In Washington Now...at Walmart. :)

Howdy! We are in Chehalis, WA now, halfway between Portland, OR and Seattle, WA. We were in the Portland area for the past couple of days.  Prior to that, we were driving from the coast of Oregon, through wine country and then just East of Portland.

We had a nice trip from our campsite on the coast to McMinnville, OR...after we took a 10 mile detour on the wrong road...we had to backtrack to get going correctly, but no big deal. We got to drive through the agriculture region of Oregon.  It was nice to see some crops and fields full of trees, flowers and fruits, as well as vineyards. We stayed in McMinnville at the Walmart and saw the Saturday farmer's market, their small downtown area and got to sample some local wines. It's a very neat little town that gets buzzing around Memorial Day when they have the wine country tours.

Coos Bay

Holly got to swim a little. 

We left McMinnville and drove North to a state park, just East of Portland. We took a drove up the Scenic Highway along the Columbia River Gorge where we stopped to see a few of the 77 waterfalls in that region. Multnomah Falls is one of the biggest around there. We spent a couple of days exploring the area as well as seeing Portland and some of its sights. We stopped by Vista Point which is a lookout that was built for tourists to see the Gorge and the highway that was engineered along the Gorge. Then, we drove into Portland and went by the Saturday Market (On Sunday) and saw so many different people in one area.  There were pirates, bums, gothics, preppies, normals (we fit into that category), etc...all shopping, listening to music and eating. It was wild! My senses were on overload and so were Holly's and Mindy's.  So many people, smells, sounds, etc...it was overwhelming...but very cool.

Ponytail Falls

Multnomah Falls

Today, we left Portland and drove to Mt St. Helens. We were able to drive in the park and go to a few visitor centers. The last one we visited was the Johnston lookout, right at the base of the crater. It was cloudy, rainy and of course, snowy today so the views were somewhat obstructed. But, I was able to get a few shots of the mountain in about a 3 minute time period.  We learned quite a bit about the eruption and the mudflows it created.  We stopped to eat at this restaurant called Patty's place along the route.  The food was excellent, especially the Elk burger and homemade cobbler!  We are making our way North to Seattle.  One stop in Olympic state park tomorrow and then Bremerton on Wednesday, and then we fly out to Rhode Island. Good night!

That's right...snow again!

Behind those clouds is the crater where the volcano blew the mountain out.

Somewhere over the rainbow...I didn't find a pot of gold.

Bigfoot sighting!

Now that's one happy monkey.

Tree growing in the back of the truck. (I only parked it here a couple of hours)

View from our camp tonight.

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Paul's Bunyon and More

Hello from the coast of Oregon. We are in Gold Beach Oregon tonight, about an hour north of the California state line. We left Klamath this morning (yes we got Joe's truck up and running) and stopped by The Trees of Mystery gift shop, nature walk and gondola ride. It is where Paul Bunyon and his Big Blue Ox are. We took a walk through the nature trail and saw some funky trees with trees growing on them.  One tree had 12 trees growing within one trunk. Others had tunnels in them and other crazy looking things growing out of them.  We also took a gondola ride up the mountain to a lookout platform.  Dogs were allowed so we took Holly and Mindy with us. After that we drove up the coast and landed in Gold Beach.  There's an area through town that is right on the beach, where the Rogue River flows to the ocean. It is a beautiful view looking out the front windshield where we are parked.  We walked down to the beach and let the dogs run around while Laurie and I watched the seals or sea lions (not sure how you tell the difference) and Jan picked up driftwood pieces for her basket that she is going to make. The sea lions were swimming right near the jetty and others were out in the middle of the river catching fish. This is a great place to stay for the night.  So far, the coastal drive is beautiful. It is much different from Florida, with so many huge rocks on in the water. We are headed up the coast tomorrow.  Have a good night!

Paul Bunyon & Babe

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Finally reached the Pacific!

We reached the Pacific Ocean yesterday. We have been driving for a couple of days since we left Lake Tahoe area. We drove through the Sierra Nevada Mountains and had more snow to plow through along the way. We camped near Lassen National Park 3 days ago, hoping to get into the park. It has volcanic activity there, so we were pretty excited to see that type of stuff. Well...we did't get to see anything except snow. It was raining/sleeting when we left our campsite yesterday morning and the further we drove into the mountains, the colder and heavier the snow fall got.  We made it to the park and it said the road was closed 5 miles into the park. We drove about 4 of those 5 miles through snow covered roads, but we were on a mission and no snow was going to stop us. It did.

Is that a road out front?

What season is it again?  

We decided to turn around after getting out and letting Holly play in a parking lot that was full of snow.  As we got lower the snow turned into rain.  then, we ran into hail when we got down a little lower. Crazy!  We drove through rain, sleet, snow and hail in one day! We drove up to the Redwood National Park and let the dogs play on the beach for a while. It was about 50 degrees out and the water was freezing!  But it was so nice to take a deep breath of the ocean air again. We have been landlocked for sometime and we really missed the water.  We drove by the visitor's center and watched a short video on the forest and then made it to a campground in Klamath.  The Chinook Campground is right on the Klamath river. We set up camp and then took the truck for a drive through the big redwood tree. We barely made it through the tree, but we were able to slide through. Then, we drove down a scenic route through the forest and then to see some elk that were laying out in a field. The Redwood trees are huge!  I have never seen any tree that tall or big around. I have seen pictures, but the pictures don't do them justice. My pictures probably won't do them justice either. It was pretty amazing to see trees over a thousand years old. The forest has a pretty fascinating way of reproducing and making sure that the trees survive. 

We took some walks through the forest today, even though it was rainy this morning and early afternoon. On the way home, I was driving Joe's truck and the gas (diesel) was getting pretty low so I asked him if we should put some fuel in the tank before we leave the parking lot. He carries a couple of fuel tanks with him so we could transfer fuel pretty easy. He said "naw, don't worry about it. The low fuel light hasn't come on yet and when that does, we still have 12 miles until we are out." All was going well until we went up a steeper incline on a side road that we were headed up to check out a restaurant...and the truck stalled going uphill. "The light's not on," Joe said. Well...I guess sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but we were out of fuel, in the middle of the road, on a curve. We managed to push the truck to side of the road, somewhat out of the way.  We must have tried to get it running for an hour. It was supposed to be an easy process to prime the fuel system in the diesel, but it didn't want to cooperate tonight.  I guess it was mad that we took a chance on it. After many people stopping to ask if we were ok, and one guy actually helping us out, we resorted to calling AAA to tow the truck back to the campground, 2 miles away. Laurie and I walked the 2 miles back to the campground because we weren't sure that there would be any room in the tow truck for us. It was nice walk anyways. Laurie and I started dinner while Joe and Jan waited on the tow truck to come get them. It was another good day of scenic, unbelievable nature. 

We have 10 days to get up to Seattle to fly out for Todd and Shana's wedding.  I can't believe time is flying so fast!  Enjoy the pics!  I uploaded some more pics to the link in the upper left hand corner of this blog site also. See ya!

Just squeezed through!

Ahhhh. The outhouse is made out of a tree trunk.

Roosevelt Elk

Showing off.

He's going to be working a long time with that knife!

Mooaaaaa! Spooky

Hmmm...

My model picture.