California, Here I Come!

In the morning, Mary Lou shopped at the Birkenstock outlet while I sent out the previous blog entry at the state-of-the-art Lincoln City public library. On our way out of town we passed the "D" River. The sign said it was the shortest river in the world, but they will have to duke it out with the Roe River near Great Falls, MT, which claims it is recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records as the shortest. The Roe is definitely shorter than the D, but we probably could have a lively debate about what qualifies as a river.

The day, although cloudy, was another parade of stunning ocean scenery. It seems each county claims to have one of the most beautiful stretches of coastline in Oregon. And, actually, they all do. Our first major stop was a viewpoint at the outskirts of Depoe Bay. A state park employee showed us where we could spot gray whales blowing water spouts. He said whales had been seen close in, right in Depoe Bay. We went there and a fluke was disappearing into the water as I got out of the car. We saw a number of blows and gray backs, many quite near to shore. Then we moved on down 101 to the Devil's Punch Bowl, formed when the ceiling of two adjoining caves collapsed. You can look down into the bowl and watch the waves pour in through a former cave door. At an espresso kiosk there, the barista told me it had been her busiest summer ever. I asked, "The gas prices haven't kept people away?" She said there had been lots of Canadians taking advantage of the favorable exchange rate, and lots of Germans.

The next stop was the Yaquina Head Lighthouse. It was picturesque (aren't all lighthouses?). Just south of Waldorf, we stopped at the Governor Patterson Memorial State Park and took in a strong dose of wave mesmerization. Then we pulled into the Landmark restaurant on the estuary in Yachats for a late lunch/early supper (lupper?). We had a splendid view of the estuary, thickly strewn with seagulls floating in the still water, and the waves breaking at the mouth of the river. I had a delicious cioppino (Italian seafood soup). Right outside the window by our table, a substantially-sized Western gull stood on one leg throughout our meal. It twice stretched the free leg behind it, and once set that leg down for about 5 seconds, but otherwise spent the better part of an hour standing on the same single leg and giving us a gimlet eye, never showing the slightest bit of imbalance. The waitresses said they thought the gull had figured out that such a show would produce French fries from the diners, which is why it was so fat. It indeed got a French fry from me upon our departure.

We turned in at the sign to the Hecate lighthouse -- the most photographed light house in Oregon, possibly in the world! (As Mary Lou said, How do they know that?) From the parking lot, the lighthouse was hiding behind trees, and neither of us had the inclination to take the trail up to it. But 101 soon had a turnout that gave one a perfect view back to the lighthouse. I went up to the wall of the turnout to take a picture, but first looked down and gasped. A man standing nearby chuckled, knowing I had just seen that the rock below was carpeted with sea lions lying in the sun (which had finally come out). He said there were sea lions on all the rocks going around the corner of the point, and sure enough there were. There was also a gray whale spouting out in the ocean. The sea lions took to grunting as a few argued over rock real estate.

Not long after this, a turnout gave a view of the start of the sand dunes. We continued on, passing numerous signs to beaches. At Coos Bay we got a little lost, ending on a road that dead ended at Cape Arago State Park. But it was worth it, because at Sunset Beach there were a zillion seals barking a hallelujah chorus with the sun low behind them, and at the terminus of the road we saw a black-tail deer and her adorable fawn feeding at her teat, then looking up at us ever so cutely. We turned around and retraced our steps, then turned where a sign pointed to Bandon, our agreed-upon stopping point. The road was labeled Discovery Drive and followed a ridge through forest, with absolutely no development -- beautiful and nerve-wracking as the sun set and painted the sky fuchsia and gold. We finally made it to Bandon in the dark. The motel directions said Highway 42, 2 blocks from 101. The only highway intersecting 101 in Bandon was 425. Turns out they are the same thing. 42 equals 425, give or take a 5.

Wednesday morning brought the lovely surprise of not being cloudy/foggy, but bright and clear. Mary Lou, who lived in San Francisco 30 years, says this is the pattern -- about three days of morning fog, then a clear day. I sat on the Coquille jetty, listening to the fog horn and watching the waves take on light as the sun rose. We had breakfast at the Station in Bandon, did laundry, washed the car, and, sparkling as the day, continued south.

The sun made the beautiful Oregon coast impossibly ravishing. At the south end of Bandon, we walked a loop of trail above the beach and its ocean-set rocks. We saw a whale at the overlook at Port Orford, near the "Port of Port Orford" (honest, that's what the sign said). We ate lunch at a table with an ocean view at a Gold Beach restaurant. We had a tire repaired in Brookings (no flat tire hassle, but I'd noticed a slow leak which turned out to be due to a screw). And otherwise we simply drove through miles of an eye-candy feast of a blue ocean with a white lace collar of foam, set against dramatic cliffs and sculpted rocks.

And then we reached the California state line. I'm home! To celebrate, I splurged on a room at a resort right on the ocean in Crescent City (at the northwest corner of California). Our balcony looks right at a picturesque (of course) lighthouse, and a garden of rocks in the ocean. It must be a fertile area, because in the late afternoon light scads of gulls and pelicans wheeled over the water, and harbor seals frolicked and dove between the rocks. I've watched both the sun and the moon set into the black sea. It doesn't get much better than this.

Just a few more days of this adventure. Next stop: Redwoods.

Coasting in Oregon

In Portland, Mary Lou and I were graciously treated to a home cooked meal and comfortable beds by her friends Joan and John. On Saturday I visited with my friend Matt. Matt bought me lunch which we ate sitting outside at a cafe in the Alphabet District -- the weather was exactly the right temperature for being comfortable outside in shorts. Then I picked up Mary Lou and we joined my friend Trena for coffee. Thus, it was relatively late before we left the city, going up to Route 4 in Washington so I could have the leisurely drive along the Columbia River I hadn't had time for the previous day. It was a Saturday in August; it was not clever to have headed toward the ocean without reservations somewhere. We found no rooms at the inns along Route 4, so went across the wide Columbia at the Astoria bridge -- actually two bridges and a causeway strung together. The bridge on the Oregon side is a dizzying high arch so that ships can pass through to go up the river. In Astoria we got the last room at a motel on the main drag -- several other people were turned away as I registered. Phew! After putting on warm clothes (it was much colder in Astoria than in Portland), we had a delicious dinner of ribeye steak and halibut fish & chips. As we left the restaurant, I noticed a table of a dozen people wearing t-shirts that said "The Adventure of a Lifetime" and asked them about it. They had run from the top of Mt. Hood to the Pacific in 36 hours, as a relay team. Hmmm. I think I like my adventure better.

In the morning, upon awaking, I left in search of coffee. Having immediately spotted a Burger King and a McDonalds, and seeing the river only a block away, I went toward the river first. The Sunday morning was quiet, cloaked with high fog. Apart from an occasional car on the main street, the only sound was an intermittent foghorn. By the river I watched a pilot boat race downstream. A few moments later, the fog horn grew very loud and then a huge container ship appeared going upstream. It was very close -- the channel is near the Oregon shore, as is the arch in the bridge. The pilot boat I had seen a minute before was a midget escort at the side of the ship, which was labeled China Shipping Lines. Many of the containers also said China Shipping. I've noticed that a large number of the containers on trains throughout Washington and Montana have had Chinese names -- concrete evidence of the rise of the Chinese economy we hear so much about. I walked long the river a little and found a "riverfront park" -- rather a pocket park, consisting of a small board plaza and an observation tower right next to water. Next to it was the Cannery Cafe that looked cozy and inviting. I went back to the motel and collected Mary Lou and we returned to the cafe. We ate at a table next to the water and watched the Columbia roll on and roll on.

After packing up and checking out, we drove onto some side streets of Astoria with the fog lifting. I was looking for the library, but we first found the visitor center for the historic Flavel House. About half the gifts were tea cups or tea paraphernalia; the attendant said the Flavels drank a lot of tea. Understandable with this foggy weather. The public library was down the street and was closed. But further down the street, very open and very lively, was the Astoria Sunday market. After a taste test, I bought what were possibly the best peaches and blackberries I've had in my life.

We left Astoria and drove just a few miles south before turning a bit inland to the Fort Clatsop National Memorial. This is at the site of Lewis & Clark's encampment for the winter of 1805-1806. As at Fort Mandan in North Dakota, there is a replica of the small log fort the Corps of Discovery built -- awfully close quarters. There also was a path to the spring they probably used -- dry right now -- and a path through the forest to the canoe landing on the Netul River, now the Lewis & Clark River, with replicas of dugout canoes. The view across the sluggish channel of water and yellow fields to the green hills was lovely.

