Lost Coast

After that great week of catching up with friends in Oregon, SR flew in from Denver to join me for another round of adventuring, south along the coast.

There's aren't many more dramatic arrivals at the Pacific than the view at Cannon Beach.

And headed south into California, the drama grows. No pun intended. This is redwood country, and they are mighty.

We stayed for a night in the appealing town of Arcata with my cousin B and his wife M, who live in a sweet house on a gorgeous property (complete with outdoor shower, sauna, chicken coop, greenhouse, raised garden beds, and an adjacent conservation causeway where they can walk through a redwood grove whenever they want).

It was hard to tear ourselves away from the offer of sauna time, but we had been to the Arcata BLM office to pick up our required bear canisters and were ready for our long-planned adventure--backpacking in the Lost Coast Wilderness. Not really into paying the shuttle fee necessary to do the entire, one-way hike, we instead drove down to Shelter Cove and hiked out to Big Flat and back over 5 days, 4 nights.

The walking on the beach was not easy, but the scenery and remoteness were totally worth it.

We had unbelievably lucky, brilliant, sunny weather for the first four days of our trip. So though we'd been planning to stay for a fifth night and sixth day, when on the fifth day the clouds rolled in, we decided to hike out the entire 8.5 miles and call it a trip with fond memories rather than rolling the dice with the rain. Good choice, as by the time we made it back to the trailhead parking lot, tired but grateful, it was hard to see where we'd come from, and the chilly drizzle soon reached us in our retreat.

Satisfied at having gotten to spend such great time on this stretch of wild, undeveloped coastline, we pointed the car to a pretty opposite environment: the metropolis of the San Francisco Bay area. Coming soon!

Friendship State?

Oregon is so dang lucky. It gets to be home to so many fantastic people that I'm grateful to call friends. From the Olympic Peninsula, I drove out to the very different, western part of Washington State, waiting until I hit Yakima before turning south. As a geology lover, it's completely thrilling for me to drive past so many iconic volcanoes, catching fleeting glimpses here and there of Rainier, Mt. St. Helens, and, once I was southbound, Mt. Hood (pictured here), among others.

Once I hit Oregon, I got to spend a weekend in Bend with my great, great Peace Corps Morocco friend O, her husband, and their adorable son.

From there, on to Portland, where the GPPSM (Great People Per Square Mile) ratio only increased. There is my friend D, who is ever-reliable for a thoughtful conversation during a satisfying walk...

...my friend F (sixteen years since we met during study abroad in Italy! Just crazy!) and her contributions to the parade of unbelievably sweet children of friends (note how her son S, who didn't want to be photographed, handily solved the problem by simply closing his eyes at every sign of the flash)...

...and last, but very much not least, more Peace Corps Morocco friends: A & L, and their new baby. It's been awhile since I've gotten to cuddle a 4-month-old, and way too long (6 years?!?) since I'd seen his parents, so a sweet evening it was.

AND the weather continued to be completely, blissfully perfect in another place that is not exactly known for its great weather. I mean, really. This is my life? Somebody pinch me.

Olympics

After saying goodbye to my mom at the airport in Seattle, I headed over to the Olympic Peninsula, thinking I might stay for a couple days and then try to squeeze in a trip back up to North Cascades National Park before I needed to be in Oregon at the end of the week. But the travel gods made clear that I would be a world-class idiot if I didn't just stay in the Olympics for the week by delivering once-in-a-lifetime weather: a week of gorgeous, warming sunshine. In the rainforest! What a gift. So I took advantage of it and stuck around as long as I could.

Hiked up Hurricane Hill with it's amazing views of Mount Olympus, plus sightings of endemic Olympic squirrels and Olympic marmots.

I was really excited about hunting down some undeveloped hot springs I read should be in the Elwha River Valley, and was bummed to learn they are temporarily closed. But the reason is a good one: the Elwha River dam is being disassembled over the course of several years, and the whole area is restricted due to the reclamation process. That's a good cause. Plus, salmon were spawning in the Elwha River for the first time in anyone's memory due to the progress made on dam removal. I have been spoiled by seeing a lot of salmon spawning in various places this summer, but all of the park employees in the Olympics were so outrageously excited about these pioneering salmon that I couldn't help but get excited, too.

