Washington - Take 2

After the warmth of inland Oregon the north pacific coastline was a shock to the system again. Little had changed in the weather since we were there two and a half months earlier. There was slightly less rain but a biting wind blew off the ocean as we pulled in to camp at the Quinault tribal casino. We couldn’t complain though – the parking was free and right on the beach which provided us with our first sea-sunset for months. The morning after we decided to take a back-roads route north towards the Olympic peninsula in order to save us a few miles on the 101 which headed inland. The GPS said it was only 14 miles but would take 2 hours. After the drama of Wards Ferry Rd we decided together that we would share the blame if the road went wrong and would embrace any craziness the road provided. An hour later the road began to run into deeper and deeper forest with the gravel giving way to rubble and dirt. After a particularly steep incline with trees scraping along the side of the van we came to a break in the road where heavy rains had subsided the track. 

I got out to walk across and noticed that the road steeply inclined to the right where it dropped into a deep ditch of swampy water and trees. To the left the track ran across the roots of a dead tree with holes collapsed between the protruding boughs. The track was the width of our van. Having driven this far and being only two miles from the 101 I decided I could drive it and told Emma to navigate me across. As I edged my way forward the van began to pitch to the right so I opened the door on the left hand driver’s side to try and weigh it over and provide me with a quick escape should it start to tip. Fortunately the water and fuel tanks were on the left as well so we were weighted in the right direction. As I edged the front wheels past the dirt drop offs Emma jumped out the way and I gunned it past and up the other side. Emma got back in, heart in mouth and we continued for two minutes into a dead end. 

After all that I had to turn a twenty foot camper around in a dense rainforest. Having cleared a good section of protected tribal land with my manoeuvrings we had the van facing the subsided road once more only this time the weight was all on the wrong side. As I edged the van towards the dip again it began to tilt only this time to the left with me inside it. I closed the door this time and buckled up. If it went there was going to be nothing we could do. The van would be on its side in a remote rainforest, miles from anyone or even phone reception. As I crept forward I shouted to Emma to move out of the way of the road. She moved briefly only to step in front again. I shouted over and over to get out the way but she kept repositioning to better see the wheels. As I felt the back wheel begin to slip I had no choice but to floor it and try to get it up the other side. As I roared forward, screaming at Emma to get out the way she jumped to the side at the last moment and the van made it across once more. As Emma got back into the cab we sat there for a second pondering our stupidity but seconds are short and before long we were off again and laughing, wondering how on earth a 1978 van could make it through rainforest without even breaking a sweat. Two hours later we made it through the labyrinth and back onto the 101 where the smooth tarmac felt like gliding on ice compared to the rubble tracks of the forest floor.

Oregon - Take 2

Crater Lake is the hollowed out caldera of a formerly 12000 foot mountain which blew its top around 7500 years ago. At nearly 2000 feet deep it is also one of America’s deepest lakes. The lake is replenished only by rain and snow and therefore is an unworldly deep blue in colour and clarity. As we traversed the rim trail we noted the surface was peppered with what looked like a yellow oil slick only to realise these were probably seeds from the surrounding forest. The lake was beautiful and we could only imagine the beauty on a cloudless night when surface must mirror the moon and the stars. Back in Oregon the temperature was heating up again which we were both happy about considering the dismal weather we had experienced in Montana and Wyoming. The drive back to Oregon had taken us across the salt flats outside SLC where land speed records are contested and broken. It wound us through deserts comprising nothing but hundreds of miles of sage brush before raising us into the mountains of Eastern Oregon and greeting us with pine and more bearable temperatures.

