Aaron in the Cascades
Deer in the morning at the Fisherman Cabin
Tree in the Hall of Mosses in the Hoh Rain Forest
Aaron next to a redwood on the first day. That's him at the base of it.
Sunrise on the first day
Interesting tree, somewhere on the Olympic peninsula. "He went thataway!"
Trees at Paradise on Mt Rainier.
I haven't photoshopped any of these, they'd probably look a little better with more contrast (I talk about my camera problems below), but I don't have time or photoshop with me to make those changes.
Here's the rest of the log.
Tuesday August 3, 2004
My sleep was a little more fitful than I would have liked, and on top of that, I had my sister telephone. At 6am. "Did I wake you up??" "Um yeah, it's 6am here, we're 3 hours behind, remember?" "Oh, right. I forgot." Then a little while later, Aaron, who shared the bed with me, managed to punch me in the face, apparently unintentionally (he said he was stretching, a likely story). I ended up waking up for good at about 7am, we got on the road by about 830am. My dad drove most of the day, which was fine with me, I was still a little tired, but more importantly, I wanted to look out the window as we drove up the coast. I'm fine with driving and looking around, the only problem is my mother's sound effects and comments about "watch[ing] where you're going!" as I drive along.
We didn't have to drive all that far today, only a couple hundred miles, but it was still a long day. We stopped a large number of places, probably 12-15. I'll have to check with my mother, I think she wrote them all down.
Our first stop was about 20 minutes from the (m|h)otel. There were lots of gulls and pelicans on the beaches here, and the rock formations in the ocean were very nice.
Later, we tried to see the sand dunes along the coast, where they're supposed to be hundreds of feet tall, but we apparently missed the right turnoff, so we ended up going to a different part of them, which weren't very extraordinary at all. Along this side trip, however, we did manage to see a couple of quail and take some pictures of them.
At one of the places (images 303-321), there was a wall that was built to keep people from falling off the cliff. In order to try to get a better angle for pictures, I got up onto the wall. Now, there was a ledge about 10 feet down, but apparently my mom didn't see it. She got so completely freaked out by my standing on the wall that she started crying and just saying, "Jeremy get down!" My dad's only comment was, "You act like you don't have a couple to spare." It was here that we saw a sea lion down in the ocean. There were also a ton of cormorants roosting on the rocks below.
We also stopped at a place where there were rocks containing little tidepools (images 322-350), containing sea anemones and starfish. We ended up spending a while there, since it was a small trek down the beach to the tidepools, and there was a bunch of stuff to check out there.
Our last stop of the day was at Agate Beach. Supposedly at one time, there were lots of agate rocks on the beach, but the beach looked pretty much picked clean when we were there. We did go down to the surf and Aaron found some sort of goo on the beach (it seemed organic, but we weren't sure what it was from). I also tried to get Aaron to pick up some dessicated dog crap partially buried in the sand, but he recognized what it was before he picked some up. (images 358-398)
When we checked into the BW, we asked if there were any palces to eat in the area. It was about 850p, not exactly dinner time, but hardly late. The womean behind the desk looked at us incredulously and said, "I don't think you're going to find much open this late..." Gotta love little towns.
We checked into our (m|h)otel, the Best Western Landmark Inn in Lincoln City, Oregon. Dinner at Burger King (ugh), pool and jacuzzi, then downloading pictures and typing up this stuff until 1230a. Time for bed.
| Day: | 2 |
| Miles Driven: | 200 |
| Total Miles Driven: | 800 |
We went white-water rafting today. It was funny as hell seeing my mom wearing a wetsuit and 2 pairs of glasses, since she was wearing her regular glasses and a pair of sunglasses on top of that. She didn't want to lose her magnetic clip on sunglasses, so a pair on top of her glasses was the way she went.
