Oregon and Washington

We are in Bellingham WA again, which is fantastic because it's fantastic here! We'll be in the area a bit longer than expected because Luke cracked his bike frame and he has to wait for Santa Cruz to send him a replacement frame. It's pretty great that they have a warrantee system--they are known for being particularly awesome in that department from what I understand.

It finally looks like it's going to rain here today. It's been horribly dry on the west coast in general and there are upsetting fires on Vancouver Island--we've been seeing the smoke from it over here for days. I think they need at least a week of rain, but at this point I suspect they'll take what they can get.

We went to see a mountain bike movie at the local theatre last night and there were piles and piles of people there. Luke said considerably more people attended the movie here than when he went to see a mountain bike movie in Toronto. Impressive, given the population is a fraction of Toronto's population. We even briefly met a local woman who just did the 24 hours of Light in Whitehorse a couple of weeks ago.

So, here are some highlights from the last bunch of weeks. We kept going north to the Redwood forests of Northern California. We rode the Ossagon trail and, besides seeing two elk and two lovely waterfalls, it was used as a set for Jurassic Park 2. After the bike ride we stopped to make dinner at a gorgeous pull-off by the ocean. Here's the view:

Our next stop was Ashland Oregon. It's a very cute town that has a famous Shakespeare Festival and lots of great parks and cute boutiques. I was surprised to learn from Luke, after seeing lots of broken window glass in parking lots, that they have a big meth problem and that people have been known to steal anything and everything out of cars...including the inside trim. Pretty sad.
We stayed at a campground for a couple of nights and we had some unusual neighbours. They slept most of the day and stayed up all night drinking and fighting. Very loudly. The woman was very friendly and respectful, but loud as anything and seemed to say everything that was in her head even when no one was with her to listen. She told me she has six kids and I heard them say multiple times that it was the 'best honeymoon ever!', so I'm guessing they were newly weds. Colourful!

We spent part of a day in Portland and I was surprised that I didn't like it much. I've had lots of people tell me how great it is and that I'd love it, so I'm not sure if it's just because I'm so used to being in nature away from cities by now. I thought the traffic was just awful, which was a surprise to me given Portland is known as a cycling city. I suspect if you live there and get to know the neighbourhoods and people that it's a great place to live, but my small taste of it was underwhelming.

Next we stayed a few days around Tumwater WA, where we found a free camping area where local dogs would come by and visit on a regular basis. One dog was pretty shy, but obviously interested in food. The others were very friendly and they were all very sweet.
Our friend Ed from Toronto flew to Seattle to travel with us for a couple of weeks. After a bit of a slow start when his bike didn't make it to Seattle with him (it showed up the next day, but Air Canada didn't make it easy to find out what was going on in the meantime), we travelled along Oregon and Washington. We started in Bend and made our way north to Oakridge, Hood River, Sandy Ridge, Mount St.Helens, then to the Mount Rainer area before dropping off at the Seattle airport again. Ed is a very good cook so we got particularly gourmet meals while he was around, including camping hollandaise sauce!
One of my favourite days was Mount St.Helens and the Ape Canyon Trail. It's a good climb on the trail so I didn't lug my camera up there, but this shot was close enough to the bottom for me.

Lava field that ran down the canyon

The view at the top was spectacular!!!  It was a 360 degree view with a snow-capped volcano in each direction. I could have stayed up there forever.
Not far from the trailhead there was Lava Canyon. Here's a shot of the lava that traveled through this area. It's pretty neat how there is a 'cap' on top of the distinctive columns.

There's a waterfall there too.

Here's a shot of a very pretty waterfall at one of our campsite in Oregon:

After saying goodbye to Ed we went up to BC, which I'll cover in my next post.

Truck repairs

Our stereo conked out, out of the blue, so when we got to Sacramento we went to Harbour Freight (Luke's favourite store) so he could fix the problem. It turns out there are three fuses that effect the stereo, only one of them being obvious. We ended up being in the parking lot for a while while Luke was doing the repair and we were approached by a shocking (to me) amount of people asking for money.