One of our most enjoyable visits on the way south was Ashland where we had hung out with some locals in what was then a sleepy little town. This time we were greeted with the crowds attending the summer Shakespeare festival as well as the students of the local university and their families attending that weekend’s graduation ceremonies. This meant the town was bumping and we would have to spend the nights sleeping parked on the streets for lack of available accommodation. The first evening we drove up Mount Ashland only for Emma to turn us around again as the roads turned to 4x4 only trails and we were forced to camp parked up in a quiet and salubrious neighbourhood – not the most inconspicuous place to park a camper van. Fortunately we weren’t bothered and the next day we hung around the town, wandering the shops and drinking coffee in the sunshine. By evening I had arranged to meet Steffan, a local whom I had met on our last visit. We parked on a quiet street 10 minutes from downtown and popped into the local microbrewery where we met Emma-Juliette, the barmaid who had served us on our last visit. A lovely girl she told us how she was leaving soon to hike the Pacific Crest Trail just as Cheryl Strayed had done in the recent hit book and film Wild. As time ticked on and I heard nothing back from Steffan I began to get annoyed as I had specifically arranged to meet him and was looking forward to talking to him again. Many beers later and we had transferred to the bar across the creek where Emma proceeded to drink far more than she could handle despite us both acknowledging she would make herself sick. 

Angered further by Steffan’s no-show I too indulged a little heavily until a young bearded fellow plonked down next to me in the bar and introduced himself as Jimmy. Jimmy was in town for his sister’s graduation but had decided to seek some company in the local bars as his family slept. Jimmy was my type of guy. He told us about his work as a computer game journalist and his life in San Francisco whilst we traded stories from our journey. We drank far too much but greatly enjoyed each other’s company. I immediately collected him on Facebook so I could have another friend in San Francisco for future visits and Emma set about trying to organise a night out the following night. Retaining some degree of foresight I mentioned that we probably weren’t going to feel well the next day and, later that evening, as I helped a very unwell Emma back into our van, I knew we wouldn’t be out the next evening. Instead we spent the sunny morning and afternoon lying under a tree in a secluded park nursing violent hangovers. As Emma moaned her way through the day I replenished my fluids and played with a toy plane I spontaneously purchased from the supermarket. I think I was still drunk. Jimmy sent some lovely messages as I apologised for not being able to meet up (see Steffan, not so hard) and I am certain we have a good friend to meet up with when we return to California in the future.

Northbound we headed towards Portland to celebrate Emma’s birthday and our first anniversary which falls the day before.  We had visited the city before but as we had enjoyed it so much last time we decided to visit again and splurge on a hotel (well, Travelodge) and a night out. After visiting the rose gardens and enjoying the 30 degree heat we dined in a fantastic little Vietnamese restaurant called Luc Lac in Downtown before wandering across the Pearl District to an indie cinema called Century21 and its neighbouring Belgian beer bar. There we watched an excellent film on Yves Saint Laurent in the company of a dozen outrageously dressed gay people in town for pride week before strolling south again through the sultry summer evening to our hotel for the night.

After the civilisation of Portland it was time to hit the country again and make our way north towards the Olympic peninsula in Washington. We stopped at an out of the way creek in the Tillamook forest in northern Oregon, where an icy river provided plenty of summer entertainment for kids jumping off the bridge. As we sunned ourselves we were visited by an interesting gentleman and his friends who greeted me with “ooh look, a land Jesus.” It’s difficult to be annoyed at that greeting so I smiled and said hello which encouraged him to note that my accent sounded like Russell Brand, even though it definitely doesn’t. The odd bloke’s mate then asked if I was from Bolton which was a bit weird considering that, although I am not from Bolton I am from near Bolton and I thought he must have picked up on a bit of my northern twang. It then transpired that Bolton was one of only two places he knew in England because this is where Amir Kahn the boxer was from. As I quizzed Odd Bloke on where he was from he proceeded to do that quintessential American thing of listing half a dozen cultures other than American. I find it so bizarre that some American’s insist that they are anything except American, like being American is terrible. Emma jumped on the bandwagon and insisted that he was definitely American, much to the guy’s awkward displeasure. He blabbered something about Italian but took it in good spirit. Before he swam away again he wished us well and warned us that some people around the area could be real “assholes.” It was a bit of a strange warning but one which would ring spookily true later that night.

