We had about 270 miles to drive to get to the next stop so we left Tuesday night to knock out an hour of driving through the pass. We found a fantastic campsite at a place in Idaho off the Salmon River called Bobcat Gutch. Lots of grass for the pups abd there were 6-8 free sites with fire pits. Maggie was in grass heaven.
We got up to a beautiful morning and headed the 190 miles to Craters of the Moon National Park. This is a place you probably don’t want to visit during the summer. They say that the rocks get up to 150°. The site is basically a very large area that collapsed millions of years ago and caused volcanic activity near the surface. It’s a really unique area to learn about lava, lava flows, and the different types of cinders. The park has a very nice drive and a couple of really interesting hikes to take you to some Cinder cones and lava spouts. They do have a visitor center where you can get passes to go into the caves and look at the bats. We opted out of that.
we finished the day camping in a boat ramp/camping area next to the snake river. The snake river is jammed up in this part of the canyon so it was definitely right from a full summer season. But there was a nice little stream. It was running behind the camp spot and the dogs were able to have some good walks.
We routed East from Idaho and stopped in with some good friends, Hake and Monique, in Hamilton. We stayed a few days and enjoyed some normal life for a few days. I was able to remove Howie from the truck, take it in for a good wash, and get it cleaned up a bit. I also changed the oil and filter, while managing to spill the nasty stuff all over myself and the ground. I forgot to open the breather hole on the oil catch tub and the cold thick stuff couldn’t drain into the hole. I managed to shove my finger in the drain hole to stop the flow, but it still made a huge mess. Uggh. I had to toss a pair of shorts, shirt, and undies into the trash after that screw up.
So while we are staying there Monique used some of the wild plums to create a baked chicken with plum sauce and rice for dinner that was delicious. Jake and Monique paired up and made some sourdough huckleberry pancakes for breakfast using the wild huckleberries picked in the mountains.
Monique made some fresh bread on Saturday and used a friends recipe to make the most delectable huckleberry cheesecake, probably the best cheesecake we’ve ever tasted. And she showed us how to maintain a sourdough starter that we named Hamilton.
We ended up having to stay an extra night due to the USPS being slow for a delivery of medication Kathy needed. It was shipped the previous Wednesday from AZ and was supposed to take 3 days, but ended up taking 6.
We enjoyed hanging out with them, grilling steaks over a fire in the back yard, feeding the horses, doing projects around the house, and having in a great meal in Darby at the 406 restaurant on Sunday. We even met some interesting locals at a local bar across the street from the restaurant. On Tuesday, Jake and I headed up to Missoula to get supplies at Costco and Walmart. It was great spending time with some good people.
The drive to the Grand Coulee Dam and Lake Roosevelt was very interesting. It started in the rolling hills that had just been harvested and then freshly planted with winter wheat and then ripped through some forests and canyons. There were long lakes along the way and after the second one, it was time for a stop for the pups. It was 88 degrees outside and the water was not too cold. Maggie decided to wade out into it and then plopped down to lay in the water. I decided to go for a swim. It was nice, not too cool, and felt good.
A few miles up the road we stopped at a state park called Dry Waterfall State Park. It turns out this was at one time the largest waterfall in the world and had water flowing over it during the end of the last Ice Age. Apparently there was a very large lake called Lake Missoula that would fill up behind the glacier and then every once in a while between 13,000 and 15,000 years ago, the ice dam I would break and the water would travel all the way from Northern Idaho/Montana to the coast of the Pacific Ocean. All the lakes that we just passed and swam in were part of the old waterfall as it ate its way up the valley. The lakes, soap lake, Lenore Lake, Alkali Lake, blue Lake, Park Lake, banks Lake, and finally Lake Roosevelt at the Cooley Dam were all part if the massive flood valley. It’s really rather interesting if you want to read. https://www.glaciallakemissoula.org.