We went down a tributary of the Columbia River, the White Salmon River. It was a very scenic river, very pretty. Of course, since we got soaked and everything, I didn't have my camera, so I couldn't take any pictures (though given my camera problems, it wouldn't help necessarily). Our guide's name was Terie, at the start of the trip, my dad felt it necessary to point out (quietly, only to me) that I have bigger boobs than she does. I guess I can write that here, she's unlikely to read this. :)
I sat up front, so did my dad, and we got soaked. In the boat, I mean. There was a part of the river that we had to get out and hike a bit, since the rapids were a little bit too difficult. At the end of that, there was a 15 foot cliff we could jump off, and to my surprise, all of us did it. I got to the cliff and reconsidered...it looked a shitload higher when you were actually considering jumping off the thing.
| Day: | 3 |
| Miles Driven: | 350 |
| Total Miles Driven: | 1450 |
When we left this morning, we ended up stopping at a couple places in and around Yakima, to get cherries at the one place, to get bread and jam at another place. We got the latter items at a little grocery store called "Slim's". When we were about to leave Slim's, my dad and I both decided that it was a good idea to hit the restroom before we left, so we asked where it was, and we got pointed to the right aisle, and sure enough there was a sign that said, "Restroom/El bano." My dad motioned for me to use it first, so I went back there (through part of the stockroom), and I opened the door. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Someone had done something most awful to that bathroom. It was filled with diarrhea, so I just turned around and walked out. As I passed my dad, I said, "I'll pass." I walked to the front of the store and waited for him to come out, and to my surprise, he was out immediately. He too had passed. I told the woman at the front of the store, "Someone did something bad to that bathroom back there. I wanted to tell you so that you wouldn't think it was us." She had a horrified look on her face when I said that, but we left. As we were driving away, I thought I could hear a faint shriek coming from the back of that store...
Not much to write about today. We went to Mt Rainier and drove around it, then drove on to Aberdeen, where we are staying for the night. The hotel actually has internet access, which is good, though it's only a modem.
Mt Rainier was in the clouds, so we didn't get many pictures. We hiked up the mountain a bit when we got to Paradise (where the visitor center is located).
My dad hit another animal today, a bird, actually. It was sitting in the middle of the road, and it started to take off, but we definitely hit it. My dad said it was a "junco" and I think that's the correct spelling of it. Maybe if I'm feeling energetic I will put a link there to wikipedia. It reminded me of the Seinfeld episode where George hits them ("We overlook the pooping everywhere, and they get out of our way when we're driving").
I'm getting frustrated over a lack of ability of my camera to take a decent photo. I certainly don't know everything about using an SLR, but I've never had a problem with a film camera in taking decent shots. All of my shots are getting overexposed, and it's really pissing me off. The real problem seems to be when the white predominates the picture, the camera's whitebalancing just doesn't seem to work quite right. I'm gonna try to use the internet access to figure out what the hell I can do to fix this problem.
| Day: | 4 |
| Miles Driven: | 300 |
| Total Miles Driven: | 1450 |
| Animals run over: | 3 |
We left Aberdeen a little later than we wanted to, around 945am. We didn't want to leave too late because our trip today consisted of driving around pretty much the entire Olympic peninsula and back to the Southern end of Puget Sound, to Olympia.
On our way to Olympia, we saw a "scenic overlook" sign for Mount Walker that my mom suggested we take. We should have realized that this was a mistake when we turned onto a gravel road. Several miles later, up the side of the mountain we finally decided to turn around, but not until my dad had scared my mom half to death (and the rest of us too) by driving up this gravel road, along a cliff, at 25-30 MPH. It was definitely too fast to be driving up the road.
Also, a few hours before, when driving on the highway, though there were a few curves, my dad said, "Can you do me a favor and slow down a little bit?" though I was doing about 60 in a 60 MPH zone. Big mistake for him to say some shit like that to me this early in the trip. And you'd better believe I broke that out when he was tearing up the side of the mountain.
| Day: | 5 |
| Miles Driven: | 350 |
| Total Miles Driven: | 1800 |
| Animals killed: | 3 |
Oh my goodness, is this trip over yet? We didn't drive all that far today, but I'm beat. I'm ready to be home, I'm ready to not be living out of a car, I'm ready to be on solid ground for more than an hour at a time.