Down the road from the creek were a number of dispersed campsites, each one neatly laid out complete with fire grid. As we parked up in one of these we were the only people apart from the odd truck which trundled down the gravel road. We settled down to sleep and I was thinking to myself what a lovely setup this was for the state to provide for free to visitors. We were awoken at midnight to the sound of trucks spinning doughnuts next to our van and their occupants whooping and screaming. As they parked up at the campsite next to us I could hear them shouting and laughing, talking about vodka and beer and getting a fire going. I lay there wondering what to do but decided that as long as they left us alone they would drink themselves unconscious and we could put up with a few hours of party noise. Eventually we drifted off again before being woken with a start to the sound of shouting and screaming – this time without the jovialness of their arrival. From what I could make out there were around three guys and a girl and one of the guys was taking exception to something one of the other guys had said or done to his sister – the girl. When you hear words like “I WILL FUCK YOU UP” shouted at the top of a man’s lungs you begin to thing sensibly about your own position in the conflict, even as a benign observer. When those words are followed by “holy shit dude, have you got a gun?” – then you take action. I got Emma out of bed and dressed quickly before jumping in the cab and putting the keys in the ignition. The problem with our van is that it takes a few minutes to warm up the engine which meant that as soon as I started the motor we would attract attention but be sitting ducks. We took a deep breath and I turned the key. The engine started and I hit the lights on. I took a chance and shifted into drive but as soon as I did the engine cut out. I looked into my rear mirror and could see torch lights swinging in our direction, a cold sweat breaking over my body. I fired the engine up again and again it cut out. Twice more I tried but twice more it wouldn’t bite. Emma was shouting at me to pump the gas but I knew that if it wasn’t warm it wouldn’t bite. Finally I started it again and instead of holding my foot on the break whilst I shifted into drive I just floored the pedal and moved the shift lever to go. The van shot off and we spun our own doughnut out of the lot. We bombed it along the dirt track for 3 miles back to a pay campsite where we tucked into a quiet spot in the corner, all the time I looked back in the mirror waiting to see headlights that never appeared. I couldn’t help but wonder as I calmed my nerves and settled down to sleep at 2AM that the voices we heard could very well have been the people who swam up to meet us earlier. Either way the odd ball was right – some people in Oregon can be assholes.

Driving by the Bonneville Salt flats on our way to Oregon.

Glittering salt.

Crater Lake - Luke pondering...how is it SO blue?!

Mirror reflections in the lake.

Happy it didn't snow this time!

Oh Ashland! I love your Shakespearean themed signs.

Caldera Brewery in Ashland.

The award winning rose garden in Portland - it's nickname is City of Roses after all.

Strike a pose in Portland.

Yes, please keep it weird.

Great indie cinema we went to on our first anniversary.

My Birthday cake!

Land Jesus.

Splosh! A great way to welcome in the big 2 5.

Idaho

As with Montana and Wyoming we didn’t have any guide books for Idaho and couldn’t find any at all in the bookshops. Heading to the north of Idaho having looked up some info on the region we made our way through the towns of Whitefish (MT), Bonners Ferry (ID), Libby(ID), Sandpoint (ID), Couer D’Alene (ID) and back into MT again to visit Missoula; all nice small towns of the resort variety each with their own top notch coffee shops and microbreweries but each lacking anything really spectacular.

In the last of these, Missoula, we stumbled upon a community event where a student band butchered their way through some American folk classics whilst a PA system honked the So-Cal voice of an announcer commentating on a surf competition happening in the river. In memory of a local world class kayaker the town had built an artificial reef in the river creating a wave which could be surfed and kayaked as long as there wasn’t ice present. We watched the competition unfold, not really understanding the criteria for success other than not falling off, as the sun set and the mosquitos swarmed, as the children did handstands and the obese locals perused the food stalls, all to the backing track of Willie Nelson in a tumble dryer.

