The Great Pacific Northwest

Day 5
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Sunday morning, we drove up from Seattle to Vancouver. It was an uneventful drive up I-5. I tend to think of I-5 as this lonely highway traversing the arid and barren expanse of desert between San Jose and LA, but here, the I-5 is lush and green. We arrived in Vancouver at about lunchtime so it was the perfect time to seek out sustenance in Chinatown. It was a very hot day so my criteria for a good place to eat included strong air-conditioning. We ended up in Hon's Noodle House which was pretty good.

Driving on through Vancouver, we crossed over the bridge to North Vancouver to our hotel, the Holiday Day Lillooet. Nice place! We decided to try to escape the heat in nearby Lynn Canyon. Turned out to be a good choice. The little visitor's center had some interesting exhibits, including this one of all kinds of antlers and horns.


Lynn Canyon is surrounded by a second-growth temperate rainforest with trees about 80-100 years old. The original old-growth forest was logged in the late 1800's to cater to the building boom which occurred with the incorporation of the city of Vancouver in 1884 and later, with the arrival of the railroad from the east.


We had fun crossing the suspension bridge.

Woah! It sure is shaky!


...followed a boardwalk trail...



and hiked down to Lynn Creek which was really a swiftly-flowing river set in a deep and narrow canyon. Erosion on the bank gave us access to the river:

Nice views of the bridge, canyon and Twin Falls from the river...




Everyone had fun wading in the VERY cold water and relaxing on the rocks...


Lots of summer berries growing along the bank!


And of course, where there's water, there's the opportunity to throw rocks!


All in all, it was a very pleasant way to spend a hot summer afternoon - by the cool riverbank :-)

The Great Pacific Northwest

Day 4
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Driving up from Mount Rainier on day 3, we arrived in Seattle in the late afternoon and went directly to Pike Place Market. The instant the car door was opened, the kids reacted to the 'odor' of the wet market. We walked around a bit but no one was very impressed so we continued on to Lynnwood, a quiet suburb 15 minutes north of Seattle, and checked into the Hampton Inn. This was later voted the kids' favorite hotel of the trip. For me, it's a toss-up between this and the Holiday Inn at Lillooet North Vancouver. After checking in, we ended the day with a satisfying dinner at Kirirom Cambodian Restaurant in Lynnwood.

The next morning, we decided to visit the Boeing factory in Everett. Yay! The boys found it quite fascinating but the girls were a little blah about it. At one point, Cassie refused to get out of the bus to get up close and personal with a 747 on the production floor. Now, who wouldn't jump at the chance to see a half-built 747? ;-) The dimensions of the building are certainly impressive. Doesn't look very big, does it?

It didn't either in real life, being set all by itself on the vast expanse of Paine Airfield. But the tour guide quoted a bunch of statistics for comparison, including the fact that all of Disneyland fits inside the hangar building with 12 acres to spare for parking! The world's largest building by volume.

We got to see the Dreamliner production line, of course. Can't wait to fly in one!

And this one's my favorite - the modified 747-400 Large Cargo Freighter with a swing tail. The one used to transport Dreamliner parts from all over the world is called "The Dreamlifter".

Lots of cool information about Boeing and its planes on Wikipedia, for anyone who is interested.

Trying out the official junior pilot's vest at the gift store:

Finally, a dose of parting advice from the tour guide: "If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going!"

After an exciting tour at Boeing, we stumbled upon a little gem of a Japanese restaurant that is worth mentioning: Miako Teriyaki in Mukilteo. We started off just ordering some gyoza for a snack, and ended up going back to the counter three times to order some more! Best gyoza I've eaten - positively heavenly :-)

After a successful morning, at least in the boys' books, we drove into downtown Seattle to visit the Seattle Center and the iconic Space Needle. Here we are under the Space Needle. It took many tries to finally get everyone AND the SN in the photo, phew! Some locals sitting around in the plaza were quite unperturbed by the mini commotion we were raising. I guess they're used to this area being flooded by silly tourists :-)

It was a blazing hot day in Seattle, but we walked around a little bit. The Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum building is pretty cool.

It was designed by Frank Gehry, who also architected other famous buildings such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles.


Here's a view of it with the Space Needle:

We didn't do very much as it was very hot. We thought about watching a movie at the Planetarium but the only show at the time we were there was Kungfu Panda, which we had watched, and thoroughly enjoyed, on Father's Day. But the kids had fun climbing on an outdoor sculpture. Clarence helped the Korean boy in the photo up onto the sculpture. Our two kids had no trouble getting up, the little monkeys :-)

Before leaving downtown Seattle, we ducked into a cafe and enjoyed some ice-cold smoothies. I found some Kinderschokolade (German Easter chocolate eggs with really cool mini-toys inside) but the children are obviously more interested in the strawberry smoothie!