This was my last intersection with the Lewis & Clark trail (although I still have a long way to go with the "Undaunted Courage" CDs). Having bid adieu to those intrepid explorers, these explorers headed down 101, which provides a rapid-fire succession of spectacular viewpoints and beaches. Many stops for pictures and for detours into cute little beach resorts were required. Lunch was clam chowder in Seaside and watching bored teenagers trying to act cool on their beach vacation. Cannon Beach provided views of the famous "haystack" rocks. The Nehalem turnout provided an awesome view of a sharp curve in the shore line, with waves brushing a steep cliff at one end. The pullout had a sign that said "Rock Work", and there indeed was an impressive rock wall propping up the road, but there was no information on how, who, why, when. [I've since learned it was done under the New Deal Works Administration Program, along with 5 of the impressive bridges along the Oregon Coast road.] There was information on Oswald West, the far-sighted governor who set aside Oregon's coast for the public during his term of 1911-1915. Thank you Oswald!

We stopped for the night at Rockaway Beach and watched until the sun was low and golden on the ocean and dunes. The next day again broke foggy. I went down to the beach and had it all to myself. After an attempt to find a better way to pack the car, we continued south. Despite the high fog, there still were beautiful beach vistas. We stopped in Tillamook (as in cheese) to check email at the public library and eat seafood (halibut sandwich, oyster burger, clam chowder) at a restaurant recommended by the librarian. Then a crawl down to Pacific City where I blogged some at their library, and then to our resting place in Lincoln City. We made 111 miles in only two days! At this rate, I should be to California by Christmas. Hmmm. Maybe need to pick up the pace. Sure is hard to resist stopping for this dramatic coastal scenery.

Olympic Glory

I have failed in the previous entry or two to rhapsodize about the pines of coastal Washington, and correct that now. They are fantastic -- very tall, stately, rich dark green, with full symmetric boughs. Just about every acre of land that isn't covered by water, pavement, or crops is rich pine forest. Within a grove of those pines, it is hushed, soul-lifting, peaceful.

From Jamestown, 101 went northwest up to Sequim, where I took the scenic loop through Dungeness, right next to the Dungeness Bay and the long spits of land hooking into it. Then another few miles to Port Angeles for a dinner of delicious halibut fish and chips at a restaurant right on the blue water. The road then turned more inland and wound through pine clad hills and around the edge of Crescent Lake, as fog returned and hurried the darkening of the evening. With night nigh, I found a room in Forks, in the heart of logging country. The desk clerk told me they had seen no sun that day, and the next morning was still completely overcast. The forecast gave no hope for anything else, but as I left Forks late morning, the clouds lifted and the day became beautifully sunny and bright. The landscape now was a mixture of denuded polygons of hillside, short regrowth pine groves, and tall pine forest in areas long undisturbed. Periodically, a sign near the road would provide a chronology of when an area had been harvested, replanted, harvested again, etc.

At the Hoh River, I turned east and followed the river up the mountain and into the Hoh Rainforest National Park. This area receives more than 150 inches of rain per year. It is a pine rainforest -- enormous Sitka spruce, Western hemlock, Douglas fir and redwood cedar, trunks velvety green with moss, branches draped with epiphytes (plants that can live just on air -- they don't hurt the trees, but use them as platforms). Soon after entering the park, there was a turnout labeled Large Spruce. This Sitka spruce was 275+ feet tall, 12.5+ feet wide at breast height, and 500-550 years of age. Up at the Visitor Center, there were trails through the lush forest, with tiers of greens from ferns on the ground to needles at the tree tops. Obviously, I was very fortunate to be there on a rainless day. It was a sight to look straight up and see the spiky tops of pines 100+ feet up, green against the clear blue sky.

Shortly after regaining Route 101, I turned at the Ruby Beach sign, and there was the blue Pacific below me. My heart took a thump to see it after all these days of driving across the Continent. (I can only imagine how Lewis & Clark felt at their first sight of the Pacific.) The road went downslope to a parking lot, and from there one had a spectacular window through the pines to the beach below, thickly littered with bleached pine logs, and with a handful of enormous rocks scattered into the ocean at one side. A foot trail descended to the beach, which was coated with gray, wave-polished pebbles ranging from gravel to palm-of-hand size, all relatively flat, like a round potato knish. Since there was not sufficient sand for traditional sand castles, inventive engineers had created frame sculptures of driftwood logs and towers of pebbles stacked in descending size. Towering over the beach was a high bluff dense with flowers, shrubs and pines. The waves were small -- nothing you could surf, but they made plenty of pleasant crashing as I walked the length of the beach.

Next was 4th Beach, with a new set of driftwood on the pebbles and rocks amongst the waves. As I walked down the path, a girl was coming up holding a net in one hand and a bucket in the other. The bucket was filled with skinny silver fish, about 6 inches long; the girl said they were smelt. On the beach, the tide was out, so that one could look in pools of stranded water in the rocks and see gardens of sea anemones. As I did so, low clouds swiftly blew in and covered the sky, turning all the color to gray and silver and giving the beach an eerie feeling. About 10 minutes later the clouds just as swiftly blew away, brushing the pines as they departed inland, and it was again sunny with the blues of sea and sky, the intense white of foam, and the greens of pine and ground cover.

Filled with sunshine, surf sound, and ocean breeze, I continued southward. The road soon turned inland across the Quinalt Indian Reservation and went past Lake Quinalt. At Hoquiam, with one small flag of cloud turning pink, I stopped for the night. In the late morning, with the fog lifting, I continued south through the forested hills. At Raymond on the Willapa, I took a quick look at the Public Market on the Willapa, basically a tiny version of Pike Place Market, and purchased a yummy banana nut muffin. The road then followed the Willapa River to Willapa Bay, went around the bay, and then went west to Cape Disappointment, the tippiest tip of the north side of Columbia River. It was so named by Captain John Meares who in 1788 interpreted the sand bars at the mouth of the Columbia to mean there was no huge river as rumored and no Northwest Passage. He was wrong about the former, right about the latter. At the Cape I toured the North Head Lighthouse, shrouded in fog, and then the very well done Lewis & Clark Interpretative Center. It had several hands-on exhibits that gave one a concrete feel for how difficult their journey was, such as trying to load a model dugout canoe without tipping it over, and sighting a rifle on pictures of game, sized to look as if they were 100 yards away. Thank goodness I have a car and an abundance of restaurants!

From the Interpretative Center, there was a beautiful view of the Cape Disappointment lighthouse. I didn't take time to walk out to it, which was fortunate, as I ended up speeding to get to Portland in time to pick up my friend Mary Lou at the airport. The next entry will tell you about our first couple days on the Oregon Coast!

Sound Adventures

Have had a lovely family reunion time. We lucked out with a streak of clear, sunny days. It would have been a great vacation just staying in the rental home, with its redwood deck and hot tub, fireplaces, large comfy sectionals, big screen TVs, and 3 block walk to the Puget Sound. But we also took the ferry to Kingston and back, strolled through the Edmonds farmer's market filled with fresh peaches and berries, candied nuts, artwork and crafts, smoked salmon, etc., visited Pike Place Market in Seattle, and drove up Whidbey Island. We also ate a lot.

At the farmer's market, I put my little toe into modern fashion and got a henna tattoo on my wrist and hand. Ah, the freedom of unemployment!

The Pike Place Market in Seattle is near the harbor and is a huge covered structure filled with shops of produce, fish, flowers, etc. For those of you who know Eastern Market in DC -- it's like that but much larger. The original Starbucks is there, with the original Starbucks logo in which you can tell it's a mermaid (well, actually, a mesuline, with two tails). There were a number of quite good street musicians, and seas of tourists so that simply walking in a straight line was a challenge. We had lunch at a Bolivian restaurant. Mark and I had the halibut, which, as Mark said, was how fish should taste -- it was the best fish I've eaten since a visit to Boston in the '80's. The harbor was sparkling blue and busy with container ships, ferries, sailboats, motorboats, a parasailer, etc. There were baskets of brightly colored flowers everywhere, and a joyful interplay between hot sun and cool breezes.

I had gone to Edmonds driving down Whidbey Island under clouds, but with the family drove back up the island in sunshine. We stumbled into Coupeville, an adorable historic waterfront town within Ebey's Landing National Historical Reserve. We got ice cream cones at Kapow Iskreme (the chocolate mousse ice cream is to die for) and wandered around the boutiques and galleries in the perfect weather. Then we drove on, stopping for a look at the absolutely quaint Captain Whidbey lodge, made of madrona logs, pine paneling, and rustic charm. Another stop at Deception Pass, which separates Whidbey and Fildago Islands and is traversed by an impressive cantilever bridge, and then we joined the heavy traffic on I-5 to return to Edmonds.

Tuesday morning the more typical clouds were back. We drove under them to Tacoma and got a tour of the University of Puget Sound where my niece is tanking up on Knowledge. It is just what a college campus should be -- dignified brick buildings, a large field suitable for frisbee, ivy-covered walls, arches, pine groves, a compact student center with book store, dining hall, pizza cellar, cafe, and cozy lounge, a handsome library with a studious hush, and a collection of theme houses for students who want to try on an identity.

