BEHIND THE VEIL

Our final “destination” of this trip was Silver Falls State Park, just to the SE of Salem, Oregon, and the “Trail of Ten Falls.”  We thought we had seen plenty of falls on this trip, and I wasn’t sure it would be worth the effort.  But it came highly recommended by folks whose opinions we trust, so we pulled in to the Silver Spur RV Park in Silverton, just north.  Do you think they mined some silver around these parts? This turned out to be an excellent park and we recommend it if you’re going to be in the area.  Clean, modern, and with all the facilities.  It was raining when we pulled in, but soon stopped, so off came the scoot, we dried it off, and were good to go.

We were very glad we did.  We had about a twenty mile ride to the park through rolling countryside dotted with Christmas tree farms.  From the look of the farm manse on the hill, business is good.

 

We didn’t actually do the Trail, as it is almost nine miles long and it was already mid afternoon when we arrived, but you can scoot to various locations and see the principal falls via short hikes.  And wow, were these neat.  We started at the South Falls, which are 177 feet high.

Now, it sort of looks nice in that pic, but you really need some perspective to get the full impact of the size.  If you look at the rock face, just above Loni’s hat there is a horizontal crease that runs all the way across.  That’s a path that allows you to walk behind the falls.  Loni went on ahead while I waited to shoot this photo.  That little orange blip is her on the trail.  Yeah, they’re huge!

Below the South Falls, there’s a picturesque bridge across this fork of the Silver (natch) Creek.

There were very few people around, so it felt like we had this all to ourselves.  After hiking around awhile, we hiked back up to the scoot and took off for the North Falls Trailhead.  Loni has her trusty REI collapsible hiking pole with her.  She is a really tentative hiker when we’re anywhere near water.

There are two falls at this trailhead, the Upper North and the just plain North Falls.  The Upper is “only” 65 feet, but it is really a beautiful setting.  We exchanged “take your picture together?” with another couple.

The main North falls took a bit more hiking down from the Trailhead along a cliff-face trail that was rocky and wet.  On the other side of that fence is a sheer drop of a couple hundred feet.  That’s why I send Loni ahead.

The North falls are 136 feet high, and the shape of the canyon walls captures and rebounds the roar to almost a deafening level.  You have to shout to make yourself heard standing right next to each other.  Like the South falls, you can walk behind these as well.  There’s the intrepid scout just about to walk behind.

The trail basically hugs the crease.  You do NOT want to venture out towards the falls as there are no guardrails and precious little to stop you if you slip.  I love it that there are still public places where you just have to exercise common sense to stay alive rather than be fenced in or kept away.

Here’s a shot from the far side of the falls, back over to where we started.  See Loni waving?

We hung around for quite a while, absorbing the sound and fury, but eventually had to climb the thirteen stories back to the top.

  Silver Falls was worth the effort, but there’s no need for our morning constitutional tomorrow!

IRON MEN IN WOODEN SHIPS

Taking advantage of the weather, we offloaded the scoot and took off for Astoria, which is home to two things we wanted to see.  The trip down, although only 20 miles or so, proved to be perhaps our scariest scoot ride to date.  Although there was no rain, the wind picked up considerably as we neared the mouth of the Columbia, and was really blowing in gusts as we prepared to cross the 4.5 mile bridge that spans the “bar",” which is where the ocean and the river meet.  This is the start on the Washington side.   Smaller craft can pass under these arches, then the bridge drops down to water level for a couple of miles, before soaring to the span where the big ocean freighters pass under.  See the rise at the end?  That’s not going up a hill on land.;

that’s the upgrade to the r-e-a-l-l-y high part.

Anyway, we were being blasted by the wind gusts, on a wet roadway, with trucks barreling by from the other direction.  I kept it down to 45 (limit was 50) and some (unmentionable) Washington driver behind me floored his pickup, roared past, spraying water, and cut right in front.  All that to catch up to the cars that were about 200 feet ahead.  We leaned, bobbed, and danced our way across and were very happy to be off that thing.  Fortunately, on the way home, the wind disappeared and it was a piece of cake.

