Northwest Places

When you live in the Pacific Northwest, you really don't have to travel far to find scenes that take your breath away or to find interesting little side trips.

 One of the first trips we made this year was to one of our favorite RV parks, Pacific Shores in Newport, Oregon.  From our windshield we can see the Yaquina Head lighthouse at Cape Foulweather shown here.  You may remember seeing this scene in a previous blog.

 Another of our favorite areas is Olympic National Park.  Here, in late June, are some of the snow covered peaks in the Olympic Mountain Range.  We made this trip with friends, Jenny and Steve Hill

 In order to get to Hurricane Ridge, one of the high profile areas in Olympic National Park, we drove through low, heavy clouds.  From above, they obscure the Washington Coast.  The city you see across the way is Victoria, B.C.

 At Hurricane Ridge, there are always a few native black tail deer wandering about.  Here, three of them are framed by an alpine meadow and the magnificent peaks in the background.

 Down a trail from Hurricane Ridge was this den tree.  One had to wonder how many generations of the inhabitants had spent their lives here.

 Snow graffiti lined the trail.  If only all graffiti simply melted away like this.

 In the parking lot we saw this RV with a Swedish registration plate.  We wondered how much it had cost to transport it to North America.

 Another fun place is Astoria, named after John Jacob Astor.  Friends, Gail and Spiro Pappacostas, were our excuse for this trip.  This trolley ran along the Columbia River side of the waterfront.  Notice anything missing?

 That's right, there are no electric wires to feed the pantograph.  Not a problem if you tow your own generator.

Here, a ship crosses the Columbia Bar just outside Astoria.  Since there is no delta at the mouth of the Columbia, the full force of her 4-7 knot outbound current crashes directly into the predominantly incoming winds and currents of the Pacific Ocean.  Even under the best conditions there are deep standing waves along the bar.  There are six full-time bar pilots who board ships and guide them across the six miles of the bar, then pass eastbound ships on to Columbia River pilots, or surrender control back to the Captain of outbound ships. 

 

 Around 2,000 vessels have been lost in or around the bar.  Every year we hear of at least one.  Elite Coast Guard crews face demanding rescue conditions here such as this one, inspired by an actual event, and depicted in the Columbia River Maritime Museum.  As I was writing this, I heard on the nightly news that the Columbia River Bar is closed to all inbound and outbound traffic due to extremely hazardous conditions.

 A short trip from our house is Mt. St. Helens.  We've been there several times since moving here, and we see something new every time.  Ted took this photo looking into her crater from Johnston Ridge.  The dome you see wouldn't have been there when we first moved to the Pacific Northwest.  Right now, it is resting, but the crust over it is very thin and fragile, so new lava could start pushing up at any time.  Ted's cousin, Colleen Kafer, came from Bixby, OK to see this.  You may be asking why there are no photos of all these visitors.  Our friends and family are photogenic, but we don't seem to do them justice. 

This is Mt. Adams taken from Johnston Ridge.  She is supposedly the most extinct of all of the Pacific Northwest volcanoes.

 Only about forty miles from our house is another of our favorite places, the Columbia Riverfront RV park.  From our windshield we saw this heavily loaded grain ship outbound on the Columbia.  Because of the short routes to Asia, much grain is exported from ports along the lower Columbia River.

 Shortly after we saw the big grain ship, we looked out to see the Queen of the West glide serenely by.

Known as a hogline, these boats are fishing for salmon.  We saw several landed.  Ted kicked himself because he had not brought his fishing gear.  Still, there is an excellent Mexican restaurant not far from here, so he drowned his sorrows in a big bowl of menudo.  Brent loves this, too.  Look that recipe up and see if you would eat it.