area. It's only a matter of time.

We went to Cashmere to the Devil's Gulch/Mission Ridge area. There's a 40km bike ride there that has a 25km descent which takes 90 minutes of bombing down to complete. This photo wasn't taken at this trailhead, but I think it captures the joie de vivre Luke felt on the trail:


It was an 18km climb so I opted to do a trail run on the Red Devil trail instead. It also went up and up, but that seems more doable when not pushing a bike. Here's one the lovely views I had:


The next post will be about Leavenworth WA, where we are now. It will feature some cute photos and details about the forest fire that's currently happening just on the outskirts of town. They are keeping it under control so we're safe and fine...but it's crazy to see all the same.



Tuesday 9 September 2014

another whoops

Luke realized that I forgot to mention another thing that happened in Haines Junction. We had been driving down one of the roads just outside of town in the evening and it was dark. As we passed an intersection we saw a truck camper on its side on the opposite side of the road, with no sign of the truck it belonged to. We turned around and as we approached we could then see that the truck had fallen into the deep ditch beside the road (it was about a 20 foot drop). The truck's headlights were still on and it was on its side as well. You could see that the truck had been going in the opposite direction, then did a tight 180 degree turn causing the camper to fly off and the truck to land in the ditch.
Luke went down with a flashlight--there was no one in the truck but it smelled of gasoline, there was lots of blood and there were many empty beer cars strewn about.  We couldn't tell if they had been rescued or if they had wandered off somewhere, injured. As Luke was calling out and looking for evidence of where they might have gone, a guy in a truck came by and started putting up pylons. It turns out the police had already been there and he had been called to section it off for the safety of the other drivers. Scary stuff!

We're in Castlegar BC waiting around while our truck gets yet another repair. This time the radiator needs replacing. It was slowly leaking coolant and it turns out there's a crack in the plastic. Thankfully Luke noticed the temp gauge starting to spike as we drove uphill and he sorted it out well enough for us to get to a mechanic before any damage was done. It's very mountainous country around here, so we could have been in trouble if Luke didn't catch it when he did.

After leaving the Olympic Peninsula we spent a day in Seattle. We hunted down a bike shop so I could buy some new shoes (which I love!!) and then went to a bike area called Duthie in Issaquah. Duthie is a super fun bike skills area that is very well built--I was super impressed. It's good for people like me who need to practice skills since they are set up in a safe (well, as safe as that stuff gets) progressive manner.
It was a bit strange to be back in a big city again. It was especially weird to see people glued to their phones again.

We then drove to Bellingham, just south of border from Vancouver. It's a wonderful place (except they have a lot of bad drivers). I went to a fabulous yarn store and we rode some fabulous trails.

We headed east after that, into the mountains towards Twisp.  We did a ride called the Goat Creek trail that started a bit higher up of a mountain in the Okanogan National Forest. That side of the mountains is high desert so it was sandier and drier than what I had gotten used to on the west side. As we rode we came across a number of cows grazing in the area. Some just stared at us, others ran way, while one made very annoyed noises as we went by...but they left us alone.
That night we slept near a small lake just outside of Winthrop WA. We could hear coyotes howling through the night and the next morning we watched two raptors hunting other birds. An older couple drove up with a boat and told us that a wildfire (started by lightning) tore through the area a couple months before and traveled 30 miles past. They thought the lake was mostly dead from the ash, but they were going to try their luck fishing regardless.
We couldn't get to the trail Luke wanted to ride because of closed roads due to road work, so we drove to Rossland instead. We had a lovely swim in one of the lakes in Osoyoos BC on the way (it was hot!!). We'll be going back to Rossland so Luke can ride the Seven Summit trail (when am I going to be in good enough shape to climb 3000 ft already??) once the truck is back from surgery. I'm sure there will be trails I can ride there too :)

Tuesday 2 September 2014

Whooops!!