Can’t say as the terror was worth it for our first stop, the Lewis & Clark encampment reproduction.  The visitor center was ok, but we both have read “Undaunted Courage” and were pretty familiar with the story.  They truly were iron men in wooden, well, canoes.  We didn’t learn much new from the exhibits, save for the fact they carried a huge Newfoundland dog with them.  Neither of us remembers that from the book.  The reproduction of their fort was again, ok, but not much to make a special trip for.

We went back to Astoria, cruised the main drag and decided to stop for lunch.  Good call.  We found a great little cafe that made interesting quesadillas, what appeared to be excellent sandwiches, and homemade desserts!  We split a smoked chicken/apple/walnut quesadilla, two bowls of clam chowder (alas, the thick kind, which I don’t favor, but still good), and a piece of lemon pie, made with the whole lemon innards, not just the juices.  Delicious!

Fortified (actually, stuffed is more like it), we moved on to the Columbia River Maritime Museum.

The mouth of the Columbia River is regarded as the most hazardous waters in the U.S.  It is called the “Graveyard of the Pacific.”  Hundreds and hundreds of ships and boats have foundered here because of the violent conditions.  The mighty Columbia here tries to exit into the ocean, in a fairly narrow space.  The ocean tides and winds, however, try to force the river back, resulting in ferocious waves at the juncture, called the “bar.”  The waters are so treacherous, with constantly shifting channels and sandbars, that all major ships have to be guided in by a professional “bar pilot,” who is ferried out on a powerful small craft that races alongside the ship, where a dangling rope ladder awaits the pilot, who has to grab and jump onto it.  The waters here are also recognized by the Coast Guard as the worst in the U.S., so all of their training of their rescue craft sailors is done here.  If they can hack this, they can work anywhere.  They have a rather dramatic display of a rescue, using an actual boat that served for 29 years, and showing the incredible wave-mountains that these boats have to deal with.

The museum had lots of displays of navigation lights,

models of ships that went down here, artifacts from wrecks,

films of the boats in rough seas,

real boats that worked these waters,

and nautical lore.  At last, I finally know how to tie a bowline!

Docked next to the museum was the lightship Columbia, that spent three decades bobbing and tossing at anchor just outside the entrance to the river, warning boats of the dangerous waters.  In olden days, the same job was done by iron men in wooden sailing ships, with no motor power, just anchors to keep them in place, until they ripped loose.  Regardless of Columbia being made of metal, it’s sailors were made of the same iron. 

In the late 70’s, these ships were replaced by floating beacons like you can see at the left of the pic above.  The crew spent two weeks onboard, then had one off, before starting over.  The pitching and rolling were so bad that even the most experienced sailors got sick.  I can’t imagine doing that job for long, even with luxurious quarters like these.

  

Again, this is another of those unusual museums unique to the Northwest.  We thoroughly enjoyed it and do recommend making a detour to see it.  After we finished on the lightship, we looked over towards our own small craft, and got underway.

DUNE

Certainly not talking about some waterless planet far in the future.  After the occult Mt. St. Helens, we slushed down I-5 in the rain to WA4, and headed west to Long Beach.  We’re starting to use our Passport America membership (you get a 50% discount at member parks, with date restrictions) for the return leg, and there were a couple of PA parks in Long Beach, which is within scooting distance of our real objective, Astoria, OR, which lies just across the mouth of the Columbia.  The route along WA4 is quite nice, curvy, and mostly right along the Columbia.  We couldn’t see a whole lot because of the weather, but not a bad drive.  It started to lift as we pulled into Long Beach, which appeared to be your typical beach get-away town, with lots of rentals and shops.  The first of the PA parks was right in town, an older setup that, at this time of year, seemed half-full exclusively with long-term tenants in RV’s of varying states of decrepitude.  The managers weren’t there, but a mostly toothless denizen next door said they would return that evening, and I should proceed to space 21 and check in later.  We moved down the empty row to a string of four occupied spots.  Number 21 was at the end of these, which were very close spaces.  Our immediate neighbor in 20 had his awning out, with all sorts of junk stored under it, occupying all the would-be open space between us.  The crone denizen’s male companion came up to guide us in, but I said we didn’t want to be parked hard on to the neighbor’s junk, and couldn’t we take one of the 20 or so other unoccupied sites.  Uh, nope, the owners said to put any newcomer in 21.  Well, alrighty.  Put Albatross in gear, give a wave and a thanks, and pull away.  Another customer lost to mindless rigidity.

