The Great Northwest: family

 

My nephew Jefff and Lizzie’s wedding is what brought all of us to Portland, Oregon.  They held it in a lovely canyon called Horning’s Hideout, along a creek.  They wrote their own vows—touching and personal-- and created a wonderful celebration for everyone to share.  There were wine and beer, Asian and Mexican food trucks, and dancing under the trees.

 

Amy (my niece, sister of the groom) Lizzie and Jefff, Grandma (my mom) and Carol (my sister, mother of the groom)

The whole Kohls family mostly from Wisconsin:  Don, me, my nephw Bill, his wife Krista, my niece Amy, my sister Carol, Lizzie and Jefff, my mom Elaine, our son Troy, my brother Chuck, his wife Tami, my nephew Ben, his wife Sarah.

We and many others camped out there rather than leave.  The road back out—steep gravel switchbacks had me worried.  First gear and floored had me barely moving, but we made it without a tow truck.  Then the newlyweds had an open house at their charming home in Portland.  They have an amazing container garden with bumper crops ready to eat.

 We moved the condo-on-wheels to my sister’s Carol’s home in Elmira where I had the adventure of attending the Oregon Country Fair.  It was not exactly a country fair—more of a hippie fair, but great fun.  We dressed in costume, ate scrumptious food and saw unusual performances—music, dance, creative bubble blowing, parade, too much to take in really.

Me, my sister Carol, my cousin Diane, my niece Amy, Diane's husband Stephen.

 

 

 On our way out of Oregon we stopped for a delicious lunch and wonderful visit with my cousin Ruth.  Time with family seems to fly too fast and come too infrequently.

The Great Northwest: Columbia River Gorge

For weeks the family has been saying, “See you in the Gorge.”  And that is where we gathered on the enormous river, wider than many lakes, that divides Washington and Oregon and that carried Lewis and Clark down to the Pacific. 

Here we are ready to raft the White Salmon, class 2 to 4 with a class 5 falls for those brave enough.  Front row:  Don, me, niece Sarah.  Back row: my brother Chuck, nephew Bill, his wife Krista, son Troy and his girlfriend Meghan.  

Unfortunately none of us had a waterproof camera, but the 2 ½ hour trip was wild and exciting.  We alternately floated and paddled like crazy surrounded by thick forests.  Troy, Chuck, Bill, and Krista did the falls and lived to brag.
A rescue on that falls happened days later.  http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/caught-tape-rafting-rescue-video-shows-heroism-action-19710528#.UewnE7DCUCg.facebook

Multnomah Falls, the iconic old original attraction in the Gorge dates back to 1914 with its original lodge.

Vista House at Crown Point high above the river was built in 1917 for travelers to rest and enjoy the view.

 

The Great Northwest: Mt. St. Helens

 

Mt. St. Helens was a sobering, amazing experience.  It is beautiful now, but in 1980 its volcanic dust traveled around the world.  The long dormant volcano had developed a bulge on the north flank—pent-up gases and magma pushed the side of the mountain out 500 feet.  David A. Johnston, a young volcano researcher was camped five miles away monitoring it.  TAn earthquake caused the bulge to slip down in the largest landslide ever, anywhere, releasing the pressure on the mountain.  The landslide buried 14 miles of the Toutle River valley by up to 450 feet in minutes, covering lakes, streams and river, until they found new routes and reformed differently.  Johnston radioed headquarters yelling, “Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it.”  His body was never found. 

 

Scientists and the rest of us expect volcanoes to erupt upward.  Mt. St. Helens blew laterally, shooting magma, ash, gas, and melted glacier mud sideways where the landslide opened it to the north.  Huge trees 15 miles away were blown over like toothpicks.  Too full of mineral and ash to be salvageable as lumber, they remain,  still looking like toothpicks from Johnston Ridge Observatory, named for the scientist who was one of 57 to lose their lives that day.

 

  The lateral blast toppled and scorched 230 square miles of forest in three minutes.  The ash plume rose 15 miles in the air, raining ash on four states.  The National Monument was created to preserve the area with no human intervention in order to study the volcano and its aftermath.

There is a plume of steam rising from the center of the crater.

 

The Great Northwest: Seattle

The family is beginning to gather in the northwest for my nephew’s wedding.  We have never been to Seattle, but my brother Chuck and Tami have said often how they love that city.  We crossed Puget Sound on a ferry, a beautiful but all too short crossing. 

Yes, our truck and camper fit on the ferry.

 

We couldn’t pass up the chance to see Seattle with Chuck and Tami as our tour guides, so we met them at Pike Place Market.   Amazing market.  We saw the fishmongers tossing a fish or two.  We bought a good supply of fruit, wonderful Greek yogurt and fabulous cheese.  Yes, you heard me say that good cheese can be made in places other than Wisconsin.

Seattle Center is the grounds of the 1962 World’s Fair with its iconic Space Needle.  Great views all around the city. 

 

The Seattle Beer Fest was on the grounds there, so we imbibed, with Ben making informed choices for us.  Great fun.

We also gazed in wonder and awe at Dale Chihuly’s fabulous glass installations.  He must be the most innovative glass blower artist ever.  Some of his thicker pieces had layers of different colors for dramatic effect, which reminded me of Louis Comfort Tiffany, the master of stained glass in layers to enhance the designs, shades and colors.  We have enjoyed Chihuly at the Milwaukee Art Museum, downtown Orlando, and the Desert Museum in Tucson, so it was wonderful to see so many and such variety of treatment of glass.

 

 

 

 

 

The Great Northwest: Olympic National Park

Olympic in Washington was never on my bucket list (which is extensive), but I am so glad we came.  This park has nearly everything: lush mossy rain forests, rivers, lakes, ocean beaches, and glacier-capped mountains. 