I then joined my parents in a tour of Union Station in Tacoma -- formerly the grand train station and now the grand U.S. courthouse -- and the Museum of Glass. The courthouse and museum are joined by the Chihuly Bridge of Glass, a pedestrian bridge over the freeway that has a pavilion with a Chihuly glass ceiling, a wall of Chihuly vases and sculptures, and two towers of Chihuly blue polyvitro crystals looking somewhat like huge strings of blue rock candy. There also are several Chihuly pieces in the atrium of the courthouse. The museum has a several-story-high steel cone that houses the Hot Shop, where you can spend all day, if you wish, watching glass being blown or sculpted. My favorite exhibit in the museum was Absence Adorned, life-size diaphanous dresses by Karen LaMonte, made of frosted glass and sculpted into the form they would have if someone were wearing them, except there is only air where the body would be.

Then it was time to say good bye and go our separate ways. I had to take I-5 to get to Olympia, then exited for a drive around the state capitol grounds before heading north on 101. I ate dinner at a roadside crabshack, watching the sun on the water as I sipped clam chowder and munched onion rings. Then I stopped for the night in Brinnon, at the Bay View Motel, at which I in fact had a bay view, as well as a huge room from which to watch the sunset light on the pines and water.

The clouds were all back for the morning. I took my time departing, and then, almost immediately after leaving the motel, pulled into Seal Rock campground. It had a boardwalk nature trail through the pine and madrona forest at the edge of the bluff above Dabob Bay (a fjord off of Hood Canal), and then stairs to the rocky beach. The tide was out, and about a 20-foot depth of the beach rocks were coated with oysters. Some rocks had a cluster of oyster shells, with one half of the shell glued to the rock and the other fallen or torn away, revealing the white mother of pearl -- the effect was of a flowering rock. At one point I walked to the water's edge and discovered a colony of large, fat, purplish starfish clinging to the bases of rocks. At another point I came across a jellyfish the size of a dinner plate stranded on the beach, looking as though a ball of red wax or plastic had melted at that spot. Oh, and there were some blackberries hanging down from the bluff. There also had been a wall of blackberry bushes next to the railroad tracks in Edmonds. You could wade in only a little way before you were in danger of slipping and falling into a thorny mess. Dozens of deep purple berries dangled tantalizingly just out of reach. But just one of the reachable berries -- if you picked the ones that essentially fell into your hand when touched -- had more flavor than a Safeway-full of fruit. And to think they are considered a weed here!

I am now a few miles north of Seal Rock, at the attractive campus of the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe, next to Dungeness Bay. It looks like the sun is about to come out, so I'm ready for more of Route 101 and the Olympic Peninsula.

Cascading to the Sea

Before recounting the latest happenings, a note on "Expresso". The witty wag Dean has asked what that is, a western spelling of espresso? My dictionary shows it to be a variant spelling. It is not the preferred spelling, but given that Meriwether Lewis had 23 ways of spelling mosquito, I will not apologize. Speaking of that beverage, I no longer see espresso signs on all sorts of establishments, as in Montana, but there is an espresso hut on every corner and another one in the middle of the block.

From Kettle Falls, Route 20 went west through more of the Colville National Forest, over Sherman Pass. I stopped to take a picture of a couple lumber trucks that had pulled into a turnout in the midst of the forest road. The drivers told me that, at the logging site, there was a machine that automatically cut the tree trunks into 16 foot lengths and stripped the branches. It was then easy to pick up the pile of logs and put them on the trucks. At the sawmill, another machine can strip the bark and cut the log into boards in two seconds! Those two big truck loads would be cut up in about two minutes. The amount of lumber consumed in this country is hard to fathom. The drivers said it is because 4000 square feet isn't enough any more -- everyone wants a 10,000 square foot house.

Further along the road I stopped at Camp Growden. This had been a camp for the Civilian Conservation Corps. The CCC was a New Deal program that put 300,000 young men to work, mostly on conservation and infrastructure projects in the national forests. The gate to the camp said "Little America", because there were men from all over the US. That gate is all that is left of the camp now, but interpretative signs provide pictures and a letter home from one of the camp members, lauding the bountiful food at the camp.

The town of Republic had a fun Old West character and information about its mining glory days. After Wauconda, the road dropped out of the pine forest into private land, some farmed, some rangeland. The pines on the hills thinned and then completely gave way to sagebrush and dry prairie grass until dropping into the Okanogan Valley. The sky had been hazy with fire smoke all day, but in Tonasket there was an umbrella of thick yellow smoke. It gave the light at 4 pm the quality of sunset luminescence. Tonasket didn't look particularly old west, but a sign in the gas station market harkened back to another time: "Spitting on sidewalks prohibited. Penalty $5 to $100. Dept. of Health".

Route 20 joined Route 97 in going south through the Okanogan Valley and its apple orchards, then split off again at the town of Okanogan to start up through the Cascades. The smoke grew thicker and, after Loup Loup Pass, columns of smoke from a spot in the mountains revealed the location of the fire. I stopped for a pleasant night at the Winthrop Inn, with dinner a tasty sirloin at The Virginian (Owen Wister, author of The Virginian, lived in Winthrop). As I went into a market to stock up on diet Coke, a group of workers all wearing the same dirty khaki pants and blue t-shirts went in also. I realized they must be firefighters. When I was shoulder to shoulder with them, I saw their t-shirts said "Zuni Hotshots". They are a renown firefighting team from Zuni Pueblo in my native state of New Mexico. Turns out that the North Cascades Smokejumper Base is near Winthrop (as well as a major fire at the moment).

In the morning, the air smelled like a campfire and there was a light dusting of ash on my car. The smoke was much thicker than the previous evening. Between that and a forecast of cloudy, I fussed bout whether to backtrack and go to Leavenworth, a Bavarian theme town, or continue and hope to see something of the Northern Cascades. I finally chose the latter. It was the right choice. Soon after passing through the cute western theme town of Winthrop, the smoke was greatly diminished, and the only clouds all afternoon were the fluffy cumulus that decorate the blue western skies.

The Cascades are right up there with Glacier National Park in splendor and grandeur. However, unlike the lakes in Glacier, the lakes I saw -- Ross and Diablo -- are not natural, but made by dams on the Skagit River. The first dam was built in 1924 and cheap hydropower has been providing Seattle's electricity since. Ross Lake was a deep blue set in the green pines far below the outlook. In the far distance, you could see Desolation Peak, where Jack Kerouac, icon of the 60's counterculture, spent a summer as a fire watcher. I guess it's been clear for some time that Baby Boomers have been running things. Clinton and W are both boomers; the Beatles and Led Zeppelin are standard background music in restaurants. But nothing brought it as home to me as reading the official U.S. Park Service sign discussing and quoting Kerouac and other Beat Generation authors in terms of esteem. Somehow I don't see Park bureaucrats from my parents' generation sanctioning such a sign (although Kerouac actually was born the same year as my parents). Behind Desolation Peak, you could see the Hozomeen Peaks, which are right against the Canadian border.

Diablo Lake was an amazing green-turquoise color, which is due to glacial silt that flows into the lake with the summer melt (the silt is created by rocks grinding against each other under the weight of the glacial snow and ice). There was a large overlook with a number of informative signs high above the lake, and then the road dropped to the level of the lake and followed the Skagit River toward the sea. I went into the North Cascades Visitor Center, which has a huge relief map of the Park and many drawers of rock samples -- a geologist's treasure trove. There is a boardwalk out to a view of the impressive Pickett Range. The walk is lined with signs, each describing a bird; a cardboard picture of the bird was perched in a nearby tree. I had a lot of difficulty spotting the stationary cardboard birds -- no wonder I can't see the real ones. (In my defense, it was a dense, dark forest.)

The night was in Marblemount at the Buffalo Run Inn, in a historic roadhouse building (it and the Winthrop Inn were recommended by my bicyclist friend, Rick), and dinner was buffalo chili at the Buffalo Run Restaurant. Speaking of bicyclists, I saw lots of them the entire width of the Cascades, some in teams, some individually, all intrepidly pressing up the daunting grades.

The next day started overcast, but as I headed out at about 10:30, the clouds had begun to break, and soon there was lots of sunshine to show off the Skagit Valley. At this point, the road was relatively level, and there were farms along the valley floor. Then the ruralness gave way to the town of Sedro-Woolley, and I've not seen undeveloped land since. I passed under I-5 and out to Anacortes and, Pow!, I had made it to the West Coast. From Anacortes I dropped south through Widbey Island. Around Sedro-Woolley, I had driven back under cloud cover, so the views of Puget Sound from Whidbey were of gray water, but were still very beautiful. I picked up most yummy bing cherries, strawberries and blueberries at one of the roadside stands. By the Mukilteo Ferry, the sun was back out, and so it was a lovely ride across the blue Sound to the mainland.