Turns out it was a good thing.  The second park, the Pacific Holiday RV Resort, although two miles further out of town, was quite nice, cheaper ($12!), and we almost had it to ourselves.  It stretched from the road all the way back to the start of the dunes that protected it from the ocean.  Here’s a shot from the dunes back into the park.  We’re sorta hidden way down on the right.

We took advantage of the break in the weather to head out to the beach as the sun was setting.  These dunes are pretty wide, and it was a nice little hike through them.

Finally, the beach!  This was really a gradual sloping beach.  You can see that the shallow breakers go way out there.  This was pretty much low tide, as best we could figure.

It ran for miles to the south, down to the mouth of the Columbia, which is where the hills are in this pic.  To the north, it just kept going as far as we could see.

The dune grass was quite pretty in the setting light.  It has to be tough stuff to grow in the saltwater environment, sand, and constant wind.

The rain came back in the evening, and kept up on and off throughout the night, but it was a nice sound on our aluminum roof.  Dawn brought clearer skies, so we decided to do our morning constitutional on the beach.  Big mistake.  (cue music from “Jaws”)  I got attacked.

Yeah, those are gloves and a thinsulite cap I’m wearing.  The skies may have been clear, but it was rather nippy out.  We had a great walk on the hard-packed sand, much needed after a few days spent mostly indoors.  There were several cars & pickups cruising the beach.  Not sure if they were clamming or just taking a morning drive.

Now, you might recall the “Dumping” tutorial from a few posts back.  One of the amusing things about going from rv park to park is seeing the often, uh, odd way that the various parks place their electric, water, and sewer hookups.  What you don’t want is for the dump drain to be right next to your fresh water supply, or for that matter your electric source.  Why?  Because it’s almost impossible to avoid being the tenant right behind the previous occupant who makes a mess and splashes junk all around.  Ideally, you want your drain to be all by itself, in a concrete basin with lips all around, to confine the stuff.  Well, as much as we liked the location, price, and general amenities of this park, they did everything wrong with the hookups.  Just how do you think this malevolent looking beauty got its nourishment, hmmmmm?

CAR WARS

Now that we’re getting close to the Oregon border, a minor rant about driving characteristics between OR and WA.  When we first started in Oregon, we were amazed at how polite drivers were.  They made it easy to merge, always waived you on first at intersections, and would stop immediately if a pedestrian so much as glanced at a crosswalk.  Wow.  Among the best of all the states we’ve been in.  Then we got to Washington.

Yikes!  We’re voting WA drivers the absolute worst we’ve encountered.  Rude, impatient, dangerous.  They pull out from a side road at the last second, causing heavy braking and a torrent of cursing.  They pass on two lane bridges.  They tailgate.  Generally, they’re asses.

So, Oregon si!  Washington, bah!

RAIN, RAIN, GO AWAY

After finishing with the Museum of Glass, it was getting late in the afternoon and the rain was beginning to come down in earnest.  The forecast was for two days of heavy downpour, and hopefully a one day respite after that.  Since our next goal was Mt. St. Helens, there wasn’t any reason to go far until things cleared up.  Can’t see the mountain in the soup.  We decided to sit tight for the weekend, watch football, and generally veg.  The best option seemed to be the Majestic RV Park in Puyallup, just SE of Tacoma.  It sounded great in the park guides.  NOT.  First, they charged top dollar ($34 a night).  However, the advertised WiFi turned out not to be included in the price, which I found out when I tried to log on.  It was provided by an independent service at the princely sum of $5.00 per day.  The advertised “full” cable had only networks and junk.  I asked about that, and she said (with a note of smarmy incredulity that I wanted to slap off her face), “You want more stations?”  Well, yeah, like ESPN for some sports.  “You’ll need a cable box for that.”  I was about to pop, but she said, “You’re in luck, someone checked out and returned one.”  At least she didn’t try to charge extra for that.  What if the previous guy hadn’t checked out?  Too bad, sorry about the false advertising? 