Next stop: Chittenden Locks and the Carl English, Jr. Botanical Gardens. The locks were fun to visit. As it was hot day, there were many private boats of all sizes going through the locks between Lake Washington and Lake Union.



There was a salmon ladder which was teeming with wriggling salmon trying to get upstream! The kids had fun rolling down the grassy slopes of the botanic gardens. We also played hide and seek. Dad was the best at hiding. Unfortunately, that is not a good thing as no one could find him. They started another game, and he was left standing in the middle of a prickly bush for 15 minutes before emerging slightly annoyed and sheepish.

There was a most impressive cedar tree in the garden.

Beautiful, isn't it?



Well, Seattle has been fun but the weather was reportedly cooler in Vancouver, so we decided to skip the Sunday sailing outing at the Seattle Center for Wooden Boats, and instead head up to Vancouver the next morning.

Canada, here we come!

The Great Pacific Northwest

Days 2 and 3
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Mount Rainier is an active stratovolcano located 54 miles southeast of Seattle. It is the highest peak in the Cascade Range, reaching more than 2.7 miles above sea level. The mountain and the surrounding area are protected within Mount Rainier National Park.

With 26 major glaciers, Mount Rainier is the most heavily glaciated peak in the lower 48 states with 35 square miles of permanent snowfields and glaciers. The summit is topped by two volcanic craters, each over 1,000 feet in diameter. Geothermal heat from the volcano keeps areas of both crater rims free of snow and ice, and has formed an extensive network of glacier caves within the ice-filled craters. A small crater lake, the highest in North America, occupies the lowest portion of the west crater below more than 160 feet of ice and is accessible only via the caves.

Impressive technical information. But the mountain itself is a sight to behold. Here's a view of the mountain seen from just outside Seattle on the Puget Sound lowlands.

An inspiring view but also a reminder of an ever present danger. These fertile farming valleys were flooded with rich volcanic soil and debris from previous eruptions of Mount Rainier, most notably by the Osceola Mudflow of 10,000 years ago. The present communities face the risk of being buried by volcanic mudflows (lahars) from the next eruption!

The drive to Mount Rainier was interesting. As we made our way east on US-12, we came across a farmstand at Mary's Corner where we indulged in some fresh Bing and, of course, Rainier cherries. Yum yum! A little further on, we visited the Mossyrock Trout Hatchery on Mayfield Lake. The hatchery is run by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and used for hatching local Rainbow Trout for release back into nearby lakes and rivers.

After a Subway lunch and grocery stop at Morton, we came to the little town of Elbe where we stopped at Ex Nihilo, a lovely sculpture garden set on 9 acres of meadow and forest.


Oh, no! It's Shelob!


Onwards through Ashford where we were to stay the night, we saw some llamas lolling around by the roadside - probably pets and also used as pack animals for extended hiking/climbing expeditions. We then entered the Mount Rainier National Park proper through the Nisqually Entrance at the south western corner of the park.

Approximately 58 percent of the park is forested and about 35% lies under permanent snow and ice. Forest ages range from less than 100 years old on burned areas and moraines left by receding glaciers, to old-growth stands of 1,000 or more years. Some alpine heather communities have persisted in the park for up to 10,000 years!

At Longmire, the first stop in the park, we hiked on the Trail of the Shadows with beautiful views of Mt. Rainier over Longmire Meadows.

We passed by a beaver dam in the river, an old log cabin, plenty of bridges across small streams, old stone cisterns where guests of the Longmires long ago would soak in the medicinal waters, and a travertine mound, bubbling and oozing minerals. Much of the trail passed through forests of old-growth Douglas fir, western red cedar and western hemlock. Here's a photo of Cassie holding a Douglas fir cone next to the tiny cone of the Western hemlock.

The children signed up for the Junior Ranger program and were enthusiastically doing the Ranger activities along the way. They would later be sworn in as official Junior Rangers when we got to Paradise, further up the mountain.

All along the lower mountain, there are fantastic burst of colors in fields of brilliant paintbrush, anemones, and gentians.

Onward ho to Paradise! We stopped at a vista point for Nisqually Glacier. The Nisqually Glacier is one of the larger glaciers on the southern face of Mount Rainier. See the valley carved out by the glacier in the Ice Age? Lots of moraine (a mixture of rock, gravel and boulders) all over the glacial valley floor.

