Archive for the 'Oregon Washington road trip' Category
The OrWa diaries, Day 7: Finish line
July 20, 2009 2:10pm
Hey, I finally connected the highway dots between California and Canada today. That is, a little after 3 p.m., I rolled into the public park at the north end of Blaine, Wash., which happens to border another country.
Nice little border crossing they have here - lots of grass (of the fescue variety), picnic benches, a man selling ice cream and a lone U. S. Border Patrol SUV sitting in the shade of a tree, waiting and waiting for action.
Weird, if you’re from Southern California. Also wonderful. And that, I figured, would be an ideal final note for this week-long road trip, and for the day, which began with a ferry ride from Port Townsend to Whidbey Island and a concession-stand lunch at Deception Pass. But we don’t really get to choose when our trips end. The trips tell us, sometimes days before the return flight is scheduled. And this trip said: “Not so fast, buddy.”
I had a night to spend in Bellingham before flying back to Los Angeles, so I invited Gil, a buddy from Seattle, to come on up and join me for dinner. Killing time, we first ran into a serious bike race, for which several downtown streets were closed. Then we wandered down to the public dock in time to see a fine sunset and a couple of local young men flinging themselves repeatedly into the sea (pictured below).
Now that I was done chasing fun, fun was coming after us.
And then we finally sat down for that dinner — in a pub resounding with the strings and whistles of an Irish folk group. Turns out they play every Sunday night at Skylark’s, in the Fairhaven area of Bellingham. And that’s where this coastal adventure came to its proper ending, at the bar, with a hunk of cod at the end of my fork, a lilting note hanging in the air.
Of course it wasn’t a comprehensive trip– neither Washington’s shoreline nor my department’s budget would allow one. But I started at the Oregon-California line, clung to the coast as closely as I could, and slept every night in a hotel or trailer or lighthouse-keeper’s home that was right on the ocean. The cheapest night was $81 (the Port Townsend room above the Grateful Dead cover band). The costliest was about $225 (the Heceta Head lighthouse B&B in Oregon). Put this trip next to my January journey from the Tijuana border to northernmost California and you get a snapshot of the West Coast, and maybe an idea for a trip of your own. More details and advice on the Oregon-Washington findings will follow soon, when I pull together a proper story for the Travel section.
And by the way, what’s all this nonsense about people needing umbrellas and raincoats in the Northwest? Seven days, something like 900 miles, maybe two dozen beaches … and not a drop of rain.
– Christopher Reynolds/Los Angeles Times staff writer
Photos: 1. Far below the big bridge at Deception Pass, Wash., two kayakers work their way around a corner. 2. The seaside Washington-Canada border crossing, which includes a fenceless park, grassy expanses, a sculpture garden and ornamental horticulture, is remarkably like the California-Mexico border in that, um, never mind. 3. On the ferry from Port Townsend to Whidbey Island, Wash.,, a small dog braves the stiff breeze. 4. They closed off several streets for a Sunday afternoon bike race in downtown Bellingham. 5. Down at the dock in the Fairhaven area of Bellingham, some of the boys like taking flying leaps. Credit: Christopher Reynolds
The OrWa road trip diaries, Day 6: Stacked stones, bared fangs and the end of the new world
July 19, 2009 1:07pm
About now, you may be thinking, we’re due for a reference to that old Grateful Dead lyric, “What a long, strange trip it’s been.” So here it is. And here’s why.
I’m sleeping tonight — well, I may not be sleeping; I may just be lying down — in a Port Townsend, Wash., hotel room, directly above the town’s leading brew pub. My room was quite affordable, about $81, and when I got here I remembered the proprietress saying something about the bar having live music sometimes.
Well, what it has is a Grateful Dead tribute band, Jack Acid. The band members have already covered “Truckin’,” “Sugar Magnolia” and a bunch of other favorites. And it’s clear they’re far from done. Which probably means that I’m far from sleep.
So, the day. It was long — something like 250 driving miles. And because of the way 101 is routed through Washington, there’s been a lot of jogging out to the coast, jogging back to the highway, then jogging out to the coast again. But there have been rewards.
A few miles north of Kalaloch Lodge, I stepped down to Ruby Beach, the last easily reached beach before the 101 veers inland through the Hoh Rain Forest. It was filled with massive driftwood — not so surprising, given Kalaloch beach. But over the months and years, visitors had covered this driftwood with little cairns — pebbles and stones stacked everywhere, on trunks, branches, sea stacks. I’d seen cairns in plenty of other places. But this setup was otherworldly.
An old guy with a fancy camera sidled up.
“Down in San Diego, they sell flat river rocks like this for a fortune,” he said. “A friend of mine put some in his frontyard. Cost about $1,000. I don’t dare tell him he could have gotten all he wanted.”
The man wandered off, and so did I. To Forks, where popular culture is rewiring the town.
Every since writer Stephenie Meyer set a 2005 vampire novel in this small, hardscrabble lumber town (after she went looking on Google for someplace dark and wet), entranced strangers have been showing up, often teenage girls. But now that the novel has grown into a series of books, and a movie series, among other things, the vampire pilgrim phenomenon has gone out of control.