This morning started out in Olympia, we went to the capital building for a few minutes, and then drove up to Seattle. It took just over an hour to get to Seattle, where we were pretty much only going to the aquarium. We went through the aquarium, it was a nice aquarium, but it was pretty small.
I stopped at the help desk in the aquarium to see about a camera store, since I wanted to get an LCD cover for my camera, and I wanted to talk to someone about the overexposure/whitebalance problem that my camera seems to be having. We walked over to the camera store, the girl behind the counter talked to me for a little while, but the end result was that she said to contact Canon about service. She said that it sounds like something that's wrong with the camera, not with how I'm using it. Which is somewhat of a relief, but leaves me in a quandary about what to do about my camera situation. Buying a new one and returning it when I get home seems like a less than satisfying solution.
After going there, we went to meet one of my college roommates, Andrew, who lives in the Seattle area. Andrew's always been a little odd (not that I'm not), but I wanted to see him, it had been 4 years since we had seen each other (at another roommate's wedding). I had called him Friday night to see where he thought would be a good place to meet, he suggested a Vietnamese place. I was thinking when I agreed to that, that my parents and Aaron would be at the aquarium or something and wouldn't be around. My family isn't exactly the most diversified of families, so I wouldn't generally think to take them to a Vietnamese restaurant. As it turned out, though, they went with me. I was somewhat worried about it.
We arrived a little early and waited for Andrew, and during that time we ended up talking to the guy watching the parking lot, this little old Vietnamese guy. Apparently it was his job to make sure that people who parked in the parking lot actually went into the restaurant. He and my dad talked a bit, but we were all standing there under a tree, and during this conversation he (the Vietnamese guy) felt it necessary to point out that I'm "handsome." I finally get hit on by someone on this trip, and it turns out to be a little old Vietnamese guy. Just my luck. Andrew eventually showed up, we had a pretty good lunch, talked about what we're both up to a little bit, and both went our separate ways. We probably spent 45 minutes in total having lunch, and I think both of us said what we could say in that time, so it was a good thing we didn't setup more time than that to meet.
As it turned out, I needn't have worried about my family. They have all been raving about how good the food was at the Vietnamese place. We all got beef pho (Aaron got meatball instead of beef), and they all really liked it.
We drove out to bumblefuck today, to stay at "Ovenell's Heritage Inn" in Concrete, WA. It's pretty close to the Skagit River, but we didn't actually go down to the river while we were there. It's a nice little place, they have a bed and breakfast, and they have a set of cabins you can stay in. We stayed in one of the cabins. The cabin (which I forgot to take a picture of) was called the "Fisherman" cabin and was probably 200 square feet, had a bathroom door that didn't quite shut, and the water in the place tastes and smells like iron. So I ended up not showering while I was here, the water was just nasty. But other than that, it was a nice little place. I am sleeping on the futon here, Arn is on the floor, and my parents have the bed.
After we had checked into the place, and after we had dumped off most of our shit at the cabin, I decided that I'd like to go look at this trail that the innkeeper had told us about that was on the map of the Cascades. Big mistake. The road, once we found it (it wasn't well marked, a common theme on this trip), was a dirt road. Which would have been ok, if it hadn't been turned to mud by precipitation. So the first bit was mud, and I could definitely feel the car sliding about a bit on the mud. It shortly thereafter turned to gravel, but then again, it added switchbacks to the mix as well. The trip up the mountain ended up being about 9 miles of gravel and switchbacks, though thankfully it wasn't usually a cliff along the side of the car. We actually had gotten close to the top and had decided to turn around, as we didn't know how much further it would go. When we did that, there was a pile of snow where we were turning around, and we had gotten out of the car to take some pictures and look around. My dad started throwing snowballs at us, which we found amusing, and something to tell Aaron, since he had decided to stay at the cabin. A car was coming down the road, and we flagged it down and asked how much further it would be to get to the top, and he said, "you're there," as it was only about 250 feet to the little parking lot (though it wasn't clear that it was a parking lot until you got there, pretty much). We got out, took some pictures, and started down again. Not quite as harrowing as yesterday, when my dad was driving.