Wonderful vistas looking downstream along the glacial flow.

How high up are we, I wonder?


From Paradise, the panoramic views of the ice-capped mountain peak, fields of glaciers, dense evergreen forests and meadows are breathtaking.


According to the National Park Service, Paradise is the snowiest place on Earth where snowfall is measured regularly. "1,122 inches of snow fell during the winter of 1971-1972, setting a world record for that year. It also holds the Cascade Range record for most snow on the ground with 367 inches on March 10, 1956".

One of many snowball fights in Paradise :-)

With all that snow and ice, it's no wonder the whole park is littered with lovely waterfalls falling off sheer rock faces. Here are a few we visited.

Christine Falls:

An unnamed but beautiful waterfall right beside the road:

Narada Falls. This was an interesting one because the trail to the falls viewpoint was snowed up but we managed to slip and slide our way down to see it.

The weather was pretty hot (mid 80's) so we stopped at Ashford for burgers and ice-cream. The huckleberry ice cream was delicious and the kids even got to do their own summit climb free of charge.

Two lovely days in the shadow of Mount Rainier. Now it's time to find the exit and move on to Seattle. Just follow the sign!

The Great Pacific Northwest

Well, we've done it. We finally went on a trip to the Great Pacific Northwest. Long talked about, and finally consummated. We flew into Portland and drove up through Mount St. Helens, Mount Rainier, Seattle, Vancouver, Victoria over on Vancouver Island, and back to Port Angeles in Washington state where we visited the Olympic National Park. Then, it was back to Portland by way of Olympia, the capital of Washington state. All in all, it was a great trip. We had tons of fun and loads of photos. In the interest of time, I'm only going to post a few photos from each day of the trip to accompany my travelogue.

Day 1
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Mount St. Helens was amazing. It has been 28 years since the eruption of 1980, but the surrounding landscape still bears clear evidence of the devastation that occurred. Here's a brief description of the eruption on the U.S. Forest Service webpage:

"At 8:32 Sunday morning, May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted.

Shaken by an earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale, the north face of this tall symmetrical mountain collapsed in a massive rock debris avalanche. Nearly 230 square miles of forest was blown down or buried beneath volcanic deposits. At the same time a mushroom-shaped column of ash rose thousands of feet skyward and drifted downwind, turning day into night as dark, gray ash fell over eastern Washington and beyond. The eruption lasted 9 hours, but Mount St. Helens and the surrounding landscape were dramatically changed within moments".

Intrigued?

Background information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_St._Helens

More information for aspiring volcanologists:
http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/MSH/Publications/PP1250/table_contents.html

The first visitor's center at Silver Lake afforded grand views of the mountain, still snow-capped in late June. We walked on a trail skirting Silver Lake and admired the profusion of wildflowers and water lilies. Lots of wild foxgloves. To the south of Silver Lake lay the vast Pumice Plain. Looming in the east, the mountain.
Incidentally, Silver Lake, like many of the other lakes in the area, was formed about 2500 years ago by lahar flowing from the mountain and damming up the valley.

Further along the Spirit Lake Highway and much closer to the mountain, we hiked on the Ridge trail from Loowit Point to Johnston Observatory on the slope facing the northside of the mountain with the best view of the crater and lava dome. The terrain consisted of loose scree which made it a little treacherous on the narrow trail.


We saw some fallen logs, some buried under the ground, and lots of tree stumps.



The mudflow formed by the collapse of the northern flank dropped down into the valley below, and bounced back up over Johnston Ridge. Later on, the same area was hit by the full force of the pyroclastic flow. Only tree stumps remain - the old-growth forest was ripped out by the blast like twigs, and joined the pyroclastic flow like huge burning missiles in a tsunami of hot gas and rock (known as tephra), seething at 1000 degrees Celsius and moving at over 100 miles per hour.

Phew! Suffice to say, it was an awe-inspiring experience to contemplate the power unleashed, and scale of the devastation even 28 years after the event.

After taking all this in, we ended the day at Coldwater Lake, a cool oasis of peace all to ourselves, with views of Mt St Helens and the Cascades. The lake was strewn with large logs, deposited from miles away into the lake. Hummocks, parts of the mountain that stayed intact in the mudflow-avalanche, lay as grey humps with long shadows across the landscape. We watched a blue bird dip into the clear water, falling into the reflection of mountains and clouds in the golden evening light.



To end a beautiful day a little inappropriately, we then checked into the Motel6 in Kelso, Washington. Good night!