The OrWa road trip diaries, day 5: Long Beach to Kalaloch
July 18, 2009 2:09pm
Before blasting off from Seaview and Washington’s Long Beach peninsula this morning, I had time for a rib-sticking bowl of oatmeal and marionberries at Laurie’s Homested Breakfast House and another chat with my innkeepers, Len and Miriam Atkins, who don’t like any guest’s biography or psychology going unexplored.
I told them what I was up to. They told me they’re both 80 and came to this damp corner of the world by way of South Africa, Israel and Chicago. Len’s background is in education and counseling, so before they had the Sou’Wester Lodge running full bore, he occasionally traded therapy for fish.
But the problem with a road trip such as this is that you always have to tear yourself away, because there are miles to cover. I have four days and three nights to reach the Canadian border.
“You know,” said Len thoughtfully and amiably, “what you’re doing is just about the exact opposite of what we’re trying to do here.”
I had to agree. And drive. Cape Disappointment. The Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center (because right around here, at the mouth of the Columbia, is where they finally hit the Pacific back in 1805). South Bend, Cosmopolis (which is not cosmopolitan), Aberdeen, Hoquiam.
The OrWa road trip diaries, Day 4: I see cheese, cross into Washington and flop in a silver bullet
July 17, 2009 12:41pm
She is a faded beauty, a 35-foot Spartan Royal Manor, parked in a grassy field near Cape Disappointment, Wash., complete with kitchen, bathroom and a bedroom with cool, curvy corners, so you never forget you’re in a trailer. She goes back to about 1954. And tonight I sleep between those curvy corners.
Len Atkins, owner of the unrelievedly miscellaneous and bohemian Sou’Wester Lodge, leads me to her through the dim dusk. About a dozen other trailers are parked on the three seaside acres around. There’s also a great big old farmhouse that Atkins and his wife, Miriam, have filled with artworks, books, dental equipment and some stuff that makes no sense at all.
“We came here to spend a weekend,” he says in a disarming accent from some corner of the British Empire. (I’ll have to ask which one tomorrow.) “My wife and I looked at each other and we said, ‘Wow, this is home.’ It had been on the market for three years. No one was touching it. From those two days, this September will be 29 years since we came.” He is clearly as happy as a pig in mud, and it’s infectious.
Still, it’s not for everybody, as Atkins is quick to warn anybody who inquires. But it seems like the right place for me tonight, my first night in Washington.
The OrWa diaries, Day 3: Facts, fiction, fish
July 16, 2009 2:40pm
Four things I learned today about myself and the world, while driving from Heceta Head to Newport, Ore.:
— The town of Yachats is a gem, tucked in along the green coastal hills about midway between Florence and Newport.
I stopped there for a prowl around and a quick, excellent pasta, prosciutto and peas lunch at Heidi’s Homemade Food.
The OrWa road trip diaries, Day 2: The cod and the light
July 15, 2009 1:17pm
Was Day 2 of my Oregon-Washington coastal road trip better than Day 1?
Let’s put it this way: Do a great lunch and transcendent lodging beat a poke in the eye with a sharp stick?
The worst part of Day 1 was Horizon Airlines’ failure to deliver my suitcase, despite having plenty of time and a far from full plane. But all that bad blood is over now, because at 11:45 a.m. a messenger arrived at my Gold Beach hotel with the luggage in question. With that chore done, it was time to ramble. And it was a great day for it — brilliant blue skies and bracing winds.
The great lunch came at the Crazy Norwegian’s, a fish joint in Port Orford, Ore., that was recommended to me by a couple of bikers I met in the shadow of a concrete dinosaur at the the Prehistoric Gardens, a tourist trap/kitsch haven north of Gold Beach that goes back more than 50 years. (The restaurant people use cod in their fish and chips; I subbed pasta salad for the chips and licked the plate clean.)
By the way, everybody in Oregon already seems to know about the Crazy Norwegian’s. I had to wait 15 minutes for a seat on a Tuesday afternoon.
Road trip: Going coastal between California and Canada
July 14, 2009 11:50am
Call me OrWa. Beginning today, I’m driving the whole Oregon-Washington coast, from the edge of California to the edge of Canada, with a little fudging to cope with Puget Sound.
Today’s progress: LAX to Arcata, Calif. (by air). Arcata to Brookings, Ore., to Gold Beach, Ore.
Driving miles: about 150.
Lodging: about $160.
It’s great to be in Oregon. Of course, it would be greater if my luggage also were in Oregon and if I hadn’t spent several hours near the airport waiting in vain for it to arrive . . . but the people at Horizon Airlines say they’re working on that.
Anyway, that time-killing in the beach and pier zone of Trinidad worked out pretty well. And it was followed by several more hours of northern progress on land and then some desperate scavenging for dinner at 10 p.m. on a Monday in Gold Beach. (Jeff at the deli counter of McKay’s all-night grocery fixed me up with the chicken, beans and slaw.) As a result, I can now offer an illustrated public service announcement:
Six things to do in Trinidad while waiting for your airline to fulfill its obligations:
