Yes, that is a DC-3 tucked under the Goose's wing (with plenty of room to spare)
So before I get into Oregon, I need to mention our last stop in the state of Washington. When we got to the Columbia River, we hung a left and meandered for a while on one of those highways I like to affectionately refer to as a “motorcycle road.” Anyone who rides knows exactly what that means, though such a designation is typically diametrically opposed to easy RV driving. In any event, I’m establishing quite a list of roads I want to cover on the Gold Wing when I get it down from the Great White North. No offense to the brief but intensely scenic motorcycling opportunities in Alaska, but when your state’s highway system numbering doesn’t make it into double digits, after a while you start to dream of a greater variety in your riding choices.
(By the way, if my writing tonight seems a bit discombobulated, it’s because my concentration is periodically interrupted by Laura screaming in jubilation as the Phillies put another nail in Tampa Bay’s game four coffin in this year’s edition of “The Mets should have been here if not for yet another late season choke,” AKA the World Series. No bitterness here, though. That and the fact that I have to finish off this growler of Lost Coast Brewing’s double IPA, lest it go flat in our travels…clearly, an offense which should be considered at least a misdemeanor, if not a crime felonious in nature.)
But I digress…The purpose for our side trip east along the Washington-Oregon border was “noble” in nature (you hop-heads will get that pun, but for the rest of you, noble is a variety of hops- need I say more?). Since circumstances had conspired to keep us from the breweries of Washington, I was determined to make it to at least one before we made it to “Beervana,” as Oregon likes to refer to itself. I had heard good things about The Walking Man Brewery of Stevenson, WA, and we were not disappointed despite the fact that we had to wait a bit for the brewpub to open. I knew we had arrived in beer country (and, I have to admit, got a little giddy) when I saw that they actually had hops growing on a trellis outside the place. Their brews bear names of all things bipedal, ranging from “Pale Strider” to “Barefoot Brown” to “Old Stumblefoot,” their barley wine. After a full tasting of their offerings, I settled on a growler of an excellent strong pale ale (ABV 6.5%, IBU 100 for those interested), “Knuckle Dragger.” All things considered, I would not hesitate to include this as a “must visit” for any pilgrimage to the craft brew promised land that is the Pacific Northwest, and would say that each of the brews they offer is very representative of it's style or type.
As it turned out, our visit to the Walking Man served to foreshadow our next day’s adventure in the Hood River region of Oregon. That fine day consisted of alternating visits to wineries/vineyards for Laura and breweries for me. Hood River is a cool, outdoorsy kinda area with some respectable, if off the beaten path vineyards, and some very solid breweries, anchored by Full Sail Ale. All in all, definitely worth a weekend of tasting and other activities if you are so inclined. From a vino standpoint, the Cathedral Ridge Winery is certainly worth a visit, and the Naked Winery has some interesting selections, though there are several other excellent vintners to choose from- these just happen to be the ones that I remember. Cool scenery with the Columbia River and it’s world renown kite/sail boarding, and a rather bohemian, but small town feel in Hood River itself.
OK, I’m enjoying my Lost Coast IPA entirely too much, so I’m going to call it a night, but I can assure you that I will continue with our Oregon adventure tomorrow, as I have been strongly chastened by relatives regarding my lax blogging ethic, and do not wish to raise their ire further (I will name no names other than to say that one may be a Long Unvisited Cousin in Yon san francisco bay area).
Montana and Washington
OK, so we now have a front-runner:
We’ve visited Western Montana a couple of previous times, and had even taken a cursory look at real estate on one of those vacations, so it wasn’t very surprising that we stalled out and ended up spending a couple extra days in both the Whitefish-Flathead Lake region and the Missoula area (it didn’t hurt that the University of Montana had a big home game that weekend, so the whole town was hyped up and decked out in maroon).
