Blimme if we didn’t see a heckuvalot of animals though. Yesterday, we saw another Banana Slug. What shocked us were two Great Pyrennees dogs, running in the wild along Highway 101N. They looked a tad shaggy and very, very lean but did not approach the car when we slowed down, just looked over to us. We weren’t sure if they were runaways, although they were far from the next settlement, or simply ferals, but obviously they didn’t belong into the forest at all. The next Ranger Station 40 miles away was closed already, so for lack of information and idea what to do, we emailed National Park Services from the hotel once we arrived. Didn’t hear back yet from them, who knows.

But today…spectacular. Let’s see:
- One Coyote
- Two Black Tail Deer, female
- One Elk, female, with two fawns (we’ve always seen twins this trip. Is that the norm?)
- One Marmot (on the watch)
- One whole herd of Elks (don’t expect me to go back and count them, this was up some serious mountain…)
- One quail sized little cute bird I could swear was a somethingorother I forgot and’d have to look up again in the flyer I have. Maybe a partridge (no tell-tale pear tree though….)
- One tennis ball sized squirrel thing that played chicken with me at the wheel of the car. I swerved and chickened.
- HUGE seagulls. I mean seriously huge. Like…supersized, making our common European seagull sob.
- Flocks of other birds we could not identify.
- At least one bald eagle who did not stay around or fly low enough for us to easily take a picture of him. Bastard.

Other than that, we drove up to the Visitor Center on Hurricane Ridge to see Mt Olympus. We did see every other mountaintop than Mt. Olympus as fog was coming in already when we arrived, but it was a spectacular sight. Again, I am looking forward to going through the pictures we took. A bit nippy up there and it started to rain plus fogging the roads…so we decided to make like a tree. Down to the coast.

Which was a real pleasure to drive, but whenever we stopped and strolled along a beach to look at the, again, low tide and tons of driftwood, rain started again, chasing ups back to the car.

We drove back along the 101 again, once more enjoying driving along Lake Crescent and now sit in the hotel, planning our trip to Seattle. We will take the ferry from Bainbridge Island to Downtown Seattle/Waterfront. Woohoo. Aquarium, here we come.

Sadly though, this almost concludes our trip, as tomorrow is Wednesday, and we fly back to Germany early Friday morning.

Bullocks

When driving back to Washington via the 101N, we weren’t quite prepared to what’d await us once hitting the Olympia Peninsula.

Twilight Tours. Twilight Stores. Twilight themed everything. WTF?

Turns out that the Vampire/Werewolf/Romance/Teens thing series move books what the heck is based in this area.

Egads.

Teenage girls all over the place in black t-shirt with I have no clue who those guys are on them. Edward? Beats the heck out of me, and I actually do not want to know. You can have tours to places where two characters met, live, went on a date and kissed the first time and what not. Let’s hope the serious doesn’t get R-Rated and, you know… Yuk.

Nature rocks again though. Even though the weather is not super duper extra special, it is interesting. Mostly

A few towns on the way here to Sequim though were…wow. Run down doesn’t even do it remotely justice. I’ve never really been to some areas looking as miserable and down on their luck as here. Scaaaary.

Tomorrow, we’ll tour the area again for a day, still not quite sure if we will focus on mountains (Hurricane Ridge to see Mount Olympus. Should we really tempt our luck and turn a 3 for 1 into a 4 for 2?), coast or rainforest.

We’ll see. And let’s hope there are no sparkling vampires where we stay tonight.

‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself

We went to the Rose Test Garden in Portland today. Follow the link to read up more on it, it’s definitely more worth your time than me copy/pasting and editing what they have to tell about themselves.

Let’s just say it was an intense and awesome experience of sights, lines, colors and smells. Again, some really nice pictures were taken. Look forward to them once I am back in Germany with a little bit of time on my hands.

We also went to the Japanese Garden. Mostly good, just the one piece of it I was looking most forward to, the sand and stone garden? Was in serious need of maintenance. Fallen leaves, it wasn’t raked in a while and…yeah. Not so spectacular. Bummer.

But all in all, a rather nice day.

Did not purchase an iPad today. Best Buy here didn’t carry them yet, they will get Apple stuff in 3 weeks. Darn it.

Portland is also called the Rose City - very aptly so when you visit the Rose Test Garden. Roses in every size, shape and color. And smell… I even found a yellow tea rose that smelled like tea - dried tea leaves which you use to make a fresh brewed black tea. Strange that, but not unpleasant at all. So I unpacked my handy sponsored-by-employer Ricoh CX2 with it’s incredible macro lense and went click-smell-click-smell-click-smell… for about two hours. And the nice thing: my nose never gave up… and it didn’t lead me to the janitor’s cabinet either… just to the next rose bush.

