Day 27 – Glacier National Park (Day 1)

Avalanche Creek

We spent the night in Kalispell, MT, and then drove into Glacier National Park this morning for our planned hike up to Avalanche Lake. It was a fairly difficult hike, at least for us, and it took us 1.5 hours to climb the 2.3 miles to the lake. The hike goes along Avalanche Creek and then up to the lake.

John and Jeanne at Avalanche Lake

Avalanche Lake is a mountain lake surrounded by high glacial mountain walls and the lake can only be reached by backpacking. The lake is formed by glacial run-off and snow melt. All along the hike and in the lake you could see trees felled by avalanches in the area, hence the name. This past winter was worse than normal and the road we took today was only opened on July 4. The scenery around the lake and on the hike in general was fantastic.

McDonald Lake

The weather today, by the way, was perfect. It was full sun and around 60 when we started the hike. We were told it had been raining for the past two weeks, so we really came at the right time.

Bear Crossing!!!

On the drive back, we came across a black bear just ambling across the road and ignoring traffic. We pulled up along side and it calmly rose up and grabbed a paw full of berries from a nearby tree, no more than 10 feet from our car. It was pretty cool and definitely the highlight of animal sightings so far. Photos aren’t the best as we weren’t prepared and the bear didn’t stick around too long. The funny thing is that it was no more than maybe two miles from where we ended the trail. We are really glad we came across the bear in our car and not on the hike!

Day 26 – Scenic Drive

Flathead Lake, MT

Today was mostly a driving day. We drove almost 400 miles, about half of that on 2-lane roads so it took a while. We entered back into Mountain Time and with all the stops we made, we didn’t get to the hotel until almost 8, which is a couple hours past what we normally try to do. Fortunately the drive went through some of the most varied and scenic roads we have seen so far - from forested mountains, to rolling grasslands with no one in sight, to fast flowing rivers, to mountain lakes, etc. For scenery, we liked Lake Coeur d’Alene in Idaho and the St. Regis river and Flathead Lake, both in Montana.

Grand Coulee Dam

We only made a couple of stops today, the first at the Grand Coulee Dam. This was a last minute addition to our itinerary but well worth it. The security on the tour seemed a little like overkill, but I suppose they know what they are doing. Grand Coulee Dam is the largest dam in the US and was built in the 30s and 40s, but had a significant addition in the 60s. One surprising thing we learned was that the hydroelectric power it generates is not the main purpose of the dam. They claim that the main purpose is really to provide irrigation to central Washington. The region it serves is high desert and gets less than 10 inches of rain a year, but the irrigation water allows them to grow a wide variety of crops. They specifically mentioned potatoes and mint as crops you might not think of as coming from Washington.

Jeanne in her "Little Red Wagon"

To continue in our “Americana” theme, we stopped in Spokane to see the world’s largest Little Red Wagon and the world’s largest milk bottle, which used to be part of a dairy but now is a restaurant.

Day 25 – Turnaround Day

Diablo Lake (above the Diablo Dam)

After 24 days on the road, we have finally turned around and are now headed back for home. We left Vancouver and drove to the North Cascades National Park. One big complaint about the trip: it took 45 minutes to get through the border crossing into the US!

Each one of the new parks we visit has a different surprise for us. North Cascades is kind of out of the way and doesn’t get as many visitors as some of the other parks but it is quite beautiful in its own way. There is only one main road, Hwy 20, through the park and it takes you through a valley surrounded by mountains on both sides, frequent waterfalls and occasional glaciers. The park isn’t quite as unspoiled as some others. There were a series of dams and power plants built on the Skagit River in the 20's and 30's to provide power to Seattle, but they aren’t all that obtrusive and the lakes created by the dams are spectacular.