So, where do the non-class-A-behemoth RV’s get assigned?  Why, to the swamp, naturally. 

See that nice concrete pad out our back window?  Those are so you can step out of your rig without donning wellies.  Sorry, only at the 50 amp sites.  We little 30 ampers (who pay the same price) get the lake, which you can see forming.  Those puddles got a LOT bigger over the course of our stay.  The Majestic Moat, without a drawbridge.  I was not a happy camper.  Loni to the rescue.

Loni is a cook.  Loni is a chef.  Loni knows how to make it all right and soothe the savage breast.  From scratch.  That’s a block of real Parmesan cheese she’s holding.  Oh, yes.

 

I know how to open a bottle.  Together we made it good.  Ahhhhhh.

We got through the weekend without much cabin fever, courtesy of nonstop football and good eats, but were more than ready to get out of Dodge on Monday morning.  Ah, but first we had to dump tanks.  In the rain.  In the moat.  There’s nothing I can say about this experience that would survive the spousal censor, so just use your imagination.

We headed south for Mt. St. Helens, hoping that the promised respite from the rain would allow us to view the blown-out cone.  The road conditions did not augur well.

Noooooooooo.  Not into the semi!

It did stop as we neared the St. Helens turnoff.  We stopped at the earnest, but ho-hum visitor center, and went about halfway up the access road to the peak.  Alas, our viewing was not to be.  It’s up there somewhere.

We didn’t bother trying to get any closer, as the cloud cover was unlikely to lift.  It was impressive looking out onto the path the major debris flow took after the thing blew.  The peak is above the center snowy face in this pic.

Farewell, St. Helens, we hardly knew ye.

GLASSY EYED

After the Hoh Rainforest, we continued our counterclockwise circling of Olympic Park/Forest.  101 goes by the ocean for a ways so we stopped to visit Ruby Beach.  There were supposed to be small stones on the beach that look like faux rubies – really garnets – but we didn’t see any of those.  Instead, what we got was an impressive set of sea stacks on a very rough looking beach.

There’s a river that comes out right here, so between that and the sea there are zillions of “river rocks,” smooth-worn stones about a flat hand size.  Hmmm.  Pretty colors and patterns.  Just right for adding to some front yard landscaping.  The beach is now short six.

Further down the coast, there’s a lodge at Queets consisting of about fifty cabin units that front another beach, this one consisting of thousands of ocean-and-river spewn (I made that word up) logs.  There were warning signs cautioning that the rubble was very unstable, and people had been crushed to death while climbing around on them.  We were content with the long view.

We came inland after this, to start skirting the southern side of the Park.  Down in this corner is Lake Quinault which was supposed to have a neat namesake lodge on its shore.  This proved to be a very scenic lake, and the lodge was a stunner.  It was built in the 1920’s and visited by FDR in the 30’s.  They named the dining room after him.  This is a shot of the front.  They were putting a new roof on, and you can see some blue tarp and bare boards where they were working.

  

Inside, the lobby was, for me, the quintessential lodge, with dark wood, big fireplace, and lots of overstuffed leather seats.  I’d stay here in a heartbeat.

The back of the lodge looks out over a great lawn down to the lake.   

On the first floor of the rear of the left wing was the restaurant where we had lunch, looking out on the scene above.  I’ll spare you more food photos, but we had excellent Monte Cristo (me) and croissant chicken salad (Loni) sandwiches, with sweet potato fries.  And, yes, another superlative.  Perhaps the best berry cobbler ever! 

On the back porch they had the lodge’s rain gauge, which shows the year-to-date total.  Way up top you can see a mark for the record annual drenching of some fifteen feet !  The mark for this year, thus far, is at eleven.

