Day 13 - Portland, Mount St Helen's, Seattle
The Plan (the whole Plan)
Wed 21 May : -> Mt St Helens -> Tacoma -> Olympic Mts (a day of
rocks, and quite a bit of driving - 150-200 miles, depending on route)
Another
long run - we set off bright and early, and headed up the interstate.
But the noise of hungry fat bastards from the back seat became intolerable
after a while, and so we stopped off after a few miles at Rosie's cafe
for a large breakfast and general supplies. Since Rosie's was also
the name of the restaurant where Rupert met the chocolate girl, this was
the cue for more puerile jokes, with which we will not trouble the reader.
And then a bit further north, to find the turnoff to Mt St Helen's.
At which point Mark, who was navigating, discovered that the road layout
of the area had changed quite dramatically due to great chunks of land
being given over to the extensive logging interests around there.
(Or, alternatively, he just couldn't read the map properly.) But
after some faffing about, reversing out of dead ends and avoiding trucks
carrying tree trunks, we were on the right course.
We've attracted widespread criticism from a substantial proportion of
our massive worldwide audience (you know who you are, Joey) for not giving
enough time to descriptions of the landscape. But if any day provided
us with the oppotunity to make up for it, this was the one. Washington
desribes itself at the Evergreen state, and it's easy to see why: the fir
tress rise high up the mountains in varying bright shades, giving a very
young feel to the surroundings. Nowhere is this more true than around
Mt St Helen's, where the destruction of the landscape 23 years ago is still
very much in the early stages of recovery. And the view of the heights
are just breathtaking. Here's some pix...
Anyway, the weather waited until just after we'd left the Johnston
Ridge observatory to clear and remove the cloud cover from the mountain.
Once we saw this, there was a frantic scramble to find a viewpoint.
And the result is here. Yahoo! Sorry about the four ugly blokes
in the foreground.
Then we went to Seattle, via Toledo, a small town in the middle of nowhere,
south Washington, so that Rupert and Patrick could send some postcards.
There, we were pleased to find the Post Office was open, mildly surprised
that the lady behind the counter was half-British, and absolutely amazed
to be engaged in a discussion about what a wonderful place Skegness is.
We made our excuses and left...
Perceptive
types will notice that Seattle doesn't feature in the plan at this stage.
This was the result of some last-minute replanning arising from the discussion
with the guy who looked like Zeke (see yesterday's entry), who had warned
us that we were carrying so much wine in the boot that we wouldn't be able
to get in and out of Canada without paying huge taxes. So the loop
around Vancouver and Victoria and so on, scheduled for the last few days
of the holiday, was reversed, basically to give us time to deplete some
of the stock. Which meant that the Seattle part of the tour came
first. An expensive meal in a slightly pretentious fish restaurant
(but which did bloody good salmon) started off this leg of the tour.