Ladder Creek Falls

We stopped at the park visitor center to watch the obligatory film and learned that the park has more glaciers than any other park in the lower 48 states. We went further down the road, stopped for a short hike up to Ladder Creek Falls and then cruised through the rest of the park in a couple of hours before reaching central Washington. As soon as we left the Cascade Mountains, we came back into the high desert region again, but with the one difference. We started seeing fruit orchards. They weren’t everywhere but we spotted apples and pears, but also passed some trees which had already been picked, maybe peaches. It was kind of surprising to see orchards in such an arid climate, but they were using irrigation. We also drove through about 30 miles of countryside damaged by the recent fires here before we reached our hotel in Omak, WA.

Day 24 – Sunny But Crowded Vancouver

BC Place Stadium

We had a beautiful, sunny Sunday in Vancouver today, which brought everyone outside to enjoy themselves. Good for them but difficult on us tourists. It made the roads really crowded and parking impossible at the popular spots.

Our first stop with at the Olympic Village from the 2010 Winter Olympics. The housing built for the Olympics is now a very nice residential section of town along the waterfront. The first shot posted is an Olympic Village statue with BC Place Stadium (home of the BC Lions of the Canadian Football) in the background across the water. The water is called False Creek, which is as the name advertises. Not a creek, but actually an extension of English Bay.

ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

We took a short walk along False Creek and saw the Canadian sense of humor in action. We saw an ALS Ice Bucket challenge where the water was dumped off a bridge about 40 feet above the two guys taking the challenge. Apparently they didn’t realize until that moment that ice dumped from that far is going to hurt! They quickly tossed the big pieces in the water. Speaking of their sense of humor, another thing we found funny was that everything in the dollar store here is $1.25, due to the exchange rate. Apparently no one sees the irony in that.

Vancouver From Stanley Park

We then tried to visit Glanville Island, which is a popular shopping area with a bunch of boutique shops. Cute but no parking spots. Honestly the stores didn't look that interesting so not a problem for us. So then we moved on to Stanley Park. I probably should say "crawled through traffic" as "moved on" isn't quite the right description. Stanley Park is another popular spot for outdoor activities for the citizens of Vancouver and once again it was too crowded for us tourists. We could see the sights from the car but it was very difficult to pull over and enjoy them. So we settled for some quick photos from the car. I think our general opinion of Vancouver is that it has overgrown its infrastructure to the point where living here would be a hassle that we don’t need.

Day 23 – Boeing to Vancouver

Vancouver Harbor at sunset

We checked out of our hotel on the south side of Seattle and headed 30 miles north of Seattle to tour the Boeing factory. We had a few minutes to kill so we took a detour through the University of Washington campus. Very pretty and right on the lake. In fact it’s supposed to be one of 4 or 5 schools where you can take a boat the football game. I think Tennessee is another.

Canada Place (cruise ship terminal)

As an engineer, I found the Boeing tour interesting. Jeanne, maybe not so much. The factory itself is the largest building in the world, measured by volume. They are currently making 767s, 747-8s, 777s and their newest 787 Dreamliners on 4 different assembly lines. No photos are allowed on the tour so you will have to take my word that the factory was enormous. In business terms, I think they said they make about $1B of product each week from that plant and they still have a huge backlog of orders. It takes over a year to get one of their latest planes built from the time you order it to delivery.

Steam Clock in Gas Town

We crossed the 5,000 mile mark on the trip and also hit our furthest point when we arrived in Vancouver. Traffic was some of the worst we have seen on the trip and the border crossing took about 20 minutes, so not that quick either. At the advice of the person who checked us in, we took the metro into downtown Vancouver. That actually worked well and only cost $2.75 CAD (about $2.50 USD). Much better than in Philly. We saw the Olympic cauldron from the winter Olympics held here in 2010 and walked along the waterfront. We stopped for dinner overlooking the water and did a quick walk through Gas Town to see the steam clock before heading back to our room.

Couple of things that we quickly noticed about Vancouver. Its population, at least where we were, was about 90% Asian. Also the downtown section is very clean for the most part but on the flip side, they have a very large population of homeless and beggars as well.

