Returning to the Pacific Northwest, Part 1

After fourteen months of cruising North America, to Alaska though the Alaska Highway, to the Arctic Circle, down the West Coast to Mexico and across the Gulf States to the Keys and the Southeast, back west through parts of the Midwest and now up the Northwest, living in 23 American states, 3 Canadian provinces, and 4 Mexican states, we are finally coming ‘home’ to Seattle, Washington. Although it is now only a mailing address, Seattle seems home to us with friends, family, tenants, doctors and agents there.

From Boise, Idaho, we crossed the Blue Mountains, reached Southeastern Washington, and settled in Moses Lake, the largest city (pop: 18T) in Grant County, the potato capital of the country (despite Idaho’s claim!) . Its Saturday Farmer’s Market was spectacular ($1 large watermelons)!  From there, we toured the Grand Coulee Dam near Electric City, the Hanford Reach National Monument near Othello, and the Gingko Petrified State Forest near Quincy, and the county’s  the orchards, gardens, and nurseries.

Grand Coulee Dam is currently the largest dam in North America and the fourth largest in the world, behind Three Gorges in China, Itapúa in Brazil, and Guri in Argentina.  Under construction in Canada, however, is Syncrude Tailings which will become the largest when completed and, along with a few others, will soon greatly change the rankings.  Nevertheless, Grand Coulee is grand, especially with the laser light show in the evening (headline photo above), with the dam as the screen, telling its story.

The unusual topography of Eastern Washington was debated for a long time but is now widely believed to be the result of massive Ice floods from Lake Missoula in Montana. Created by huge glacier fingers from Canada first acting as dams and then giving way, in repeated waves, about 12-15,000 years ago, Lake Missoula is believed to have carried 520 million cubic miles of water (Lakes Ontario and Erie combined). Imagine the power of the water that rushed through the area, finding its way to the Ocean in just 3 days!

The coulees that were formed are unique in the world and on the biggest of them all, the US under FDR invested Fed funds in building, during the Depression, the largest dam in America.  On the way to the dam are interesting sidelights of the flood.  From Moses Lake, you will pass through Soap Lake, an internationally renowned medicinal lake whose healing waters are mineral-rich (creating the look of soap suds around the lake), supposedly effective in curing many ailments.  The Monument to the lake is a sundial of a Native American couple calling the gods to give the lake its healing powers.

Just north of Soap Lake is the Indian Caves of Lenore where petro glyphs can be found. Then several miles to the east is Summer Falls, the result of the releasing of water from the Dam for irrigation during dry months. It is a 165-foot water fall gushing down a dry, treeless landscape, helping to irrigate 650,000 farms (the capacity is for a million). And further north is another waterfall of a different nature: Dry Falls.  As the name implies, there is no water gushing but mere potholes at the bottom, but once, it was the site of the biggest waterfall in the world, at 400 feet tall and three miles wide, double Niagara!

South of Moses Lake, on the other hand, is Othello where the Potholes Reservoir and State Park are. The potholes are smaller versions of the coulees.  Further south is the Hanford Reach National Monument.  Hanford Reach is the outlying delta of the Columbia River and the site of about seven reactors built to produce Plutonium for the WWII atomic bombs.  One in particular, Reactor B (with C close beside it; there is no A), was where the plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb was produced.   At the northern end of the Reach and near Reactor B are the White Bluffs, white cliffs rising out of the Reach for 400 feet.

West of Moses Lake is Quincy.  From Othello, passing through the Bluffs and the Saddle Mountain from whose summit you can get a spectacular view of the Reach, you will reach Quincy after making a quick stop at the Gingko Petrified State Forest across the Columbia.  Petrified logs of spruce, Douglas fir, elm, maple, gingko, etc. are laid out in an interpretive trail. We cut short our visit for there were howling winds that almost blew my 120-pound frame away.  Furthermore, the logs seemed pretty odd, ‘jailed’ onto holes in the ground with thick steel meshes, quite unlike the Petrified National Forest in Arizona.

Just north of the Petrified State Forest is the Wild Horses Monument, a spectacular sculpture of 15 wild horses on a cliff overlooking the Columbia Gorge.  The Dave Govedare masterpiece depicts the first horses to roam the earth.  And further north are the Cave B Winery and Inn with its yurts and the 20,000 seat Gorge Amphitheater beside it where Keith Urban was to have a concert the following day.  Lastly, there is the Crescent Bar Resort, a member of the 1000Trails system we belong to.  The resort belongs to a vacation spot on the banks of the Columbia with coulee cliffs all along it. Next time we will stay there!

Next Stop: Fall City, Washington and Anchorage, Alaska          

   

Visiting Family in Idaho & Passing-thru Big Sky Wyoming and Montana

After the spectacular duo of national parks, passing briefly through the big skies of Wyoming (seeing this unusual scene of a house being moved across a freeway and strange rock formations) getting there and Montana (seeing the arch welcoming people from the state into Yellowstone and snow catchers all along the highway) leaving there, we finally arrived in Boise, Idaho where Bill’s eldest son Jim and family live.  They were our first stop when we began this never-ending cruise last year and now we are coming back to visit, fourteen months after, on the way back to Seattle for a housekeeping visit and the trip to Alaska for Cristine’s (Bill’s youngest daughter) wedding in September!