We made it to the Grand coulee Dam and did a quick tour of the visitors center. They had some great displays of the hydroelectric plant. Initially the plant had two hydroelectric generation stations, later on they added a third that does more than the other two combined. We toured the town a bit and found this really cool shop that had just about everything so we bought some postcards and some stickers, and a paint stick.
Right outside of town there was a really nice campground at the state park so we headed over there. I managed to figure out how to make a roast in tinfoil in the oven and was able to shred that for later use as burritos, etc. Lake Roosevelt is supposedly 300 miles long as a dams up the Columbia river.
We got up to a beautiful morning and took a nice walk on the beach at the NPS park. This place has several hundred parking spots so in the height of summer it must be a busy place. The pups, especially Zuzu, really enjoyed zipping around in the sand.
We drove to our next stop, the Nez Perce NHS, and spent an hour at the visitors center looking at the displays and maps. This place was more of a celebration of the tribe and its history and the lands they traveled during the seasons. The actual NHS has over a dozen markers throughout the park to designate their significance. We passed through many of those later in the day and the next morning.
Camp was free in the little city park of Greer. When we pulled in three deer were grazing along the edge. We walked the pups and found wild red and golden plums ripe for picking along the old rail tracks. Kathy enjoyed gathering several pounds of each. A master chef friend of ours used some to make a delicious chicken dinner with plum topping. More on that later.
We drove from the Big Bend BLM campground to a small town called Heppner, OR. I had not filled my tank when we left I-84 because it was only 150 miles into the tank and I could go another 300. Well we are lucky we had enough because the truck was at 35 miles estimated remaining when we pulled into the fuel station. Eastern Oregon has a lot of emptiness. We did see a flock of turkeys as we headed up through the mountains.
We did a bit of grocery shopping, so this stop killed our budget for the day. Oh well, we were still heading north back into Washington to visit the Whitman Mission NHS. We did manage to get photos of us crossing the borders. The last two were on freeways and right across a bridge so pics were not an option. Kathy cleaned up the images a bit since people have taken to defacing the signs with stickers.
The Whitman mission site was a location where some Christian missionaries set up to convert the local people, teach them farming and modern methods, and ended up being blamed for not being able to save locals from measles. The local tribe murdered Mr Whitman, his wife Clarissa, and 15 others. This incident started the Indian wars in Washington and ultimately opened the region up to the current day. We hiked around the site and found apples in the orchard and a flock of turkeys walking about. Lots of the signage at this site is negatively written and is a bit of a put off. Hopefully some updates will occur soon.
We headed back towards the Pasco area and grabbed a McDonald’s for dinner. We headed towards Hanford NHS to find a place to camp. The local park campground was closed for the season and we tried three other RV parks, which were more trailer parks. There is a lot of harvesting of apples in this area so I presume spots are filled due to that. We ended up at a Walmart/Home Depot for the night. That parking lot was a bit more active than we would have liked and only two other campers were there. It worked out though and we got a bit of sleep before the landscapers started at 6:30. I was able to get a new eyebolt at HD and some chorizo at Walmart.
The Hanford visitors center is the only early one we have visited. 7:30 it opened. However tours are only in Fri – Sun. Funny thing, we like to get stickers and postcards for souvenirs and they don’t sell them and referred us to a local bookstore around the corner…. Which opened at 11AM. So we made breakfast and hung out until 11. The remainder of the day is driving to the Coulee Damn and Lake Roosevelt.
We got a kick out of a portion of the drive though. We left the plush forests of the coastal rain forests and entered the sparse grasslands and arid forests. We’ve been in green so long that this feels foreign to us now. And while driving the wind turbines are more plentiful than weeds. We can understand the need for alternative forms of energy, but these wind turbines are absolutely atrocious and ugly when driving these back roads. I wish they’d just put up a couple more nuclear plants and get rid of all of this garbage. I think that’s about Adam’s in the background.