Day 22 – Seattle Tour

Fish Market at Pike Place

Today we opted for the easy way out and took a packaged tour of Seattle instead of trying to drive to all the sights. Seattle is a large city with significant traffic jams as we found out leaving town after the tour at the same time as a Seahawks preseason game. Not much fun. Also Seattle seems to be some kind of GPS vortex as our Garmin GPS can’t seem to get its act together. I swear that in one block it told me to turn left, turn right, make a legal u-turn and also mixed in a couple of "recalculatings." Of course traffic was so busy I couldn’t even change a lane.

Snoqualmie Falls

We stated the tour at Pike Place Market, famous for the flying fish (actually tossed from one worker to another). The original Starbucks is located near there and we spent quite a bit of time wandering among the stalls at the market. The tour took us to Snoqualmie Falls (30 minutes outside of Seattle), then through neighborhoods to see where Jimi Hendrix grew up, the Kurt Cobain and Bill Gates homes, and to see the Freemont Troll (a piece of local artwork).

Coho Salmon

We then stopped to see a fish ladder. When the Chittenden lock was built between Puget Sound and Lake Washington, they also built a fish ladder to allow salmon to go from the saltwater of Puget Sound to the fresh water lake, thus letting them travel upstream to the various rivers and steams in the area. The King salmon (also called Coho) were running now and it was just at the end of Sockeye season so there were also a few of them as well. You could view the King Salmon from an underground viewing area (see photo). The King are the biggest of the salmon varieties, typically weighing between 10 and 20 pounds . They looked so good I had one for dinner!

Overview of Seattle

Our last stop was at an overview of the city for a great photo opportunity. The tour was called a Shutter Tour and we also got some photography tips along the way. Hope I learned something, at least about composition.

A couple of impressions of Seattle. One, Seattle is much more hilly that you would expect. The area near the wharf has hills that are a lot like those in San Francisco. Second, the city is really set in an idyllic environment between mountains and the sound. Very beautiful. Third, it has some of the best fresh seafood you can find. Not sure that this balances out all the overcast weather, sometimes up to 90 days in a row, but it's a start.

Day 21 – Puget Sound

Chihuly Glass Sculptures

This was our second long day in a row, hence a late posting of the blog. We started the morning in Port Angeles with a quick visit to the Olympic National Park visitor center, which was closed last night by the time we made it to Port Angeles. Then another quick stop at Sequim, WA, which is known for their lavender fields, so we did some lavender shopping there. This was followed by a 2-hour drive to Tacoma which took us over a pontoon bridge, one of 5 in the area. Finally we made it to Tacoma for a visit to their Museum of Glass. You might think Tacoma is a strange place for a glass museum, but it is the birthplace of Dale Chihuly who is probably the world’s foremost artist working in the medium of glass. Tacoma looked like a pretty cool town but we just didn’t have enough time for a longer visit.

Salmon on Open Fire on Cedar Planks

We arrived in Seattle, checked in at the hotel and headed straight downtown for our dinner cruise. We had advanced booked a cruise to Tillicum Village, which is 45 minutes travel by boat. The cruise gave us a great view of the city of Seattle from Puget Sound but also a chance to learn about the First People in the area. First People, by the way, seems to be the new PC way to refer to Native Americans, at least in the Northwest. At other places the word Indian was used so I have no idea what the correct term to use is. In any case, we had a nice salmon (Steelhead) dinner cooked on cedar planks in the native way. This was followed by a “First People” show that talked about their legends and beliefs. Normally we find these shows a little boring, but this one was good.

Space Needle in Seattle

Then after dinner we had the opportunity to sit on the beach and contemplate the amazing view. We could see the Space Needle and Seattle to our left and Mt. Rainier to our right. Mt. Rainier is on view only about 20% of the time, so we were very fortunate to be here at the right time again. We saw a beautiful sunset on the way back to Seattle and you can easily understand why Seattle is such an attractive city to many people. Here are a couple of photos from the trip. First is the Space Needle (built in 1962 for the World's Fair).

View of Mt. Rainier from Tillicum Village

Second is Mt. Rainier from Tillicum Village with a deer in the foreground and a Washington State Ferry in the background.

Sunset over the Olympic Mountains as seen from Puget Sound

Finally is the sunset over the Olympic Mountains, which are to the west of Seattle.