 And it has trees.  Glorious, huge, ancient, towering trees.  I am in love.  We may have a new theme going here with hugging trees.  This is the largest spruce in the world, a Sitka spruce 1000 years old and 59 feet around.

 

 

 The Hoh rain forest (named for a local tribe) is deep and shadowy with mosses hanging everywhere, another one of those cathedral atmosphere woods.  The maples, cedars and firs are enormous.

 

 

Fallen trees eventually rot and provide a nourishing place for seedlings to get started.  The young trees grow ever larger with roots reaching down around the rotting nurse logs.  Eventually the old logs are gone and strong trees stand with hollows underneath.

 

We camped on the beach on the Pacific coast.  Sea stacks are rock formations that resisted weathering.  The driftwood here is a bit larger than we expected, but when you think about it, the trees that tumble off eroded cliffs and are tossed up by tsunamis are the same size as those we saw in the rain forest. 

 

 

 

 

We woke up here on the Fourth of July, so Don dressed accordingly and wished everyone a happy Fourth.

 

Nice view for lunch.  Crescent Lake is a large inland lake.

 

Foxgloves adorn the roadsides.

Madison Creek falls.

 

 

Hurricane Ridge is up the mountains from Port Angeles.  We were above the clouds, a lovely feeling.  These glacier covered mountains looked different from those Glacier National Park.  The Olympic peninsula is isolated from all other mountains in Washington, so their plants and animals are a bit different from their cousins in other places. 

 

 

John Muir is a hero of mine, so when we saw this shirt, my dear husband bought it for me.  It says, "The mountains are calling and I must go."

 

Now we will leave the wilderness we love and head to a city we have never been to:  Seattle.

 

 

The Great Northwest: Glacier National Park

 

The centerpiece park for this trip is Glacier National Park.  We have never been here before and wanted to see it before the glaciers are all gone.  Our four days here have been wonderful.  We started in the southeast corner in a hidden gem that many Glacier visitors miss—Two Medicine valley.  Lush forests and flowers fill the landscape.

 

Running Eagle Falls is named in honor of a famous medicine woman warrior of the local Pikuni or Blackfeet people. 

 

Two Medicine Lake in the southeast corner of Glacier

 

Bear Grass is one of the more unusual of the many wildflowers in full bloom right now.

 

You can’t beat the atmosphere at dinner when you park your own condo-on-wheels in scenic parks.

 

Going to the Sun Road through Glacier NP lived up to its reputation as one of the most spectacular roads in the world.  Our big truck took the mountains as though it was flat, but not so my quivering insides as I clung to the road with only a low rock border between me and the valley 1000 feet below.  Going up was just as bad, trying to stay in my lane without scraping the rock walls that the road had been carved from. These small falls of the weeping wall ran right onto the road.

 

Enormous glaciers once covered most of the area and gouged out U shaped valleys, narrow ridges, and high angular peaks.  Today’s glaciers move slowly down the mountainsides and feed rushing icy streams and high waterfalls everywhere.

 

Jackson and Blackfoot Glaciers used to be much bigger and piled together.  Scientists are predicting that the remaining 34 glaciers in this park will be gone by 2030.

 This is a more typical view.

We were surprised to learn that the continental divide which reaches through the park is actually a three-way divide.  One triangular mountain splits watersheds going to the Columbia River and the Pacific in the west; the Missouri, Mississippi, Gulf and Atlantic in the east and Hudson Bay and the Arctic Ocean in the north.

 Don is doing so well with the hiking, as long as we are on trails that are not too rough with rocks and roots.  I try to steer him around on trails to the smoothest paths.  I do well—98% of the time.  That 2% that I miss because I am looking at flowers or waterfalls causes some stress.  But he is a trooper.

Logan Pass at 6646 feet let us enjoy the warm temps in the eighties while trudging through snow. 

 

Birdwoman Falls

 

 

 

Glacial ice does not float in fresh water because it has so much silt in it.  This glacial “flour” flows down in the glacial melt water and remains suspended in the rivers and lakes, giving the waters the lovely azure color.  Simple snow melt does not look the same. 

Lake McDonald is the large lake at the west side of Glacier.  We had a lovely steak lunch at McDonald Lodge before returning over the Going to the Sun Road to our campground in St. Mary on the east.  When the park was first promoted by the Great Northern Railway, several rustic lodges, luxurious for the time, were built.  They are still beautiful places to visit.

 

 

 Don holds a root beer bottle featuring the restored 1930's Red Jammer busses still used for tours throughout the park.

 

 

As with most mountainous places in the west, the eastern side of the range is drier because the humid Pacific air hits the mountains and rains on the west side.   Glacier is no exception.  This park has a variety of ecosystems.   As people who know me can attest, I love, love, love trees. 

 

The Trail of the Cedars on the west side with its enormous red cedars and other trees was a solemn, almost cathedral-like place in which to praise God for His creation.

 

 

 

 

We spent most of our last day at the Many Glacier area with breakfast at the lodge there and a two part boat journey with a quarter mile walk over the hill between the two lakes and two boats. 

 

 

 

Then we hiked out to Grinnell Lake.  This is the swaying-est hanging bridge I have ever been on.

Grinnell Lake is so lovely with the waterfalls coming down from Grinnell Glacier in braided ribbons of white.  Look at that water color.

 

 

Don soaked his feet in the icy waters of Grinnell Lake after our hike.

 

Glacier NP is at the meeting of mountains and plains.  Sunset from our campsite.

 “Few places in the world are more dangerous than home.  Fear not, therefore, to try the mountain passes.  They kill care, save you from deadly apathy, and call forth every faculty into vigorous, enthusiastic action.”  John Muir on visiting Glacier.