Today and the next few days are gonna be 200+ mile days. We have planned to meet up with some friends of ours back in Hamilton, Montana, and the weekend is the best time for them. So today we left Eagle Creek campground and headed to the John Day fossil beds. So the first question I had is who is John Day. There’s a town named after him, several rivers named after him, so he must be pretty important. It turns out he most famous for being attacked by Indian stripped naked and forced to walk 70 miles back to Walla Walla. If you’re interested, here’s some info. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Day_(trapper)
This area of Oregon is actually internationally known. The fossils from 50 million years ago and newer that basically tell us what life was like for early mammals on earth are located here. It’s interesting to see the timetable, with all of the plants and animals 50 million years ago up until about 5 million years ago, when humans first hit the earth. This area is one of the richest fossil beds in the entire planet. The visitor center is phenomenal how it is set up and even has a lab behind a window where you can watch scientists excavate the fossils. We got there slightly before 3 PM and were able to spend over an hour in there viewing and reading the exhibits.
A couple hundred yards down the road one of the old Homesteads is also part of the national park, so we stopped by there to take a look. The site is actually closed to the public, but you are able to tour the grounds. They have orchards back there with tons of apples and pears, and there were signs up that said that we could pick the right fruit from the trees. Having some fresh apples, a snack on will be nice since I’ve been eating too many Oreos lately. I’m going to make a pie in the next couple of days.
We have done so many miles, and I’ve seen so many things on this journey, that we’ve missed a bunch. I would recommend coming to this area and doing some hiking and exploring because there’s so much to see in this area. Maybe at some point we’ll get back here before we can’t move anymore.
We found a nice BLM campground along the John Day river about 20 miles from the National Park. It’s only five dollars a night and it’s incredibly quiet. I can hear coyotes in the distance and fish jumping in the river. I appreciate quiet and free (or almost free) campgrounds, as there are way too many of those these days. This site is quiet and beautiful and clear.
It was a long day of driving. We left the beachside campsite early and drove the 45 minutes to the Quinault Ranger Station to check in and get our NPS passport stamps. We hiked the trail to the Kestner Homestead and saw the orchard that was planted 120 years ago. There were no apples on the ground but we found a HUGE pile of bear scat in the grass that was not steaming but rather fresh. The rainforest is such an interesting place, probably because we are used to the desert flora and fauna. We didn’t see a bear but asked the ranger and he said they have several black bears in the area that eat the fruit off the ground. They will also climb into the trees and shake the fruit free. Kathy found some evergreen huckleberry bushes I the parking lot and picked two quarts of them.
We had several more hours of driving to do to get to our next stop. We were headed to the Lewis and Clark NHS in Oregon and wanted to get there before they closed. Furthermore, we were needing a shower and looked at campgrounds in the area and the KOA was $100+ for the night and the state park reservation showed it was full. I figured we need to get there early to see if we could find a place, as there were places for stealth camping, but we wanted to place with a shower.
We arrived about two in the afternoon and decided to start at the campsite of the state park to see if we can get a spot. Fortunately, they had some cancellations and we were able to grab a spot there. We checked out the spot, and then headed over to the Lewis and Clark national historic site because they closed at four, and we wanted to be able to tour the visitors center. Some of the great things in American history that really impressed me are the pioneers, and more in particular Folks like Lewis and Clark in his party of discovery. We’ve been traveling over 15,000 miles in a very posh truck on roads and into established campsites. These incredibly hearty men and woman had boats, canoes, or walked the entire length from Camp Dubois on the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean. They not only traveled, but explored, collected samples, and mapped the upper west that was to become the USA. It’s really an incredible thing. Here’s a link to some quick history. https://www.history.com/articles/lewis-clark-timeline-expedition
We were able to tour the museum and displays at Fort Clatsop and even learned about the unique American flag with 15 stars and 15 stripes during the flag retirement ceremony at the end of the day. It’s a pretty incredible historic site.