Ok, this sounds maybe a tad more gross than I intend to… and it definitely borders on an overshare… so.. let’s just say that if I hear running water for a long time, I tend to go cross-eyed and need to go somewhere for number one. People always say how relaxing the sound of running water is to them…and most of the times it works, but some fountains have that rather non-relaxing effect on me. Back at College, I had my bedroom right next to the drainspout. Rather…the head end of my bed was next to it, separated by a thick…well, it was a college dorm, so it was a rather thin wooden wall. Anyhow…I thoroughly enjoyed intense rain during night. Usually sleeping in 1 hr interwalls, waking up with the feeling that my bladder’d explode any minute unless I’d make a bee-line to my en-suite bathroom.

So this day was interesting. The Columbia River Gorge is kinda host to a bunch of spectacular waterfalls. And we tried to see them all. Actually almost succeeded, I have some awesome pics of them. Promise, once back in Germany I will look through all the pictures I took and post them accordingly. Cross my heart, hope to..well, yeah.

Most of the streams were alright, just two did their magic on me and I had to look-up one of the public restroom, which thankfully are rather common here. Another sidenote here, I am prone to doing that these days… anyhow. What I meant to comment on is the state of public restrooms here in the US. We have them, too, in Germany (well, doh, as well as paved roads, yes, we do drive on the right side of the road and yes, we do have electricity among a few other things. At times I do get asked interesting questions here in the US….), but where I would only look up an unattended public restroom in Germany if I’d absolutely, without any alternative and no more help from concentration and meditation techniques, here in the US? I am really impressed by the state of cleanliness of 9 out of 10 public restrooms over here. Be it rest areas on Highways and Interstates, public restrooms in National and State Parks… Not bad at all, folks, thank you.

Arriving at Hood River, we decided to make a right turn and head to Mt Hood instead of going back on the other side of the Columbia River Gorge… and what  a great idea that was. For the first time, one of the Mountains we did intend to see whas NOT hidden by fog/removed for maintenance (thank you, National Park Secret Organisation, we know you are out there…) but instead got to see the splendor of one of the gorgeous mountains directly without the imagination power inherent to us, aided by a postcard or twenty-four.

And thus, after arriving back at the hotel, ended our day…one more sidenote though. Yes, yet another one. What is the deal of your strawberries, Oregon and Washington? All of the strawberries we purchased were picked too late, i.e. almost overripe. Preference seems to be given to color, which almost always is deep red, and then they are put into the fridge. WTF? They get picked soft almost squishy…and then get put into the fridge to guaradamntee that they are over when you take them out and get them warm again thusly. Pick them sooner. The perfect strawberry is medium red, I’d say ‘al dente’ to the touch…not too hard, yet not too soft, just a certain amount of firmness…and light in color, yet intensely red. A healthy light red. I will post a picture of one soon for reference. But the ones we got. Even though they were famed Mt Hood Strawberries or something or other for Washington…they all sucked. Sorry. Raspberries…same thing here. Do not get them when they are over-ripe. Get them as soon as they turn right, and, again, do not put them into the fridge. A cool, shaded place is perfect (not a cooling house, really) and everything is a-ok. Please? Pretty please, and I do not need sugar and cream on top of my berries?

Thanks!

[There's a simple truth about 95% of all volunteers: they all have been to Germany at some point in time. Has entire America joined the army and have been stationed in Germany? Honestly, either those guys are only sent to Germany for a week of sightseeing or the American Army is hiding them all!]

Since the nice volunteer wouldn’t accept a no for an answer and didn’t give much about our warning that we had back luck with mountains so far and that most likely an unpredicted blizzard will hit Mt. Hood if we try to look at it, we took the Mt. Hood loop. And guess what: Mt. Hood was not out for maintenance. And the others - St. Helens, Rainier and Baker were also back… And we had sun all the way back to the hotel!

So: thank you so much, unknown volunteer! You really made our day.

It’s pretty spectacular, I guess, when you don’t arrive there during low tide. Which we did. So all we could do was get out of the car, say ‘MMmmmhmm. Yeah…” and walk over the green of the picnic grounds. Where we met some kinda ground hog squirrel critter. Not really of the shy kind, a tad spotted and with a broad tail. Easy to take pics of, which I did. Turned out later that it most likely is a California Ground Squirrel. Introduced most of his family to us it seemed.