We then headed for the mountains. We drove and drove and found a lovely secluded camping site at the top. The next morning our battery was dead, and the truck was pointed so that it would go over a cliff if we tried to push start it. Luckily we heard people shooting guns (how often does that seem lucky?) so we knew we weren't completely alone. Luke hopped on his bike to go find them, and soon after he showed up with a fellow and his truck. He had a charger but it wasn't enough to get the battery going, so he towed us to a spot where we could jump start the truck. The even crazier thing is that it took about 300 metres going down the mountain road before the battery started again.
We ended up at the little camping area where the guy and his family and friends were spending the weekend. They were incredibly nice and generous and we were so grateful for their help--we really were in the middle of nowhere. They mentioned that they've needed similar help before so they are happy when they can help someone who needs it. Yay for humanity! They told us about the powerful gun they had that could shoot 400 yards away and each shot cost $5. Even though shooting in that area isn't allowed, it was a good spot because it was in a little canyon where shots would just hit the rocks and not go anywhere dangerous. I don't understand the appeal of it, but a whole lot of people in the US seem to enjoy it.
After we left them we went straight to Clear Lake to buy a new battery.

We continued on to Eureka CA and after exploring for the day started heading out of the town at dusk...only to be stopped by a police officer because one of our headlights had burnt out. It just burnt out (Luke is excellent at staying on top of such things) and luckily the police officer told us that he doesn't give fines for such things. He was really nice but it was still scary to be pulled over and it still felt weird to be asked a bunch of questions as to what we were doing. We promptly turned around and bought a new bulb.

Luckily that was the end of the streak of truck repairs (although previous to this we had to fix a leaking tire and get a new air intake).

Yosemite

We had the unfortunate timing to be in Yosemite on Memorial Day Weekend, so it was busy. Busy. Thankfully the park is big enough that most of our time there was reasonable.
We did a great hike to see some big sequoias:

Nothing is better at making me feel petite than a giant tree.

We also saw some deer.

Can you find the camo deer? You have to look past my messy hair.

It was raining on and off that day, so there were lots of clouds that made for a sweet atmosphere. We had to laugh going past a particular look-out point because there were about a dozen cars that had stopped there, but the clouds were so think that you literally couldn't see a thing.

We then decided to visit Yosemite Village, where all the money-shot famous stuff is. Normally I would say that this was a mistake because it was a horrible, ridiculous 1.5 hours of gridlock to drive the maybe 2km of the village. However, it is so insanely beautiful that even that amount of sitting around in a car was nice given the views. It would have been even nicer if we had gotten out of the car, but at that point all we wanted was to get away from the crowds (I doubt we would have been able to park even if we had tried). 

We stopped at a little picnic table pull off just outside of the village for some lunch.

Lunch Time view

We met a very nice woman from Vancouver, who was vacationing in California with her husband and didn't realize it was the long weekend for Americans--they assumed they'd be able to find camping easily in the park. We got to talking and at one point her eyes grew as big as saucers and she pointed behind me and said 'Bear!' Here's the bear:

This bear was very obviously accustomed to people and their tasty picnic food. It had both an ear tag and a collar, so the park knew this bear and it had a pretty chilled out, calm personality. So much so that when we did the recommended 'make-yourself-look-big-and-talk-loudly-to-scare-it-off' it was having none of that. It just looked at us, picked up its paw and contemplated the best plan of action to get in on the picnic goodness. 

We were at a loss as to what to do until this rather large park worker waddled over with his garbage picking stick swinging and barked at it to 'get out of here' (who I've named The Bear Wrangler). The bear perked up and ran into the adjacent bushes to wait it out. At that very moment, a couple of tourists from Europe ran over asking 'Bear? Bear? I want to see the bear!' So the Bear Wrangler called them over and pointed to where it was waiting in the bush. This prompted other people to come over. Then a bus load of tourists pulled up right in front and those people all joined the group to stare at the bear. At this point Luke and I agreed that we didn't want to be around to see how the bear took being gawked at by a huge crowd people, so we hopped in the truck and took off.

I usually find the crowds at famous parks detract from my enjoyment enough that I don't feel the need to go back (like at Yellowstone), however I would definitely go back to Yosemite. Hopefully there's a less popular time that I can go in the future!