En route to Idaho Falls and the beer festival (I had now convinced Emma we should go) we stopped just outside the unassuming town of Salmon to visit a natural wonder Emma had heard of months ago when researching Idaho. Goldbug hot springs are a two and a half mile trek up a steep mountain ravine. As we followed the raging river to its source we passed through dense thickets of pine and scrub until an hour later we arrived at a wide collection of semi-natural pools embedded into the rock. The cold water river continued to rage through the centre but all around it hot steamy streams poured out of slime covered rocks and into channels and ponds made deeper by previous visitors who piled stones and re-routed flows. We passed a couple of people on their way back down and when we arrived there was only one other couple there enjoying the spring. We stripped off into our bathing suits and slid into the gloriously hot water. A bath is a delight when you are on the road, hell a shower is a delight when you are on the road; a bath is a real treat. When you have just hiked up a steep ravine for an hour a bath is as heavenly as it is exotic. We slopped around like basking seals for a good few hours enjoying the stunning views and waiting for the clouds above to open up, though they never did. Walking down was hard with hot legs of jelly but the whole experience was incredible and a highlight of Idaho.

After the serenity of Goldbug, Idaho Falls was always going to be a shock to the system. The beer fest had sold out of pre-order tickets so we had to queue for a good hour and a half and pay a hefty door fee of $36 per person to get in. Fortunately I figured out that you could pay $6 to enter as a designated driver so Emma paid $6 and drank beer from my glass. Beer festivals in the UK are usually fairly cultured affairs where the beer is the star of the show and the people are fans of quality product. I think it was somewhere between dancing to dub-step and watching fat girls flash their tits from atop a Budweiser van that I realised this probably wasn’t the case here. Due to the queue and such I calculated that I needed to drink a pint every half an hour to get my money’s worth which was a challenge over 3 hours and, as my belly filled with gas I realised I probably wasn’t going to make it. Still, I hunted out the Uinta stand and high fived a pleased-to-see-me Kurt whom I had met at the Jackson beer festival. “I told you to come and you came” were his smiling sentiments. We hung around the Uinta guys for the afternoon and in the evening, with Emma tucked up in  Walmart car park I made my way to downtown Idaho Falls to join them in their post beer fest celebrations. Here I spent the night talking culture and politics with a lovely chap called Rob who, as it turned out, had nothing to do with Uinta but was tagging along just like me. I notched him up on Facebook so as to have another American contact for later excursions in life and wobbled my way back to the van where I kept Emma awake recounting the tales of my evening. 

One of these tales involved us being invited back to Salt Lake City to visit the Uinta brewery on a personal tour. I never thought we’d go back to SLC but this offer was too good to pass up and as Kurt guided us around his workplace for the afternoon, beers in hand, I was ecstatic that we had chosen to come back. Breweries here are founded on principles of good beer and good times. They work hard to create commercial products but they also work hard to maintain an environment that people want to work in and the people at Uinta were certainly happy with their jobs, and why wouldn’t they be – they are surrounded by beer. After an inspiring afternoon which both Emma and I loved we were kindly invited to spend the night at Kurt’s place. As we rolled up outside his house and his wife opened the door, baby in arms, I got the distinct impression she had found out about our arrival only moments before. Nonetheless she welcomed us dearly and we spent a lovely evening chatting to Kurt and Gwennie about their work as snowboard instructors before Kurt’s move into brewing. As we lay our heads in their spare bedroom the thought couldn’t escape us that we were sleeping in a stranger’s basement as I am sure the thought couldn’t escape our hosts that some foreigners were occupying the lower floor of their house. We awoke to find a naked little boy running around the living room. Nev, Kurt’s son prefers life without pants and didn’t care who knew it. We finished our breakfast of eggs, ham and toast before setting off on the long journey across-country back to Oregon to fulfill Emma’s wish to see Crater Lake – something we were unable to do on our way down due to snow.

Montana

So we left Wyoming for Montana, and the town of Bozeman. Bozeman once again fulfilled the criteria of wealthy small town; lots of art galleries, coffee shops, boutiques and a vibrant downtown. They even had an art centre which was a collection of small studios occupying an old school. Each studio was a very small room and every studio had its own crazy owner and dog but it was a fun place and good for an hour’s walk. We spent the night in Walmart which provided one of the more interesting relationships I was to spark up.