Boise is the largest city in Idaho with a population of over 200,000.  Jim is married to Ana Goitiandia, a member of the Basque community there.  Numbering about 15,000, it is the second largest such community in the United States after Bakersfield, California and the fifth largest in the world outside Mexico, Argentina, Chile and the Basque Country in Spain and France. Downtown Boise features a vibrant section known as the "Basque Block" and Boise's mayor, David H. Bieter, is of Basque descent.

Jim is a partner in a real estate law firm in Boise and he and Ana have two lovely children, Madeline, 6, and Ben, 3. We went swimming, wandering around the huge Farmer’s Market, and visiting the Train Depot.  They went bumper car riding and ice skating (the same afternoons I chickened out and went to the library and outlet malls instead, respectively). We spent many hours playing games, watching movies and devouring delicious meals capped by delectable desserts which Anna and I alternated in preparing.

One night they stayed with us at the campground in Meridian, twenty minutes away from Boise.  They enjoyed the pool and spa, played billiards, tried puzzles, horseshoes, and the playground, and grilled burgers and dogs, barbecued chicken and steak, and made sinful s’mores (melted chocolate and marshmallows between grahams) over the fire on our brand new fire pit. Inside the RV we comfortably played Rummik-ube and sang with the Karaoke we bought in the Philippines (with a chip of 2,000 songs).

On our last night, the RV rocked from the huge 70mph gusts of rain-free wind that swept Boise, rendering the RV and most homes around powerless until the morning. Actually, when we were approaching the metropolitan area from the east, the whole horizon was a beige layer of dust storm.  I had not really seen both phenomena until this part of our trip.  The windstorm, in particular, scared me so that I did not really sleep that night, catching only about an hour or so after 7 am!

It was a great visit, nevertheless, and we look forward to the next one next year!

Next Stop: Moses Lake and Fall City, Washington

Gushing Over Yellowstone

Leaving the lovely Tetons was hard but going to Yellowstone, the first national park of America created in 1872, was also quite exciting.  We had to plan the entire visit well because we had only three and a half days, one of them being our wedding anniversary.  8PM, 8/08/08 was when we started dreaming of this lifestyle. We exchanged vows on board Champagne Lady on Lake Union in Seattle, Washington. Our wedding favor was a booklet I wrote on ‘Cruising to a Life Together’.

It took us four hours to drive from the Tetons, register at the Bridge Bay campground, set up our new home in the new neighborhood, and prepare and have our lunch. We saw boiling springs all along West Thumb on the shores of Yellowstone Lake, the largest mountain lake in North America. Along the way, although young evergreens, mostly lodgepole pines that have adapted to the thermal surroundings, were growing everywhere, the devastating 50 fires of 1988 was still evident.  

  

And the next day we travelled west to Old Faithful which is so named because it predictably gushes every 90 minutes, to as high as 150 feet.  We thought it fitting to celebrate our anniversary with him so we can be reminded of the faith we put in each others’ hands…to love and be loved by the other (our anniversary dinner was at the Old Faithful Inn).  And all around him, on Black Sand Basin, Biscuit Basin, Upper, Middle and Lower Basins was the largest concentration of geysers known to man. A little further up north at Norris are Porcelain, Back, Monument Basins.  

There are about 900 geysers in the world, over 500 of which are in Yellowstone.  The Park sits atop a subterranean volcano about 3-7 miles below the caldera that formed after its major eruption some 640,000 ago. The Pineland Glaciation during the last Ice Age further carved the landscape and even the 1959 earthquake (there are more than 2,000 a year) effected many recent changes. Thus Yellowstone is home not just to geysers (like the tallest in the world, Steamboat, at 400 ft.), mud pots (Mud Volcano), steam vents (Black Growler), and hot springs (Grand Prismatic Spring). 

Among the waterfalls is the 380-ft Lower Falls (taller than Niagara Falls) of the Yellowstone’s Grand Canyon called Artists’ Point.  Then there are the magical Travertine Terraces, a living sculpture at Mammoth Hot Springs (Canary, Palette, Opal, etc.), not exactly under the main caldera but carved from limestone rock, transferred magma heat, and deep pockets of water from snow melt and rain that seep  up through fissures.  Thermopiles, living microorganisms that thrive in heat, provide a color palette.

The rivers boast of the native cutthroat trout (4,200 to a mile in the Madison) for some of the best fishing in the country (and you only need a park permit!).  And in the valleys, particularly Hayden and Lamar, were thousands of bison, some creating huge traffic jams as they traveled the roads with the vehicles. We also saw grizzly bears, wolves, coyotes, mule deer, and elk.  Sadly, the only wildlife we missed seeing were the shy moose and the bighorn sheep that must have stayed up in the mountains.

There are lodges, inns, cabins, RV campgrounds, and tent villages from which to base an exploration of Yellowstone.  Each of Grant Village, Lake Village, Canyon Village, Tower-Roosevelt Area, Mammoth Hot Springs, Norris Geyser Area, and Old Faithful Village are equipped with general stores, service stations, dining facilities, and other amenities.  Only four (Grant, Canyon, Mammoth, and Old Faithful) had internet facilities so I was not able to do much of surfing and emailing. 

Yellowstone National Park is not only the first, it is many national parks combined.  We hiked many miles as we marveled at the different features and living things in the thermal areas, the canyons, and the meadows of 2 million acres of protected lands.  We urge you to visit Yellowstone while you are still in reasonable physical condition.  If you have more than five days, you will be able to relax, enjoy, and really appreciate the place the One Master Potter gave us to enjoy at least once in our lifetime.  

Next Stop: Boise, Idaho