We headed back to the Campground at Ft Stevens State park. The site was $50 for the night but it included free, hot showers and an electrical hook up. We haven’t been driving the 4 to 6 hours a day and I haven’t been able to get the batteries up to 100% for about a week. It got as low as 25% when we left the campground at the beach. After driving all day today, it still was only at 80%, so this allowed a trickle charge overnight. It’s funny because I put enough solar on the roof to be able to charge it up during the day from 50%, but that requires Arizona style sun. We have not had straight sunlight for any single day for the last two months so we are reliant on the alternator to charge the batteries.
The Fort Stevens campsite is really nice, and really big. There are over 250 sites there they were actually open. And there was some sort of a recumbent bike festival going on, so after dark it was like the Disney electric light parade with these guys driving around with their Christmas lights all over the bikes. Kind of cool. We got a good night sleep, took a hot shower in the morning since the one at night was just lukewarm, and the batteries were all charged up and we are ready to go. We stopped by the beach to see an old shipwreck. Apparently there have been over 2000 wrecks at the mouth of the Columbia river due to all the sandbars. This wreck happened around 1917, and a similar one happened three weeks later almost in the same spot.
We have been running into some scheduling issues with these national parks and historic sites being closed on certain days. Unfortunately, with the route that we’re choosing, we were gonna go see the Fort Vancouver down in Portland, but it’s closed on Sunday and Monday. The next site we’re planning on seeing is the John fossil beds in Central Oregon, and they’re closed on Tuesday and Wednesday. So it’s important that we get down on Monday to be able to see the fossil beds. There’s no chance on seeing the Fort Vancouver visitor center, but we’re gonna stop by the site anyway and see if we might be able to get a stamp.
We camped in a nice little campground next to a beach. The ocean is filled with waves crashing on the shore and there is tons of driftwood and logs lining the shore. We relaxed for two nights here and walked along the beach.
I got the Starlink replaced without an issue. For those of you who have not experienced this service, it is seamless and easy to work with. If Elon manages his cars and space ships in the same Jannie, which I believe he dies, it’s no wonder he is so successful.
We spent the day napping, reading, and sitting by the sea watching the waves crashing. I looked up the high tide and we walked down up the edge to see the trees being tossed about by the powerful waves. Through the binoculars we did not see wales, but there were thousands of sea birds, some otters, and a seal bobbing in the waves.
I managed to bake scalloped potatoes for dinner which turned out amazing. Definitely doing those again.
We had missed the Klondike Gold Rush Museum and Pioneer square due to scheduling closure a few days ago. We purchased tickets for the Space needle for a morning ride, not thinking that there was fog here. But that was our first stop. We were a bit early so we stopped at a cute little French bakery and had some coffee and delicious pastries. The fog didn’t lift but we had tickets that were to refundable, so we headed up to the top.
The elevator ride is like 49 seconds and the operator was funny trying to describe the surroundings before he said “and from here on up it’s fog”. We chuckled. The views were nonexistent, but the tower was pretty cool with its rotating floor. We could see enough of the ground to make out the area and tried to locate Howie, but I had parked where threes blocked our view. Oh well.
We made the best of it. At the bottom they had these pies that they sold that were delicious. Kathy had a ham and cheese and I had a huckleberry and peach. We watched the people around the base and took some cool pictures of the needle.
We returned to Howie, walked the pups again, and then drove the se real miles to the NP site. It was cool that we had visited the site in Skagway and Dyea in Alaska and had traveled to Dawson City prior to visiting this. It really gives us a perspective of these early travelers and what they accomplished. Just the supply list they had to procure for a years travel is astonishing. These gold rushers hauled these supplies up and over the pass and into the Canadian interior by hand mostly. Crazy.
We found an interesting bar called The Underground on the way back to the truck and stopped for a beer. Turns out this is a burlesque show bar in the evenings. The deco was fun and we enjoyed the break with a beverage. Howie and the pups were waiting and we had to get out of Seattle and head to Olympic NP.