I think the biggest reason for our attraction to that part of Montana is that it’s a lot like Alaska, only with a real summer, and four actual seasons (well, there’s more to it than that, but that is part of it). The mentality and attitude of Montanans is similar to Alaskans’ and the outdoors has a very strong influence on the lifestyle, so we feel like we’d fit in well. Another plus is the fact that it’s attached to the rest of the country, so we can get out on the highway in the RV for a vacation without first having to drive a couple weeks through Canada, and we’re finding that we’d like to do a good deal more exploring in the Pacific Northwest. I had already checked into the University of Montana previously, and found that it had respectable, if not stellar programs for both me and Laura. Plus, I know my cousin Patrick would love to have a Western Montana base of operations for fly-fishing expeditions, so I know where he’s rooting for… :)
In any event, we were enjoying ourselves so much that I forgot to take pictures: I think part of it is that we’ve been here before, so it wasn’t new to us, but you’ll just have to imagine this part of our trip- sorry.
After Montana, we drove straight through Idaho and on through Eastern Washington to the Seattle area, where we spent the night in a Camping World parking lot before having a satellite dish installed on the RV so that we could restart our Dish-Net subscription (it is football season, after all). We took a quick drive up onto the Olympic Peninsula and learned that this was one of the areas we would need to revisit. Laura finally got started on visiting her wineries/vineyards so that I wouldn’t get the evil eye every time we went to a microbrewery (oh yeah, did I forget to mention that Western Montana has some good microbreweries? another checkmark there…)
-I’m going to have to do a post to recap the breweries we’ve visited one of these days, although we didn’t make it to one in Washington until hours before we headed into Oregon.
We then spent several pleasant days visiting with my aunt and uncle, as well as associated cousins and their families. I have to say that everyone outdid themselves with their helpfulness and hospitality, and it was a great opportunity to relax from our traveling and reconnect with relatives we’ve not seen in a long time, as well as some we were meeting for the first time. My Uncle Jerry and Aunt Rosemarie had arranged for us to be able to park the RV next door to their home at a neighbor’s, and even offered an electrical connection with a breaker we managed to pop only twice.
As part of this visit, we went to Issaquah one day to experience all things salmonid at their Salmon Days festival. For how large of a role salmon plays in the lives of Alaskans, we’ve got nothing on these Issaquahians (Issaquites? Uncle Jerry, you’ll have to enlighten us on that one…) as far as their celebration is concerned. The festival is a huge, street-closing event with a parade and hundreds of booths with artisans and foods. All in all, very impressive, even given the gale force winds blowing the rain horizontal.
Now, while Western Washington is very lush and green, there’s a reason for that- and for all my uncle’s attempts to convince us that we would get used to the rain, it’s just too wet for us. We’re coming from a place where we already got ‘too much:’ too much winter, too much dark, etc…so we’re looking for a place that doesn’t have too much of anything. Oh yeah, and there are way too many people in the Seattle area, and nowhere near enough roads to hold them. It was a good thing we were traveling in the RV for some stretches of I-5 near Tacoma, because it looked like we were gonna be camping out in the middle lane for a while. Montana, on the other hand, has a reasonable number of people (checkmark there).
After our visit in the Seattle area, we jogged back east to Central Washington, to the town of Leavenworth, AKA ‘Little Bavaria,’ so Laura could be introduced to her German heritage. Leavenworth was a struggling little burg in the sixties, so the town leaders decreed that they would secede from the Union and align themselves with Bavaria. Well, maybe not quite that dramatic, but they at least remade themselves to look like a town in the Bavarian Alps, and as a tourist draw, it seems to have worked out pretty well.