Shunning I-5, I followed boulevards lined with strip malls, car dealerships, big box businesses, and the ever-present espresso huts to Edmonds. My parents, sister and her family, and Cousins Jack and Becky are enjoying a few days in a very nice rental house here, a couple blocks above the Sound. So, it will be a few days until anther blog entry. 'Till then, wishing you fair winds in your sail. --Ann

Wandering in Washington

Sorry for the delay in a new posting. No, the Montana spring water didn't get me; I've just been taking a break from blogging.

I spent the better part of Thursday in Sandpoint, enjoying the window seat in the Ponderay motel, eating a tasty omelette at the Hoot Owl Cafe, hanging out at the Common Knowledge Bookstore and Tea Room (with wireless), and visiting the lovely city park and beach on the edge of the beautiful Lake Pend Oreille. At the end of a pedestrian pier is a small version of the Statue of Liberty. A welcome to immigrants in this radically Right area? Maybe a welcome to New Yorker tourist money. Then I headed west along the Pend Oreille River, with a brief stop at the Albini Falls Dam. Just before Newport, Washington, on a whim, I turned up the county road that hugs the eastern side of the Pend Oreille River. Also on a whim, I turned into the Pioneer Campground, part of the Colville National Forest, and decided to spend the night there. I pitched the tent, then drove back into Newport to pick up a fire log and a wilderness McDonalds dinner. Back at camp in the midst of tall pine trees, I ate my Big Mac and set the log alight in the fire pit. The blaze was sufficient to read by if you sat right by the fire. The temperature was such that sitting outside was comfortable, but sitting next to a fire was also nice. As I read, the moon rose, nearly full and very white behind the screen of pine needles. When the log was consumed, I walked down to the river to see the moon unobstructed. In the dry mountain air, it was a striking, intense platinum. In my years in the hazy humid east, I'd forgotten the moon could look like that, so clean and immediate, making the vast sky seem vaster.

The next day I continued up the county road, enjoying many glimpses of the Pend Oreille River through the pines until an intense thunderstorm reduced visibility. At Ione (eye-own), with the rain abating, I crossed the river and drove into town. Lunch was a delicious chicken fried steak at the Inner Passage Bar and Grill. It is situated on a bend in the river such that its picture windows are filled with a view of the water, almost like a lake, surrounded by the pines and hills. Then south along the west side of the Pend Oreille (Route 31) to the Tiger Market. This is primarily a museum, with a few gift items, an old fashioned cooler of sodas, and a rack of tourism brochures, run by volunteers. It is all that is left of the once thriving town of Tiger. It is at the intersection with Route 20, which I turned onto to go west over the Selkirk Mountains to Colville (CALL-ville). At a stop to view the Crystal Falls, a man with a British accent read my license plate and called to his wife, "Read this. They fought the British and nothing changed." The motto on the DC license plate is "Taxation without Representation". I found the man's ironic remark particularly amusing, because I had just been hearing about the Whiskey Rebellion, in which our Founding Fathers imposed a tax on whiskey produced in the western territories, whose inhabitants had no representation in the matter. (I'm listening to CDs of Undaunted Courage, Steven Ambrose's biography of Meriwether Lewis, focusing on the Lewis & Clark expedition.)

In Colville I viewed the Hixon Castles in a little garden at the Keller Historical Park. These are fantastical structures made of little stones and pebbles. A couple were castles, about 3 feet high, similar to a fancy sand castle creation. Others were fancy pillars and cairns.

After a night in Colville, I decided to take a county road through Aladdin and past Deep Lake to Boundary, a general store just a few hundred yards from the Canadian border, then follow the Columbia River down to Kettle Falls, which is 8 miles west of Colville. This was a very pretty drive, but a cloud hung over it, literally and figuratively. The figurative part was that I hit a deer that leapt into my path shortly after I started up the Aladdin Road. Not wanting to be the cause of death of any sentient being (mosquitoes and cockroaches excepted), I was initially very upset, until the deer staggered upright and then ran up the hill. Thus relieved of that sorrow, I had only to be irked at the dent in my hood -- but at least that was the only damage.

In Kettle Falls, I spent some time at the library. A woman at the other end of the table finished tutoring a boy in common denominators, then came over and asked if those were my DC plates. She had lived in the Washington DC area before moving to this other Washington. After chatting a bit about the local politics, she said good bye and, "Watch out for the deer." Right.

From there, I kept following the Columbia south. Actually, from several miles above Kettle Falls, it was Lake Roosevelt, the reservoir created by the Grand Coulee Dam. The Columbia's valley is steep enough that Lake Roosevelt doesn't have a typical maple leaf outline, but basically just appears as a very wide river. I spent a peaceful hour listening to the lake waters lap at a beach I had all to myself, then continued on to the free ferry at Gifford. This carried me into the Colville Indian Reservation and a windy road westward through the Kettle River Mountains to Route 21. That I followed south to another ferry across Lake Roosevelt (which had made a right turn since Gifford), crossing the water under a blazing red and orange sunset sky. On the other side, the road climbed steeply, with a number of gnarly hair pin curves, up to the plain above the river. This was filled with wheat fields flowing endlessly to the horizon. In one field, 4 or 5 combines, headlights on, were harvesting through the dusk and into the night.

The motel that night was in Wilbur, which sits in the middle of all those wheat fields and provides the only trees for miles around. In the morning I headed southwest on Route 2. It was a bright, clear day. Huge swells of golden wheated land stretched under the enormous blue sky. Hovering not far above the horizon was the gibbous moon, appearing three times its normal size, and ghostly in the daylight. It was near flat-side down, looking like a benediction. In Almira, I saw an honest-to-God working blacksmith shop. In Hartline, a low, conical silo had wheat spilling out from the bottom. I reached Coulee City, which is by Dry Falls Dam at the southern end of Banks Lake, within the Grand Coulee. Coulee is a French word for a deep ravine. The Grand Coulee is an impressive valley created by glacial activity. The Grand Coulee Dam was built not only for hydroelectric power, but also for irrigation of the dust-choked eastern Washington plains. Water from the Columbia is pumped into Banks Lake as an irrigation reservoir. I stopped on the road over the dam for pictures. The cracks of the asphalt shoulder were filled with kernels of wheat; I presume they were the accumulation of a few kernels from each truckload of wheat that passes that way. I followed Route 135 north along Banks Lake, which is clearly named for the wall of vertical rock along the west side of the Grand Coulee, to the Grand Coulee Dam. In the clear day, with the stark walls of rock and the deep blue lake, the views were spectacular.

The Visitor Arrival Center at Grand Coulee Dam is one of the nicest I have ever been in -- great displays that were informative without being either too dumbed down or too overloaded with information, lots of hands-on displays (e.g., a jack hammer you could "operate"), a nice theater for the film about building the dam, and large windows looking at the dam. One of the displays is a simple metal frame showing you how large a cubic yard is, then letting you know the dam that appears immediately out the window contains 12 million cubic yards of concrete. The dam has three power plants -- two original, and a third that has such advanced technology that it alone produces 60% of the power from the dam, enough for the needs of Seattle and Portland. I stopped for a picture under a skyscraper-height transmission line tower and heard the electricity snapping and buzzing far above my head.

Then back to Wilbur via Route 174 (thus making a big circle) and east into Spokane. The land was predominantly wheat fields; closer to Spokane there were stretches of desert grass and sagebrush, sometimes with stands of pines. In Spokane the land was solidly pine covered. In that city I was treated to the warm hospitality of my cousin Jack and his wife Becky. On Sunday, after breakfast of pancakes with home-grown raspberries to die for, they gave a tour of the city. It appears to be a very pleasant place to live. It is in a hilly area with tall lodgepole, spruce and ponderosa pines everywhere. The Spokane River snakes through a deep ravine in the middle of the city. Downtown has a very pretty Riverfront Park, with concrete walks curving through grass and flowers, lots of sculpture, a clock tower left over from railroad days, and a gondola ride over a dramatic, solid rock, falls area of the river. The old main east-west route is very commercial, but, refreshingly, with local businesses instead of the Anywhere America franchise lineup. Interestingly, while there were lots of espresso huts in town (often in what had been gas stations), I saw no Starbucks in the heart of the city -- only on the newer fringes. My sister points out that the espresso culture up here is what would have incubated a Starbucks company, but the established part of the city must have been too saturated too allow an upstart Starbucks franchise. The day was capped with a drive to Coeur d'Alene for a most pleasant dinner on the deck of a floating restaurant, watching dusk fall on the beautiful Coeur d'Alene Lake.