I goofed on the way and headed to the ranger station but thinking there were no campgrounds. We got there a bit late and missed our stamps. I fund a campground 45 minutes away and we got a spot at the south beach campsite. It was a long day of travel today, about 11 hours.
We decided to stay two nights at Cougar Rock Campground so we could look around and do a bit of hiking. We drove up to the visitors center, which was supposed to be closed, but it turned out it was not. We enjoyed the place as it was beautiful. There were lots of hiking trails but the lot was full and people were everywhere, on a Wednesday. This place must be miserable in the busy season. The hotel was also interesting and was built similar to the Yellowstone hotel, but smaller.
We hiked around the lot and some trails and then headed down to the lower visitors center and to get fuel. It was funny though since my miles-to-empty reading was 64 at the top and when we made it to the fuel it was up to 85.
We enjoyed a coupe of hikes, one to a beautiful falls, and then hung out at the campground and did some reading. The pups enjoyed the walks in the humongous tree forest.
We headed out early on the 10th to get to Issequah where the new Starlink had been shipped. We found wildlife park (zoo) along the drive and decided to stop for a tour and lunch. They had a really nice tram ride around the wild portion of the park and we saw their buffalo, mountain goats, foxes, elk, deer and caribou. In the other portions of the zoo there were wolves, bobcats, lynxes, mountain lions, eagles, and wolverines (which we could not find). It’s a beautiful setting for a zoo.
One interesting/disturbing piece I found was a free feminine hygiene product dispenser in the men’s restroom. I guess in this area the zoo fences are arbitrary.
We made some grilled ham and cheese sandwiches in the parking lot and then continued on our journey. It was a nice easy drive and the package pick up was easy. I scoped out a spot next to a river park that was said to be ok for overnighting. We took the pups for a long walk around the park and the surrounding area and stumbled upon a neat old shopping area where old homestead buildings had been relocated and turned into shops and restaurants. Very beautiful.
The night was uneventful. Three other travelers stayed in the same location and we were undisturbed. Issaquah is a beautiful and busy city outside of Seattle.
We had planned for a couple of days in Seattle so we drove into the heart of the city. We found street parking and headed off to get the National Park stamp for the Klondike Gold Rush. Unfortunately the visitors center was closed on Monday and Tuesday. We headed towards the Famous Pikes Place to watch the fish throwing. It didn’t take long to find the crown watching the show and we joined. We walked around the market for a bit and then decided to find a place to eat. We ended up at Kells, an Irish pub. We shared a NY strip steak and some crab dip. The dip was spicy, not a traditional Irish recipe we suspected. But overall the meal was good.
We heard about the Gum Wall so we strolled down that way to check it out. You can smell it before you get to the corner. It’s really gross, but is a unique piece of artwork that only a city could create. We proceeded to head back to the truck and browsed the shops along the way. A particular map store caught our eye and we tried to find reasonably sized country stickers for Howie. Unsuccessful today. We also failed our world geography as we could not identify France on the chalk drawing challenge. Oh well.
Our next task was finding a place to camp. Cities suck for this and we could not find anything reasonable so we drive the two hours to Mt Rainier NP thinking we’d find a campground or wild camp along the way. No such luck. We did end up crashing a spot at the Cougar Rick campground that looked empty; but had some hikers stashed away in the trees in a tent. They were cool. I ended up paying for a new spot for tonight. We have to get back to Issequah outside of Seattle tomorrow to pick up a fedex, and head into Seattle again to get the stamp. We will head west toward Olympic NP and I’m hoping I can scout a free camp.
I am finding that this late in the season, lots of national parks and sites are closed or have reduced schedules. We planned Olympic NP next, but have to route to another visitors center that is open. Tomorrow will be a long day of driving due to the rerouting. Gas up here is STUPIDLY priced at ~$5 per gallon.