On we drove, taking a detour to Lafayette to see their ‘Antique Mall’. Ummm, yeah. There is this show on BCC, actually a few of them, one is the Antique Road Show, another is Bargain Hunt and the last one is Treasure Hunt. All done with rather stereotypical Brits. Seriously stereotyped. Looking at the items on sale…I started wondering what they’d say about the merchandise. Either they’d be genuinely interested…or there’d be bouts of laughter… or they’d simply cry at what the people there sometimes thought’d belong in an Antique Mall. Warner Brothers Cookie Jars (Batman) from the late 90s. Barely 12 years and already an antique? Remind me to look up when I can go into retirement then….

The rest of the drive was less spectacular although rather eventful. Big. Traffic. Jam. As I was informed, after the fact that is, Portland experiences rush hour on Fridays at 3ish PM. Which was just about the time we hit the I5 THROUGH Portland. Which we didn’t know. Mel had a serious headache and, nice as I was AND oblivious to the fact that we’d have to go THROUGH Portland, I offered to drive the last thirty minutes. Which turned into nintety (90!) minutes, drove my pulse through the roof and had me sweat and curse profoundly. I kid you not, I am fully curse-fluent in 4 languages, anot counting dialects. I made use of my whole repertoire. You ever tried backing up a steep hill in an automatic car when you are used to a clutch and feeling your way up? Good thing that bloody car BEHIND me was a few yards away, otherwise I’d have shot it up straight into the air the way our car all of a sudden to react after all as I kept on nudging the bloody accelerator.

Alas, we arrived at the Holiday Inn, save and sound, had a late lunch/early Dinner at 5 PM…and went to bed, more or less straight, utterly wasted from that last bloody bit of traffic jam. Pityful, I know.

But tomorrow, it is off to the Columbia River Gorge!

I owed Colin a whale watching tour from way back when I lived close to Boston for a few months. So when I learned that Newport has a resident gray whale pod just offshore, I booked us on a whale watching tour today. I do get motion sickness easily, so I took my tablets in time. We headed out to sea and guess what - just when we stopped to watch whales and the boat started rolling with the swells, I added to the plankton and fed a few fish with breakfast donuts. Thar she blows…

Very embarassing, as I got stuff over me (darn wind) and another tourist. I wasn’t the only person getting seasick, but still… And despite at least two grey whales were showing us their flukes relatively close to the boat, Colin just took supergood care of me.

Ask him about it, he’s an expert on dryland whale care. Just throw the words “Valentin’s Day” and “Battlefield Park” at him and watch for his reaction.

We extended a night, deciding to explore some of Newport today.

We decided on a 2 hr cruise to see whales…and blimme, I saw ‘em. A bunch of gray whales. Got some nice shots in with my camera, some flukes on their way down, a few dorsal shots, some misting if you know where to look. God, that was fun. Took me a while to wipe the smile off my face. Whales. And we had a nice, almost calm sea. I forgot how much I miss being out at sea. I miss sailing.

But I also miss the time and money for that hobby. Ah well.

After a quick stop at the hotel for some R&R, downloading pictures from the camera and what not, we headed over to the Aquarium. Which was alright, nothing extra special, but a good exhibit overall.

All of a sudden, it was 6 pm. We went for an early dinner which also was alright but nothing to write home about in a Diner…and here we are now at the hotel, taking an early morning and…well, just chill. Off to Portland tomorrow. Looking forward to the trip and the stay in Portland.

More tomorrow

I swear, that was one of the most uncomfortable stays I ever had. I actually have a bed ache from the, well, bed. Or rather the excuse of it that we had paid for 90 bucks and taxes yesterday. We skipped the complimentary breakfast there without even talking much about it, we both just looked at each other, shook our respective heads, and off to Newport, Oregon, we were. Holiday Inn Express. Looks like our trip will be mostly Radisson or Holiday Inn this time. Not that you will hear me complaining.

This time, we took the 101N up throughRedwood National Park and then just stayed on.

Weather actually got better again after it fogged up yesterday in the late afternoon. Still, no luck spotting any whales. But oodles of sealions and seals. So…I am a happy camper. What made my day though were the about 90 oldtimers, most of them from the 40s and 50s I guess, who passed us by, driving down to California. Turns out it was a 90 driver strong Street Rod club from Idaho, doing their annual one week father’s day cruise, this time to Crescent City. Cruise Idaho, unfortunately I didn’t find much yet about them on the ‘net…didn’t spend much time researching them though. Talked to one of the owners..he had a plum colored rod…just cool. 10.000 man hours of work in that one. 10k. Imagine a man hour costing at least 60 bucks. And now imagine what kind of money we are talking here if it weren’t ‘homegrown’ kinda.

Amazing.