Monday I drove back to Colville via Route 385. The lovely mountainous scenery was hazy from a fresh round of forest fires. I returned to Kettle Falls by simply going west on Route 20 instead of up to international borders patrolled by ferocious deer. From my visit to Grand Coulee Dam, I now know that the Kettle falls and the original town are under the waters of Lake Roosevelt. The town relocated to the site of Myers Falls, which explains why the Myers Falls Interpretative Center is in Kettle Falls. I went to see the historic St. Paul's Mission on a bluff above the river, built in 1847 on the road to the Hudson Bay Company's Fort Colvile, now also under water. The sign for the mission had a picture of Fr. Jean Pierre DeSmet. You may recall that name from South Dakota, near the Minnesota border. That man got around. An interpretative path, from the hewn log mission replica to lake views, went through pine forest, redolent in the 90 degree air, peaceful and hushed with the pine needle cushioning.

After the night in Kettle Falls, I am ready to stop going in circles and to head west to the ocean (well, to the sound). Will let you know all about it.

Rocky Mountain Highs

The day seemed even smokier. The mountains to the west were totally obscured as I drove north from Choteau and through the Blackfeet Indian Reservation (Blackfeet, Blackfoot -- they seem to be used interchangeably). [According to http://www.native-languages.org/blackfoot.htm, Blackfeet is the official name, but is a misnomer given by whites; in the original language the term is singular.] The terrain became more and more hilly, and by Browning (home of the Blackfeet Nation) the impressive peaks of Glacier National Park were too big and too close to be hidden by the smoke. I stopped in Browning at a concrete teepee that said "Expresso" over the door and got a latte. I've already mentioned that Montana is big on expresso. It seems every establishment that purveys any kind of food or drink -- cafes, bars, drive-ins, gas stations -- has an "expresso" sign. By that, they mean expresso-based drinks -- lattes, cappuccinos, etc. The one time I ordered a plain expresso, it seemed to confuse the owner. "What kind of expresso? . . . You mean just the expresso by itself???!" With this culture, it is just amazing that I saw no Starbucks between Minot, North Dakota and Sandpoint, Idaho. Those of you looking for an entrepreneurial opportunity, take note.

Highway 89 had been reopened, so I followed it through foothills and ever-thickening forest to Saint Mary. There were sections where fire had turned the landscape into a forest of gray telephone poles stuck in gray soil, and the air smelled like freshly doused campfire. Two big columns of yellow smoke rose out of a valley where the fire lived, and numerous wisps of smoke rose from scattered spots on the mountainsides.

In St. Mary, my resolution to lay off the carbs dissolved, and I had a scoop of huckleberry ice cream. Glacier and the surrounding area is huckleberry heaven. The signs on most every establishment since Glacier have advertised not only expresso, but also huckleberry ice cream, shakes, cobbler, jam, etc., etc. The huckleberry is much like a blueberry, but more purple in color and a little tarter in taste. It is gathered in the wild and commands a premium. For example, my scoop of ice cream was 50 cents more because I got the huckleberry flavor.

Thus fortified, I headed up the Going-to-the-Sun Road, which runs along Saint Mary Lake on the east and Lake McDonald on the west and traverses Logan Pass over the Continental Divide in between. An immediate stop was for a sign pointing out we were at the very edge of the prairie -- beyond the sign the grass ran up to the edge of the forest and that was it -- the end of this prairie I have been roaming for nearly two weeks. At that stop I saw a helicopter flying over the lake towing a huge water bucket at the end of a cable -- the water is for dumping on the forest fire. Against the mountains, the helicopter looked like a fly and the bucket like a gnat, and the idea of being able to fight the fire with that the equivalent to trying to put out a house fire with a squirt gun. But I guess it works, because the fire is largely under control.

I will not try to describe the Glacier peaks and valleys. The words fabulous, fantastic, wonderful, stupendous, majestic, breath-taking and "Awesome, Dude!" all clunk on the floor like a handful of nickels, totally inadequate to the task of conveying the beauty of the place. Everything was veiled, due to the wildfire smoke, but the splendor of the peaks came through nevertheless. If it hadn't been for the fire, it would have been one of those impossibly clear western days with mountain details sharp against deep azure sky. It would have been so perfect it probably would have stopped my heart, so just as well there was a bit of haze. There was only one place where the smoke totally obscured a sight -- the view of Triple Divide Peak from St. Mary Lake. It is so named because precipitation from one of its three faces flows to the Pacific, from a second face to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the third to Hudson Bay.

It took me about 5 hours to complete the Going-to-the-Sun Road, which takes 1.5 hours without stops. I took a short hike to see the Baring Falls and of course stopped at the Logan Pass visitor center. And I made many other stops for pictures. I kept saying, "OK, Ann, enough pictures, just drive," and then around the next bend there would be something I just had to have a picture of. I had harbored a hope that, despite being there at peak season, because it was a Sunday night, I might get a lodge or motel room or a camping spot. Dream on. At West Glacier, I called and was able to get a room at the Izaak Walton Inn, and so backtracked along the southern boundary of the park about 30 miles to Essex.

I learned of the Izaak Walton Inn from a friend who had traveled much the same northern route as me this summer, but in the opposite direction and, despite being on bicycle, in much less time. The Inn originally was built to house snow removal crews for the Great Northern Railway. It is now a train buff's delight. Its porch commands a view of the Essex multi-track rail yard, and you can sit there and watch many trains go by. Engines idle there, waiting for when they are needed to boost a train over the Continental Divide at Marias Pass. An activity of the Inn is to gather on the porch and lawn and wave at the Amtrack as it rolls by at about 9 am and 9 pm. The logo of the Great Northern -- a mountain goat standing on a rocky crag, enclosed by a circle with the words "Great Northern Railway" -- is everywhere in the Inn -- on the bed cover, in stained glass in the "dining car", in iron cutout for the napkin holders, etc., etc. A showcase in the lobby has samples of GNR dinnerware. But you can't see the Great Northern roll by -- it was acquired by Burlington Northern in the '70's or so.

The next morning, I headed back west, visited the Alberta welcome center in West Glacier, failed to be lured across the border, and continued westward to Columbia Falls. Just past that town, there was a wayside stop across from the Flathead River with spring water gushing from a pipe. A man was there filling up gallon jug after gallon jug, despite the sign declaiming: "Not an approved water source. Drink at own risk." The man said the water was perfectly potable -- he'd been drinking it for 20 years. He said the city just wants you to pay for their water; I'm guessing the lawyers made them post the sign. Putting my trust in the man's assurances, I filled up my water bottles. So far so good, but if the blog goes silent you'll know what happened.

Next stop was at a roadside stand where I selected the perfectly ripened, succulent cherries over the fresh huckleberries, but did get some huckleberry jam and syrup for an upcoming family gathering. Then into Kalispell, where I spent a fair amount of time on some administrative tasks plus a picnic lunch by the county courthouse. Then south along the shore of Flathead Lake. This is a huge lake -- 200 square miles, the largest freshwater lake in the lower 48 west of the Mississippi. It was a beautiful blue, and the far shore was flanked by the Rocky Mountains, still hazy from smoke. (I've probably inhaled the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes in the past few days.)

At Route 28 I turned west and then south through the Flathead Indian Reservation. At the sign to Hot Springs, I decided to drive the 2 miles in just to see what was there, and ended up spending the night at the Symes Hot Springs Hotel and Mineral Baths. This place is on the National Historic Register. It was built in 1930 and did well until the 50's, when hot springs vacations fell out of fashion. It has now been revived as something of a community center. The lobby has several chair groupings, an expresso bar -- The Daily Grind, and a gift shop -- Soul Intuition, which fills a small room and then spills into the lobby with racks of gauzy clothing and cases displaying jewelry. When I turned on the hot water faucet in my room, there was the unmistakable rotten egg odor that accompanies many hot springs, and I realized that the sulphur accounted for the faint odor that permeated the whole hotel.

Hot Springs, pop. 500, is truly a byway. Despite the historic hotel, it is not mentioned in either the AAA guide or the Travel Montana vacation planner. People arrive here in random, mystical ways. My excellent massage therapist, Kathy, came here from California via a wrong turn. Lori Anne, who sells "body rocks" in the hotel lobby, was led here by a red tail hawk. It sounds like the town consists of Native Americans, ranchers with roots several generations deep, and Rainbow people, New Agers, etc., drawn here by power of the springs. At the Symes, members of the community as well as hotel guests wandered in and out, hung out in the lobby or on the porch, maybe took a soak in the mineral baths, and wandered away.

Lori Anne's body rocks are fired clay pieces molded to fit comfortably in the hand to be used for massage on yourself or another. I bought one to reinforce the previous evening's Swedish massage with a self massage while taking my third mineral bath. Oh, I feel so much better. (You can get your own body rock on eBay; search on body rock or massage rock.)