| Day: | 6 |
| Miles Driven: | 200 |
| Total Miles Driven: | 2000 |
| Animals run over: | 3 |
We got up early today. Really early. 6am early. Jesus are we dumb. None of us slept well in our little cabin, my parents because the mattress was apparently really bad, and me because I kept on getting woken up. My dad woke Aaron up to go outside and look at the stars at 1215am, my mom's snoring woke me up a few times, and then I woke up again when it became freezing in the cabin because we had the windows open. The benefit of getting up as early as we were was that we saw 5 deer outside. I even got a shot of the one taking a dump.
Then it was on to driving through the Cascades. This is really a part of the trip I could have done without. It was beautiful, yes, but it just wasn't as special after the stuff that we have already seen. We only stopped twice, both times for small trails. The one stop was an overlook, where I took a bunch of pictures, and that was cool. We were high enough up that my dad and I both were talking about vertigo, something that neither of us are particularly prone to. It was extremely high up. Aaron and I took to trying (and suceeding, of course) to freak my mom out by going close to the edge, or just climbing up rocks that they had there (at no point were we in danger of falling). She went nuts of course, so it was mission accomplished for us.
We drove on and eventually came to the Coulee dam, where we stopped at the visitor information center. It's beyond me why the dam even has a visitor information center, as they don't charge for any of it, and they don't even have any merchandise to sell, really. What they do have is a movie that you get to watch, which seems like propaganda for wanting to build the dam in the first place. It includes such musical interludes as "Roll On Columbia" and the propaganda songs written in the early 40s. I guessed that the movie was from the early 70s, though my parents thought it was older than that, even. In either event, it was a worthless movie to watch. It didn't help that we missed the first couple of minutes of the film, but I think that we got the overall feel of the experience. Apparently the Coulee Dam is the largest concrete structure in the world, which I found surprising, but that's what they said.
After Grand Coulee, we went through the last of the Cascades and broke into big sky country. We eventually hit the interstate and drove the rest of the way in to Spokane on that. Finding the hotel turned out to be no big deal, it was called "The Davenport."
The Davenport is a nice old hotel in Spokane, and my mom insisted that we tour the building and take some pictures. Aaron likewise insisted that we use the pool and hot tub, after having a night without such amenities.
Later, my mom had another "Ginny" moment when Aaron was taking the shower. Now, before I say what she did, I will say that there are a number of things my mom yelled at the rest of her kids for, and we resent almost all of them, just because they're so fucking stupid. This is one of them. She banged on the bathroom door and shouted at Aaron, telling him to get out of the shower. I yelled at her, saying it wasn't costing her anything (her usual script involved something about water costing money, and interesting thought from someone who's never paid an electricity bill or a water bill), and if there's someone who doesn't need discouragement from taking a shower, it's Aaron. Without going to school, that kid's just not learning to fit in with regular people. So then my mom insists that she wasn't yelling at him, that she was being reasonable, blah blah blah. Yeah fucking right. I asked Aaron later whether it felt like she was yelling at him, he said, "Yeah." And that's all that matters.
| Day: | 7 |
| Miles Driven: | 300 |
| Total Miles Driven: | 2300 |
| Animals run over: | 3 |
I'm so far behind in my writing. I'm writing tonight, but I have a few days of writing to do. I'm gonna try to do at least a couple of days' worth of writing tonight.
We left Spokane this morning after hitting Perkins for breakfast and then Staples to return the cd burner. On our way out, we also went by the Manito Park in Spokane, they have a nice set of greenhouses and a Japanese gardens. I, um, had to use the restroom, and I went into the one near the Japanese gardens. This was an older bathroom, I hope, as there was no stall door on the toilet. There was a urinal next to the sink, and there was a divider there, but the toilet was standing free.