We ended up for the night in Tumwater at a park whose nicest feature was a cheap laundry.  The sack was overflowing, so Loni did the duds alongside another woman who poured out her rather heartrending life story.  Gads.  You need a wakeup like that once in a while to remind you how good you have it.  I, of course, was watching Texas cream the Yankees.  Yes!  I keep thinking Tumwater was the home of the old Hamm’s Brewery, so the darn theme song keeps running through my head.  “FROM the land of sky blue waters, COMES the beer refreshing, HAMM”S the beer refreshing, Hammmmm’s (drums) da da da dum!”  God, senility is wonderful.

Tumwater was just a staging for our visit to the Museum of Glass in nearby Tacoma.  We both got “into” glass art when we visited a museum in Oklahoma City that featured the work of Dale Chihuly (sp?  I don’t have internet as I type this).  Wild, fabulous stuff that I blogged about at the time.  It has begun to rain in earnest, so spending the day indoors is a good call.  We used Dora, our GPS, to guide us in, as Tacoma ranks behind only Houston in our rogues gallery tangled roads.  The maps we have (and we have several) still didn’t provide coherent detail.   Dora was doing just fine until we exited the freeway and the street we were supposed to follow was blockaded, and appeared to have been so for many years.  So much for map updates.  Fortunately, we could see where we needed to go, as the distinctive conical roof was jutting up in the distance.  We actually ended up literally on the other side of the tracks from the museum, at the Washington State History Museum.  I had Google-Earthed the area the night before, looking for open lots that we could park Albatross in (yeah, I know, dangling participle).  The History Museum seemed to have one, and sure enough it did.  We took up two spaces, encroached on two others, paid for one at the kiosk, and ran for it.

The History Museum is connected to the Glass Museum by the Bridge of Glass over the (active) railroad yard.

Ahead of Loni there is an area where the ceiling is made out of Chihuly pieces, very like an exhibit we saw in Oklahoma.

 

The sidewalls of the bridge in that area are display cases housing some beautiful pieces.  I guess the covering plexiglass is theft-proof, because it was clear that these objects stayed here permanently and were not taken in each night.  The actual wall of these things stretched about fifty feet and was nine feet high, so this photo is only a small portion of the display.

The museum doesn’t allow any photography inside, except for the “Hot Shop,” where they had amphitheater seating facing a working glass shop where visiting “fellows” are free to use the facilities and the permanent skilled crew to fabricate their designs.  It was fascinating to watch.  The current artist in residence is the woman on the left in the shot below.  The others are the museum’s artisan staff that executes the designs under the artist’s direction.

I think she’s praying the thing won’t blow up.  The process is a real teamwork effort.  It appeared that the craftsmen had worked together for many years, as they all worked on the one piece in sequential tasks that would do credit to a choreographer.  That blob on the end of the stick is molten glass.  They roll the pole along those two supports to keep it in shape. 

 

It’s too bad we couldn’t take pics, because one of the exhibits was hilarious.  Third and fourth graders from local schools got to draw whatever fanciful creature they wanted, in full color.  Then the artists (including world-renown visitors from around the world) and the staff craftsmen executed the kids’ designs in glass, with the kids present when their design was being made, for consultation.  Linkletter had it right when he said, “Kids say the darndest things.”  They also come up with some pretty wild critters, like the Pizza Cat, the Lemon Mouse, weird birds, monsters, you name it.  The executions were very faithful to the kids’ drawings, and were a gas.  In another gallery we saw an installation that had just opened that day.  It’s hard to describe, but it consisted of a forest of glass pieces (panels, puffs, objects, etc.) hanging from the ceiling by thin wires.  The pieces were layered one in front of the other to create a feeling of depth as you looked from the front.  The whole thing created a forest scene, with trees, mountains, a waterfall, etc.  It’s one of those things you just have to see to appreciate, and we were blown away, and couldn’t stop grinning at our good fortune to be have scheduled our visit by accident on opening day.

We had a great time, learned a lot, and had more than a few chuckles.  Another absolute must-see museum, unlike anything you’ll find elsewhere.