What with blogging, bathing, chatting, I left Hot Springs after lunch. I continued west on 28, and then turned northwest on 200. Just past the intersection, I stopped at God's Country Expresso. The wall was covered with graffiti praising God and proclaiming His love. My double-shot iced latte was only $1.50. Then it was into the just beautiful canyon of the Clark Fork River. The road followed what was known to the pioneers as Bad Rock Trail; thanks to the railroad and the Department of Transportation, the way is now smooth. The river was alternately a beautiful dark teal and a dark aqua, depending on the angle of the sun. Pine-covered mountains lined both sides; some high peaks were bald but grass covered. There were a number of motels and bar & grill establishments along the road, all looking in good condition, and a number of signs pointing to U.S. Forest access (Lolo and Kootenai National Forests). The river became quite wide before Noxon dam (that is not a typo), then narrowed and widened again before Cabinet Gorge Dam. In keeping with my penchant for weeds, I have been enjoying a yellow flower that lines the roadways and fills vacant lots. Turns out it is tansy ragwort, a Class B noxious weed that poisons cattle and horses, but is pretty to the uneducated eye.

The road crossed into Idaho; with that, I have finally entered the Pacific time zone! Shortly after the town of Clark's Fork, the river entered Lake Pend Oreille. This is another huge lake, but is only a shadow of the huge Lake Missoula that covered this area in the Ice Age. The name is French for ear drop and is pronounced Ponderay. That is the name of the little town outside of Sandpoint where I spent the night. I was in a Motel 6; my room had a window seat and a view of Schweitzer Mountain -- I could have lounged there all day. Dinner was delicious enchiladas at Fiesta Bonita. I sat on their patio in the perfect-temperature evening air, enjoying the fading light behind the mountains above the Wal-Mart and Home Depot. Right before dinner I had driven east of town and experienced another 360 sunset, with golds blazing over the mountains to the north and east, and pinks over the lake and mountains to the west and south. It hardly gets better than this.

Happy highs to you. Ann

More Big (but Smoky) Sky

Havre (pronounced Haver) Underground came about due to a fire in 1900 or so which destroyed the downtown. While rebuilding, the businesses moved down into their basements. A sidewalk was built around them and grates with glass prisms were installed to provide light for this subterranean business district -- a predecessor of the underground malls in Toronto and Montreal. Discovering that it was cool there in the summer and warm out of the elements in the winter, some businesses just stayed down there until about 1930. Havre Underneath the Streets, Inc. now gives tours. Some of what you see is what was originally there, other rooms house replicas of businesses that were never underground, but are historically interesting. One of the original businesses was a bordello. The beds, separated only by a curtain, were rather proximate -- perhaps after all the drinks at the next door saloon, the cowboys didn't care. A sad commentary: the bordello used space that originally was a safe house for the Chinese -- the place they went at night to escape racist violence above. Fun funereal facts dispensed on the tour: folding chairs were first patented by a funeral director, and pickup trucks are so called because they first were used to pick up dead bodies. Near the end of the tour there was a prohibition-era still, and someone said that people were starting to reuse their stills to make ethanol fuel.

Traveling southwest from Havre the land was gold-brown grass to the horizon, except for the purple of the Bears Paw Mountains to the south. The sky was clear but not classic Big Sky blue, due to wildfire smoke. After about 50 some miles of the vast emptiness, a large complex valley opened up -- it was the confluence of the Marias, Teton and Missouri rivers. Each river is flanked by buff bluffs. After dropping into the valley, the road went in between the Missouri and the Teton. This was slow going, due to road work, so there was plenty of time to contemplate the bluffs. They were gullied perpendicular to the river, but then cross cut straight down by the river erosion, so that the bluffs presented a series of triangular faces. After awhile, the main road went back up onto the plain, but I soon turned onto the road to Fort Benton, which dropped down again to the river.

Fort Benton is a little gem of a town. It is at the upstream end of the Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument. The river there is wide and placid between bluff on the far side and levee on the town side, reflecting the green of the cottonwoods and the ribs of a bridge built in 1888. Fort Benton was the end of the line for steamships coming up the Missouri -- further up was a series of 5 falls that blocked passage (Lewis and Clark's party had a terribly difficult 18 mile portage around them). Goods were offloaded at Fort Benton and carted by oxen teams to the mines and to Canada. This port was Montana's first and for a time most important city. But then land negotiations with the railroad went sour, the railroad bypassed Fort Benton, and the town's fortunes declined. The fortunes are repaid to present day residents, for there is no railroad between Front Street and the river, and there is park and a foot/bike path all along the riverfront. I sat in the park to contemplate the peaceful water and enjoy the temperate air. While there, a small farmers market gathered in the park. There was only one table with vegetables -- others were breads and pies and arts and crafts, but it was a friendly and pleasant community gathering, and my peach pie was excellent. I had meant to drive to Great Falls that day, but decided to spend the night in this sweet spot.

The next day, the road on to Great Falls passed through wheat fields, again brown and gold stretching far into the distance. To the east was the purple silhouette of the Highwood Mountains. In Great Falls, I first went to the C.M. Russell museum complex. Russell lived in Montana in the period of transition from Plains Indians to frontiersmen to "tamed" West, and beautifully documented it in oil, watercolor, pencil and sculpture. The museum complex consists of Russell's log cabin studio, the house of him and Nancy Russell, and a well done modern museum, filled with roomy galleries of the art of Russell, his contemporaries, and modern painters of western themes. One of the delights was the hall of framed letters that Russell had written to friends, with beautiful tiny paintings on the letterhead as part of his communication.

After quiche at the museum cafe, I went to the Great Falls visitor center on an overlook above the city, and from there followed the riverside drive to the Lewis and Clark Interpretative Center, below the highest of the 5 great falls (Black Eagle Falls). The falls have been dammed to capture the hydroelectric power -- a couple are under water and the others have only a trickle of water, most of the river flow channeled through the turbines. Below the Interpretative Center is Great Springs -- a pool about 25 feet in diameter with springs welling up right next to the Missouri. Most of the water spills directly into the Missouri, but some also goes down a distinct channel before joining the river. This is Roe River, and, at 201 feet in length, is recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records as the shortest river in the world. On below that is Rainbow Falls. A dam sits on a shelf of red rock that crosses the river in a straight line. A sign on the overlook has a drawing of what the falls would have looked like, and a quote by Meriwether Lewis about it being "one of the most beautiful objects of nature." "Its edges regular and straight as if formed by art, water dashing against the rocky bottom rises into foaming billows and glides away hissing, flashing and sparkling . . . ." Now it is a dry shelf of rock. The multicolored bluff and the full channel downstream are still quite pretty, and the lights are on in Great Falls.

I would have stayed in Great Falls so as to take a bike ride along the river in the morning, but there was no room at the inn -- the state fair is happening. So, having decided to go to Glacier, I drove northwest to Choteau (SHOW-toe). (Names like Choteau and Havre reflect the early French presence here.) To the west is the front range, and the views must be spectacular on a clear day. Right now they are hazy due to the wildfire smoke. I spent a day in Choteau, where not much is happening, making it easy to rest. At one point, I looked out the window and thought that, despite the forecast for sunny, it had clouded over. It was all smoke. On now to see how much of Glacier I can see.

Big Sky Country

The last stop in North Dakota was the tourist trio of the Confluence Interpretative Center, Fort Buford, and Fort Union, right at the western edge of ND -- in fact, the parking lot for Fort Union is in Montana. The Confluence Center has a great overlook of the joining of the Yellowstone and the Missouri. As well as exhibits on Lewis & Clark and local flora, fauna and geology, there is an exhibit on the winter sports with which North Dakotans survive winter. The very first exhibit is a little pink snowsuit sized for a 3 or 4 year old girl. Aww. I learned about curling so I can better appreciate that next winter Olympics. My favorite exhibit at the Center was a tree stump that geologic forces had turned into coal. The staffer at the Center grabbed me and explained all the things to do and, having elicited the information I was traveling west, rapid fire told me all the things to do in eastern Montana, loaded me up with brochures and maps, and told me the Welcome Stop in Bainville had the country's best milkshakes.

Fort Buford was a fairly large military post, and is where Sitting Bull finally surrendered. There is still the Administration building where Sitting Bull laid down his arms, and a replica of a barracks building. Looking at the one blanket on each cot, I asked if that was all they got. The tour guide said, "No, they got two blankets, so it wasn't so bad." I asked if he was from ND, and he was. This New Mexican would need a lot more than two of those military blankets.