As we cooked a pizza in a quiet corner of the car park a man approached our open van door. Popping one foot up inside the step and taking a long look at Emma the visitor announced a hello in a half Irish, half American accent. This guy was dressed in full hunting gear – cargo pants, boots, military jacket and fishing hat complete with fishing flies. Not wishing to antagonise a man in hunting gear I invited him to sit down and offered him a beer whilst Emma tried to avoid his wandering eyes. Luke, as his name turned out to be, was 24 and had been homeless by choice since the age of 12, which showed in his haggard face. His parents were both Irish and his lack of systematic schooling had left more of their accent in his voice than perhaps might otherwise be expected. He told us some far-fetched stories about how he had killed an attacking mountain lion with his bow and arrow and how he had skateboarded the Slickrock Trail in Moab (the most dangerous of all mountain bike trails). I enthusiastically egged him on and when he invited us to visit his friends in the van next door I agreed as I felt rude that his friends had been sat in the van next to us whilst we talked for an hour and had been ignoring them.

When we walked around to meet his friends he couldn’t remember their names - that’s how good ‘friends’ they were. They had met the night before as the neighbouring van was delivered off the back of a tow truck owing to a destroyed engine. The occupants were mid-twenties Nikki and middle-aged Jeremy, both of a very friendly hippy persuasion. Jeremy cleared a pile of rubbish off the back seat and we drank the night away in their company listening to their tales of the road. How Jeremy had done time for jacking cars, how Nikki had lost her simultaneous boyfriend and girlfriend recently so was making her way to Spokane, Washington to get high. I spent a good half an hour telling her not to go but to little avail. All the while a giant dog named Change snored loudly in the front seat and Emma wondered aloud how hungry he must be. It’s easy to overlook certain social issues when you’ve had a beer but in the cold light of the next day their situation had lost its hippy sheen and, as they traipsed off into town to beg for food and money, leaving Change alone in the broken down van, we were thankful to fall into the category of middle-class traveller where sleeping in the van is a choice not a necessity.

The next town on our to-do list was Helena for no reason other than it is the state capital of Montana. The population was less than that of Bozeman but the town had a certain diplomatic charm to it. We toured the State House where Emma marvelled at the statues of Jeanette Rankin, a famous female politician whose fall from grace came when she became the only senator to vote against joining world war two after the bombing of Pearl Harbour. I am certainly pro-peace in most situations however I am very glad she was unsuccessful in her bid to prevent the US joining the war and felt a certain enmity towards her statue thereafter. I’m sure she didn’t care much. The town also boasted a carousel which Emma was quite keen for us to ride. For a few dollars I sat proudly atop a cutthroat trout and Emma atop a steed as we whizzed around in circles feeling sick. Ride finished we headed north again into the wilderness.

Whilst on this trip we have watched a lot of TV shows and listened to a lot of radio. The first two months every night was spent watching Parks and Recreation and though it might sound like we aren’t appreciating the solitude of nature, having a comedy program to watch when you are parked in a dark and empty wilderness can offer a respite from the niggling fear that someone or something is going to come for you at any minute. When Parks and Recreation was finished we moved on to listen to the hundreds of hours of Ricky Gervais’ radio show, the comedy aspect once again a welcome distraction from some of the creepier places we stayed in.

One of these places was near Glacier National Park in the far north of Montana. Part of the park is actually in Canada and arriving here we felt as if we were arriving at the end of the earth. With no clear free campsites we set about looking for a place to stay along one of the many lakes in this region. We found a small boat ramp and turning circle just off the main road and backed into it so as to be out of sight. As the sun set a number of vehicles arrived, probably looking for a place to stay as well, only to find we had occupied it. Seeing beaten up trucks pull towards you out of the darkness, blocking your only exit is an unnerving experience and even more so when you know that you don’t have permission to sleep where you are. Whenever we slept somewhere ‘unofficial’ I would spend the night waking up at intervals, looking out into the moonlit forests and recoiling at approaching shadows. I don’t know what I was afraid of but I never slept well in these places and as such the comedy programs we listened to and watched were of great relief to me and deserve a mention.

Unfortunately we were a few weeks too early to drive the Going to the Sun Road through Glacier so had to detour hundreds of miles around the park. We spent an afternoon skimming stones on an ice-blue lake and watching bald eagles before deciding against the expensive campsites on offer within the park and making our way west towards the Idaho pan handle through various towns.