Luke just pointed out that I forgot to blog about our time in the Kluane National Park in the Yukon. I could have sworn I included it, but it seems I left it out.

We were there for a couple of days--it's a huge, beautiful area, but it rained a bunch so we didn't get out to do much. What I can tell you about it is they have a really impressive visitor centre at Haines Junction (the best I've ever seen actually). They have a lot of interesting interactive displays where you could see aerial photos of the huge snowy mountains (including Mount Logan, Canada's highest peak) that you can't see from the road, since they are behind the mountains you can see from the road. They also had a great informative bear section and a scale which tells you how many picas it would take to make up your weight.

We did manage to do a bike ride through one of the valleys, called the Alsek Valley Trail. Their site has a better description of the history of that area than I can do:
High beach ridges left behind by a succession of glacial lakes are also apparent from here. Further down the Alsek valley, the Lowell glacier has surged across the valley four different times during the past 12,000 years, damming the Alsek River and creating glacial lakes, the last one having drained only just over a century ago.

The park has the highest density of grizzly bears in North America but we didn't see any on our ride.

We did, however, see one by the road. We've seen a bunch of grizzlies but this was the first one we managed to photograph. Here he is:


He was actually just a kilometre or so down the road from where we camped, so I kept a vigilant eye out for bears while we made dinner.

Here's a photo of a small part of the park:


This all happened after Alaska and before Smithers BC.  It's a good thing Luke is keeping me honest!

Olympic Peninsula

We've had a wonderful five days in the Olympic Peninsula (just the Northern part around Port Angeles for now). Given it was the Labour Day weekend, it was nice to be somewhere with a low population density--nothing was too crowded.
Both Port Angeles and neighbouring Sequim have a number of very friendly, happy people. So much so that it took me by surprise. They generally go out of their way to be warm and talkative and they do so with much sincerity. Here's a few particular examples:

The first day we went to a bike trail area and there was a closed, but not locked, gate at the entrance. We thought since it wasn't locked that it was OK to enter, so we biked around for a while. As we were about to go a fellow in his truck appeared and asked us about the gate--it turns out that it is supposed to be locked and people shouldn't be there without an authorized person on site. However, instead of being annoyed with us, he told us it was not a problem and proceeded to tell us about other trails we could ride, good places to camp, and invited us to come out to when groups were planning to be there so we could ride more and getting shuttled to the top of the trails. We did join them for one afternoon and it was loads of fun! All of the riders who also came were equally as nice to us.

I went for a hike in the Dungeness area while Luke biked a more advanced trail (which he said was likely the best trail he's ever ridden!). The area is amazing! Anyway, as I was waiting for Luke to return I met a retired gold miner and he told me all about his experiences in Northern California and Northern BC. I had lots of questions for him and he seemed really happy to talk about it. Luke has been interested in gold mining so it was particularly nice to hear about it first hand. Perhaps that will be our next career move :)

We camped in a beautiful campground in an area of rain forest on the northwest part of the Peninsula. We arrived later in the evening so there weren't a lot of spots left and the place we chose was by some very drunk, loud, disrespectful 20 somethings. So the campground host approached us and offered to show us a different spot farther away from that area--it was a day use area that normally isn't for camping but she let us use it and we got to pitch our tent on a mini-beach by the river.

There's also a fantastic coffee house in Sequim called Allegro (which is where we are at right now). Great drinks and beautiful atmosphere.

Today we went to Mt.Muller. Luke rode the trail while I hiked again (this trail climbs 2000 feet in the first 5 km...I'm getting better at climbing but I'm not quite at that level yet). I hiked the climb then hiked the end part of the loop through more rainforest. Here's some photos from there, and an area just down the street called Crescent Lake:

 Huge Tree right beside a swim area at Crescent Lake

 View from bottom branch of tree

Me climbing the tree, so you can appreciate the scale

 Three-leafed clover in the rainforest

Luke at the end of the Mt.Muller trail

Moss on a tree

We're heading for Seattle tonight!