Fort Union was established by the American Fur Company. News to me -- a number of the forts were not military forts, but private enterprise trading forts. I guess they needed to be forts as protection against those Indian tribes that weren't happy to trade with the white man. But the reproduction of Fort Union consisted of walls painted white, roofs painted red, windows painted green, and huge fancy weathervanes atop the bastions, giving the place a bit of a Disneyland feel. The house for the Bourgeois -- the head honcho -- was huge and gaily trimmed in a Victorian style: "lavish" says the brochure. Everyone else got cramped little quarters. The salaries were interesting -- clerks who could speak several relevant languages commanded about 5 times as much as a craftsman, non-clerk interpreters about twice as much. Hunters got 4/5th the salary of an interpreter, but also got all the hides and horns of the animals they killed.

Then into Montana. I pulled in at the Welcome Stop at Bainville and said, "I hear you have the best milkshakes in the country." The attendant said, "You must have gone to the Confluence Center", but then said, "Yeah" in a tone of "OK, I'll accept that evaluation". My chocolate shake was very good, but has a serious competitor in Holly's on Kent Island, Maryland. The ham & bean soup was also good -- it had been overcast all day and now had started to rain, so was feeling cool.

In the rain, I drove to Culbertson and spent the night there in a cramped but clean motel room. The local cable channel alternated screens of community event announcements with pictures of flags, bald eagles, and soldiers, with mottos like "One Nation Under God", "Remember their Sacrifice", "America, Love It or Leave It".

Breakfast was at the Wild West Cafe, whose sign had the face of a prospector and classic cartoon vultures and the word "Espresso". I hadn't heard that expresso was big in the Wild West, but it does seem to be big in Big Sky country -- I've seen it advertised at a variety of roadside establishments here.

The highway west went through the southern edge of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, so that there were casinos in each little town. The sky was hazy at the horizon, which I at first thought was left over from the previous day's rain, but then decided must be due to forest fires in the west. As the day progressed, the sky filled with the puffy cumulous clouds spreading far into the distance that give the Big Sky Country its name.

I dropped south from Route 2 to see the Fort Peck Dam and Reservoir. This was a huge Civilian Conservation Corps project in the 1930's. The signs say it is the largest earth-fill dam in the world, although a local told me he thought Russia now has the largest. But it was big -- 3 or 4 miles across. The Interpretative Center at the toe of the dam has dinosaur skeletons, fish tanks, rocks, taxidermied mammals and birds -- a little something for everyone. The Corps of Engineers defensively pointed out that, while the dam had seriously depleted some native species, other fish that were much better fishing had done well.

At a dam overlook, there was a memorial to several workers who had been buried there when a section of the dam gave way. A Corps sign explained that investigations showed the dam had not been properly anchored given the bentonite nature of the soil. It said the dam was now perfectly safe, but didn't explain why/how it was now well anchored. I nevertheless dared to drive the road across the top of the dam, looking at the vast expanse of blue water. The reservoir is 134 miles long! with its width the typical elongated maple-leaf shape.

Then it was back on Route 2, through miles and miles of blue sky and brown/gold land. There is some cultivation of the land, but largely it is now rangeland, and is very flat up to bluffs and then flat on top those. The road crossed the Milk River a number of times. It does indeed look milky -- something to do with glacial deposits.

I had planned to drive to Great Falls, but only got to Havre -- this is a big state! The strongest stations on the radio were from Canada, including a French language station. There also was a station playing all Indian chants all the time. In general, if you don't like Country or Christian music, you are not going to be happy with radio in the north, unless you live close to a university town, in which case they probably play classical in between the NPR news shows.

A general note -- it is pleasing to see that the people who write the signs and brochures for interpretative centers and highway historic sites have struck a much more neutral tone than would have been true a few decades ago. There is much more just-the-facts reporting of what happened, without romanticizing either pioneers or Indians, and without judgments about which culture is better but with respect for both. Like the park ranger at Knife River, everyone explains everything in economic terms; e.g., the Crows and Blackfoot were hostile because the introduction of European goods from the American east upset the advantage they had had in obtaining goods from the British in the north. This trek has made me aware that the worst atrocities committed upon the Plains Indians occurred relatively recently in post-Columbian history -- the wounds are pretty fresh.

Today I visit the Havre Beneath the Streets museum, then go on to Great Falls, and decide whether to go up to Glacier, which has been experiencing a wildfire, or south to Yellowstone. Feel free to send me your opinion or any intelligence you have on how bad the fires are in Glacier.

May your skies be big and blue. Ann

Notable North Dakota

You may have picked up from the end of the last entry that I had some preconceptions and trepidations about North Dakota. Perhaps Fargo was not the best port of entry to introduce one to the state. But I'm here to tell you that this state is undeservedly maligned or -- worse, I suppose -- ignored. Let me bust a couple myths. First, the state is not flat as a pancake. Granted, it ain't Kentucky, but it ain't Kansas neither. The topography has quite a bit of texture, and at times the formations can legitimately be called hills. (Labeling the Turtle Mountains as mountains, however, is pushing it.)

Second, it is not true that there is nothing to do in North Dakota. Well, if your idea of something to do is shopping at Macys, eating at a 4-star restaurant, and then attending the opera, you probably want to give North Dakota a pass. But if you like sightseeing, visiting historical sites, fishing, boating, camping, and getting away from it all, this is a great place. There are two huge lakes in ND -- Devils Lake in the northeast, and Lake Sakakawea in the west central -- as well as a number of smaller lakes. There is lots of Lewis & Clark and pioneer history. And the state has a very nice set of state parks with campsites, cabins, picnic areas, fishing piers, etc.

Third, North Dakota is not just one huge wheat field. There are also fields of corn, barley, soybeans and sunflowers. Sunflowers! Yellow and perky in vast, undulating fields reminiscent of southern France (no, really).

The problem is that there is no one in North Dakota to tell friends and family about how nice it is here.

I took Route 2 from Grand Forks. The item of immediate note was the butterflies. Ohio has suicidal birds, South Dakota has suicidal pheasants, North Dakota has suicidal butterflies. All across the state, and particularly in the eastern half, zillions of little white butterflies flitted across like handfuls of rose petals tossed into the wind. Every few yards, one of their white bodies made a spot in the road. I think they were seeking union with each other but, much as I would wish otherwise, many achieved union only with my windshield. I'd like to tell you what they were, but they stayed in constant zig-zaggy motion, preventing observation of identifying marks.

The second item of note was that the drought didn't appear to be bad here, because the crops looked pretty healthy, and the road passed a number of small lakes and sloughs (pronounced "slews" -- marshy areas full of tall, thick, very green grass). Agriculture appears to be the only thing humans do here. Most of the little towns did not have signs pointing to a business district and, when I nevertheless drove in to investigate, there indeed was no business to speak of. But the houses looked nice. Lakota was a number of blocks of well-kept houses, even though there were few places of employment apparent. As I've often wondered in rural areas -- what in the world do these people do for a living?

About an hour out from Grand Forks, I lost NPR on the radio and discovered the strongest stations were from Canada. Then I found the Spirit Lake Reservation station, which alternated rock and country with Indian chants and announcements about events at the Pow-Wow, including instructions on how to register for the rodeo.

I had a reuben at the cafe on the lively main street of the town of Devils Lake, then turned south to Fort Totten. I went that way because the road went on a causeway over Devils Lake, but since the road went to Fort Totten, I did too. The historical site is a group of two-story white-washed brick buildings around a parade ground. After the military had stamped the Indians into resignation, the soldiers left and the buildings became a school to stamp the Indian language and culture out of Indian children. Each building had two labels - what it had been for the fort and what it had been for the school. I poked around in the musty history for a bit, but became saddened at the thought of lonely enlisted men, probably thinking they had been consigned to the end of the earth, and of lonely Indian children, stripped away from their families and berated for who they were.

The next stop was much happier. Minnewaukan, at the western end of Devils Lake, was having a summer festival. Townspeople were sitting in front of the stores on Main Street, just like an Andy Griffith show. In the area behind the American Legion park, in the shadow of huge grain elevators, local community groups were raising money by selling lemonade, snowcones, back massages, and the privilege of petting a pony. Families sat on chairs or blankets and half-listened to the Indigo Sisters wannabes playing sweetly on the the sound stage. I splurged one whole dollar for the first orange Julius I have had in decades. It tasted just like the ones my grandmother would treat us to when I was wee.

Back up to Route 2, and then on to Rugby. After checking into the Econolodge, the first thing to do was to visit the stone monument that marks the geographical center of North America. According to the US Geological Survey, who established the point, the geographical center is the point at which the continent would balance, if it were all of a uniform thickness. OK, but how in the world do they determine that? Anyway, there I was, at the very heart of the Heartland. Next I visited the kiosk by the sculpture honoring the Northern Lights, which apparently can be seen in Rugby when conditions are right. Sad to say, they weren't that night, but the kiosk had a nice video and slide show on a computer screen, as well as pictures on the wall. I also went to the Pioneer Village, but it closed at 7:00 pm and I arrived at 6:55, so that will have to wait for my next visit to ND. Dinner was at the Corner Cupboard, because there were lots of local license plates in the lot. The bacon on the BLT was superb, the homemade soup delicious, and the salad bar full of carbs, including butterscotch and tapioca puddings. Yum! The coasts may have forgotten how to eat, but in the Midwest it is still easy to get iceberg lettuce with Thousand-Island dressing, chicken fried steak, and coconut cream pie.