Therefore, we knew that it was now time to head further south…
Next edition: Oregon- grapes, hops, huge aircraft, and salty seadogs…
All right, I’ve been remiss in keeping this up to date for too long, so I’m going to have to focus in order to catch up a bit…
Mt. Robson:
Banff and Canmore:
After leaving the Alaska Highway, we pretty much headed straight into the Jasper/Banff/Canmore area, where we spent a couple days. I’ve heard such superlatives about the area that I was a bit disappointed that when we arrived to what was apparently their warmest weather of the year. This caused some fairly heavy haze that made opportunities for alpine photography somewhat limited. Unfortunately, the hot weather was also the inadvertent cause of blindness for several international tourists, who had the misfortune of viewing my shorts-clad, Alaskan-pale legs. I’ll be including a few photos (none of me in shorts, thankfully), though most of them were taken the morning that we left the area, after some heavy overnight rains had knocked down the haze and the temperature.
Canadian Scenery is Expensive:
Evidently, Canadian scenery in Banff and Jasper is worth $19.60 per day, as that’s what we had to pay to drive through. I’m not sure whether it’s a per peak type deal, or whether the wildlife gets a cut, but they do have several “wildlife overpasses” designed to allow Canada’s woodland creatures safe passage over the highways.
I can’t dispute the beauty of the area, but I was less excited by the “shopping villages” of Jasper and Banff. It reminded me of the cruise ship strip in Juneau, though with a bit more variety. The Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel was every bit as impressive as the pictures I’ve seen, and I’d love to return someday for a stay there.
We actually stayed in Canmore, which has aspirations of being Banff, the sequel, but seems more comfortable for us common folk. In contrast to the mediocre experience at the Jasper Brewing Company, the Grizzly Paw Brewpub in Canmore was worth the visit. We went for lunch on a Sunday, and the special was a black bean quesadilla- not your usual pub-grub, but very good just the same. The only downside was the fact that I was surrounded by Philadelphia Eagles fans watching the game :) (including Laura, of course). Interestingly enough, one of those fans had attended Rutgers, so we had to commiserate a bit about their miserable season. The interesting connections we seem to have with the people we’re meeting on the road continues to amaze me.
The RV park we stayed at in Canmore was Meika’s favorite so far, as it was filled with feral bunnies. When I say filled, I mean that per capita, the bunnies ruled. Meika couldn’t figure which one to chase on our walks, and you could smell the smoke coming off the synaptic connections in her brain as she gave herself whiplash trying to watch all of them at once. On the upside, to keep her occupied while we were away from the RV, all we had to do was leave the blinds up on one of the windows, and 4-5 hours later, there she would still be, staring intently.
Calgary:
We then spent a couple days in Calgary, which allowed me to visit the Big Rock Brewery. Think mass-market type beer, so I wasn’t terribly impressed, though it was probably better than a Bud-Mich-Miller (insert the mass market beer you have the greatest disdain for here). Laura got a shopping fix at one of the Calgary malls, thus staving off the withdrawal symptoms that had been building as we traversed the Yukon. Overall, it was a nice break before fleeing the world of the ‘loony’ (I’m referring to the currency unit as opposed to any particular Canadian, although we did meet several candidates). Any place that calls their one-dollar coin a ‘loony’ does have some issues, though.
One other place we visited while in Calgary was the Olympic Park where several of the events from the 1988 Winter Olympics took place. Laura was excited at the idea of the ski jump until she saw how high it was...
Back to the world of the mile per hour:
We then made our sixth border crossing into Montana, and found our way to the Flathead Valley despite our GPS’ (henceforth to be referred to as Jill) best attempts to send us down several of what I can’t even optimistically call cow paths. I know this because the road we were traveling on had free ranging cattle meandering along the shoulders, and even they wouldn’t be caught dead on some of the paths Jill was trying to send us down. A hint to those of you venturing into the world of GPS: Don’t select your vehicle’s icon just on how cool it looks, as Garmin will assume that you chose that monster-truck looking deal because it was in line with your vehicle’s actual capabilities. After Jill’s twentieth attempt at sending us off road, even I began to notice a pattern and made the connection, thus narrowly averting that most embarrassing of circumstances: resorting to reading the instructions.
The following is a view over an area in Montana obviously hard-hit by a recent wildfire, which is essentially the only photograph I took in Montana (more on that next time).
With that, I’ll conclude this addition, with more to come soon.