You can guess that I didn't use that one. Fortunately, there was a nice bathroom at the greenhouse area of the park, so I went and used that bathroom instead. I was still extremely surprised that there was a toilet without a stall door. Who is gonna use that to take a dump? Only the extremely desperate, I guess.
After we left Spokane, it was pretty much just a day of driving. I drove the whole way, in part so that I could be completely justified in playing my newly burned cds in the car, to make me feel better for having spent the time burning all of the cds. We drove through the panhandle of Idaho and into Montana, stopping for the night in Kalispell, MT, at the Grand Hotel. This place is a nice old hotel, though they do have modern internet access.
When we arrived at the hotel, we had the most bizarre experience. We gave the girl at the counter our last name, to check in, and another woman behind the counter said, "Oh, I think you're the ones with a bag in the back room." We were all thinking, "WTF is she talking about?" Then she said, "I guess you left a bag at the airport, maybe Boise?" and brings out my mom's missing piece of luggage. So we've driven 2600 miles over the last week, only to find my mom's luggage in the middle of Montana. Odd. Pretty cool, but odd. I guess United figured out where we were going to be by looking at the itinerary stuff that my mom had in her bag, and they forwarded it on to here.
As soon as the woman brought the bag out from the little room, my mom had a real "Ginny" moment, one that made me cover my eyes and pray that somehow I was switched at birth. There was a piece of paper that got put on the outside of the bag, taped to it, obviously by someone at the hotel (it had their letterhead on it). Apparently when they received the bag, they debated calling the only number they had for my mom, their home phone number, but had decided against it. They had written a note on the paper that said, in part, something to the effect of, "wanted to call, but it was to (sic) late in PA." Not bubbling over with thanks to the lady behind the counter (though I guess she didn't really make the bag appear in the middle of Montana anyway), my mom does take the time to say, "Oh look, she used the wrong 'too'." Right there in front of the lady. I don't know if it was that particular lady who wrote the note, but whether it was or not, it was definitely not the right thing for my mom to say. Once we were in the room, I was yelling at my mom about it a little bit, though she couldn't see where the problem might be. Apparently she said something to my dad about how I had pointed it out to Aaron yesterday on a postcard he had written to one of his friends or maybe our grandparents. But she couldn't see the difference. If she can't tell the difference, no amount of me talking is gonna show her the difference, so I didn't even bother to try to explain further.
We went out to dinner at a local place called "Moose's" which had peanut shells on the floor, cheap beer, and good pizza. I had 2 glasses of Okanokee, a regional beer (I guess). Even better, it was $1.40 a beer. I turned down the opportunity to have a beer called "Moose Drool," though I do plan on getting a couple of glasses with the Moose Drool logo on it tomorrow morning. While there, my family was really pissing me off; Aaron was being a brat, my dad was acting weird about dinner (he's not particularly fond of pizza, but they had other shit there, and he was doing his version of a pout, I think, something he does most often when he's hungry), and I don't think my mom was very happy about being in a place that said "saloon" on the outside. She was probably also unhappy about my drinking a beer (or 2), my dad drinking a beer, and there being smoke in the place (though it really wasn't that bad). The pizza was really good, and a good change of pace from what we've had already. Aaron was pouting during the whole dinner experience because we hadn't gone to Wendy's again, though we ate there last night.
After we got back to the hotel, my dad and I went out to check out the "Casino"s that are around town, we only went to the 2 closest, but they were both places where you can only play the electronic machines, so we didn't even bother.
I watched portions of "Top Gun" and "Austin Powers", and tried to figure out how to get my camera to work better for me. It's midnight again, I'm tired as hell, and I'm gonna go to bed. Without getting my writing done, of course.
| Day: | 8 |
| Miles Driven: | 300 |
| Total Miles Driven: | 2600 |
| Animals run over: | 3 |
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