The next morning I began by centering myself at the Center of it all, then headed straight north, because it turned out the International Peace Garden was only 46 miles in that direction. 20 or 30 miles up the road, at the top of a rise, pretty hills came into view on the horizon -- they turned out to be the Turtle Mountains. At Dunseith, there was a log cabin rest stop/gift shop/museum, right next to an enormous turtle made completely of car wheels. This one sculpture tied together the themes of the Turtle Mountains and the speedway that is nearby. After free coffee, a chat with the proprietress, and purchase of a book on Lewis and Clark at the log cabin, I stopped in at Patti's for a cheeseburger and shake. It appeared Patti's had once been a drive-in, but now there were picnic tables where the cars would have gone, and you had to get out of your car and go up to the window to place your order. The young woman at the window said she would call Number One when my order was ready. I asked if I was the first customer of the day, and she said yes. I felt like I'd won something. When my order was up, although she probably could have used her regular voice, the window person announced over the loudspeaker that Number 1 was ready. It was good. The burger bun had been grilled in butter, which adds so much to a burger (and one's thighs). The shake was slightly on the thin side, but that is far preferable to a shake that is so thick you can't suck it through the straw. If I want to eat my ice cream with a spoon, I'll order a sundae, thank you.

The International Peace Garden is a monument to the friendship between Canada and the US, and a celebration of the longest unpatrolled border in the world. The entrance is in between US and Canadian customs. The property is a large acreage, half in the US, half in Canada. At the far end, you can see the border stretching into the distance, cut through the Turtle Mountain forest with white pyramidal markers spaced along its length. There are roads that go around lakes, with picnic tables and hiking trails. In the center is a long mall, with a huge concrete tower at the far end, and lovely flower gardens at the near end. Behind the tower is a small Peace Chapel, with quotes about peace inscribed in the walls. At each corner of the chapel were stands with flip panels, like stores use to display posters. Here, the flip frames held the front pages of newspapers from around the US and the world, dated 9/11/01 or 9/12/01. Since that dark event has triggered armed hostilities, it seems weird to put up reminders of it in a peace chapel, but whatever. There is a memorial to the World Trade towers in the middle of the mall, with some of the WTC girders salvaged from the wreckage.

Upon leaving the gardens, it is necessary to go through customs. I had visions of the border agent thinking I looked suspicious, and deciding to search my car, which is stuffed with boxes and bags -- about half of my life. It wouldn't have been a surprise, as I have been tapped more than my share of times for the extra security check at airports. But this time the white-haired, middle-aged, little-lady disguise worked, and I was waved through after assuring him I had not crossed through Canadian customs, had not purchased anything, had not picked up any bird's nests, was born in the USA, etc.

I set my sights for Washburn, at the eastern end of Lake Sakakawea, my route first paralleling the Canadian border through the Turtle Mountains, then going south through Minot. On the way I saw my first killdeer -- a bird with two striking black chokers that seems to prefer running to flying. On seeing the sign pointing to Lake Sakakawea State Park, I decided -- some of you need to be sitting down for this -- to camp that night. I found a nice spot with a lake view and impressed myself by figuring out how to set up the shock-cord tent single-handedly. Then I sat down with my cashews, prunes, carrots and root beer and prepared to spend a pleasant evening in the warmth and late prairie light. The weather forecast was "slight chance of scattered thunderstorms", but I'd heard such forecasts all week and they all came to nought. But after a bit a stiff breeze started up, and the clouds to the west started to look more serious. I decided to put the fly on the tent just in case. Excellent choice, because the wind got stronger, the clouds darker, and then the slight chance of a thunderstorm became 100 percent. I sat in the car and watched the wind tear at the tent, which, I am proud to say, stood its ground. After about 45 minutes of hard rain, the storm finally let up. After 15-20 minutes without any drops, I was about to emerge from the car (I'd been on the cell phone -- no signal in Grand Forks but one in the wilds, go figure), but then the wind started up again, and a series of lightening bolts introduced more rain. Eventually it all passed to the east, and then there was a magnificent display of stars. I can't remember when I last saw the Milky Way; it felt like coming home to see it up there with Cassiopeia and the Big and Little Dippers and lots and lots of other stars that didn't have to compete with street lights. I took off the fly and laid under those beautiful stars, enhanced by a couple of shooting stars and occasional flashes of lightening from the eastern horizon.

At dawn, the wind started back up and the flapping tent sounds woke me and prevented any more sleep. It suddenly dawned on me that, in all the pictures I've ever seen of pioneers in covered wagons, it is a nice sunny day. Laura Ingalls Wilder includes no descriptions of how their family coped with major thunderstorms and high winds during their months on the the trail. I have a whole new level of respect for the pioneers. But there was a compensation for the early rising -- a 360 degree sunrise. There were clouds scattered in all directions, and the sun painted all of them.

I thought about calling the Farmer's Bureau and asking them how much they would pay me to camp out another night in a drought-stricken area, but instead mapped out a route to get me to Montana via the Lewis & Clark trail. In Pick City (pop. 200+), right outside the park, I filled up at a gas station that had old-fashioned pumps -- a separate pump station for each grade of gas, pump handles on the side with a lever to turn the pump on, analog dials toting up the gallons and dollars, no guards against filling and fleeing. The cash register attendant, looking into my fully packed car, said it looked like I was running away from home.

Not far south of the Lake Sakakawea State Park is the Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site. Next to the Visitor Center is a replica of an earthlodge -- a big, domed building made of earth piled over an impressive log structure. The inside was cool on the hot day, but looked like it would be cozy in the winter, especially with the extended family, dogs and horses gathered in there. The Park Ranger who gave a talk in the lodge must have gone to the University of Chicago, because he explained the relationships among the Indian tribes and the impact of the horse in economic terms. He was a Lakota Indian, and mildly poked fun at his peers who would self-righteously claim the were living in accordance with the old ways. He said to truly do that, they would have to give up horses and depend on dogs. (Horses were introduced to the New World by the Spaniards, and were closely held by them, as they didn't want to give the Indians equal advantage in warfare. (The Park Ranger called them "Horses of Mass Destruction.") But the Indians gained horses in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, and the horses were traded up from Santa Fe to the Plains Indians.)

A trail from the visitor center went down to the Missouri River, where you could see depressions in the earth as the remnants of an earthlodge village. It was one of several Mandan and Hidatsa villages that made this an important trading center, and is believed to be where Sakakawea (Sacagewea) was living when Lewis and Clark hired her husband, Toussaint Charbonneau, as an interpreter. (Sakakawea was Shoshone, but had been captured by the Hidatsa. It was her interpretation skills Lewis and Clark really wanted, for when they got to Shoshone land.) The Lewis and Clark expedition spent the winter of 1804 at Fort Mandan just downriver of the village, and that was my next stop. The original Fort Mandan burned between the time the expedition left and returned (someone forgot to turn off the iron), and the charred remnants were covered by a shift in the Missouri. But a pre-burn replica has been built and can be toured in conjunction with the Lewis and Clark Interpretative Center just outside of Washburn. The fort looked adequate to withstand an Indian attack, but the Mandans and Hidatsa were friendly and helped keep the party alive with corn, beans and squash (as well as the bison, elk, and deer the soldiers shot). The real enemy was the cold -- Lewis recorded the thermometer at -70 F one morning!

Onward west, past many signs pointing to Lake Sakakawea boat ramps and past some huge power plants. A stop at the Lake Ilo National Wildlife Refuge was rewarded with a sighting of an Eastern Screech Owl that flew fairly close before it realized a human had shown up in the otherwise deserted park. I turned north at Killdeer and paralleled the Killdeer Mountains (see -- topography in ND!). In the softening evening light, right after entering Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, my sight was shocked when a fearsomely beautiful badlands suddenly appeared below the level of the road. The road descended into the badlands, which was the Little Missouri valley, then up again to plain old prairie stretching to the horizon again.

It was late, so I stopped at the Roosevelt Inn and Suites in Watford City (pop. 1357). If you ever make it to these parts, I recommend this motel. It is as nice as any Days Inn or Travelodge, but is family owned and is filled with fun Teddy Roosevelt memorabilia. Watford City is near the north end of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, where TR had a ranch and woke up to the need for conservation. And bully for that, I say.

So I haven't made it to Montana yet. But Lewis and Clark spent fully 1/4 of the time of their great expedition here. There is something about North Dakota that holds explorers, I guess. Who knew?