I decided to take further advantage of the gorgeous days and go to the end of the road: Cape Flattery, the northeastern-most point of the contiguous U.S. I don't think the view up there ever gets better than this, not a cloud in the sky, and Vancouver Island visible in the very distant background.

I even took a hike to the breath-taking Shi-Shi beach (also on the Makah Nation Reservation lands).

Of course, no visit to the Olympics is complete without a stop in the Hoh Rainforest. Very sad to see these days of blissful Olympic wandering come to an end.

Crabbing in Washington

Once restored to our native land, my mom and I headed from the ferry terminal at Anacortes, Washington, due west to the town of Mount Vernon and our family friends P and L. In addition to it being great fun to see them, we had the added boon of a beautiful day deemed perfect for them to take us back to Anacortes and out on their boat to go crabbing!

These people are pros. P dropped two pots, and then we sailed around for a few hours eating lunch, enjoying the sunshine and perfect temperature, and talking about the logistics of life on a boat.

When the time came, we went back to the pots and, voila! Dungeness crabs galore! We had to throw back all the females, plus males who weren't at least 6.25 inches across. Despite the second trap not having been latched (and therefore devoid of all but the stupidest crabs, who didn't bother to crawl out of it after having devoured the chicken drumsticks used as bait), we ended up with 9 or 10 legal crabs.

Back at their house that evening, P, not one for sentimentality, dropped them all in the boiling pot while my mother hid her face. I felt a little less bad for the crabs when I saw this guy take one of his comrades with him to its doom. My finger experienced one of those pinchers, and they are mighty.

YUM.

Sunshine circuit

After my mom and I stumbled out of the Wells Gray wilderness and drove down to meet my Dad in Vancouver, the three of us set off north for the aptly named Sunshine Coast. On more ferries. Are you sick of ferries, yet? I'm not!

Our destination was Powell River, but we did get slightly sidetracked a bit south of that, at Lang Bay, where we spent a couple of hours at the Sunshine Folk Festival--home-for-a-weekend to way more hippies than my parents could shake a stick at, though they were great sports. (It didn't hurt that the food was darn tasty.)

Sidetracked again at Lund, as far north as the road goes along the coast from Vancouver without cutting majorly inland.

From Powell River, we ferried over to Vancouver Island. Several people had told us to be sure to stop in Coombs to see the goats on the roof. We were a little confused but followed that advice obediently, and found, very literally, goats on a roof.

That is a real, live goat. How do they keep them from jumping down?
We also discovered that Coombs has amazing pizza and ice cream. I'm not sure which made a bigger impression--that, or the goats.

Another great stop on the road to the town of Tofino was Cathedral Grove on Highway 4. AMAZING Douglas firs, some of them 800 years old.

And farther down the road to Tofino, look what crossed the road in front of us!:

Tofino itself was a place to behold. The weather was spectacular while we were there, and I fell totally in love with the town, which is probably not good since in actuality it rains 200 days/year there. That was hard to imagine with the sunny backdrop we had to explore...

...go on a kayaking trip to Meares Island...

...and take a trail through the rainforest to reach and walk on Longs Beach.

From Tofino, it was a long drive (broken up by a second stop for pizza and ice cream--but who's counting?) to the lovely city of Victoria. We took advantage of a break in the rain we found there to visit the fairy-tale setting of Butchart Gardens.

Then we had a whole day to spend in Victoria itself. I'd heard a lot of good things about this place as I made my way west all summer, and it did not disappoint. Views in three directions of water and mountains, friendly people, and quaint residential feel anywhere outside of the vibrant downtown area. We used one of those hop-on-hop-off city bus tours as our transportation for most of the day, and the narrative they play during that talked about how people in Victoria are really proud of their home gardens, and that it's a really popular place for retirees and honeymooners. So it's a city of "flowerbeds, newlyweds, and nearly-deads." My dad chuckled heartily at that one, even more so the second time we heard it on our repeat loop through town on the bus. But I can sure see why people like it here.

Victoria is also significant to me personally because it is the end of my drive to the west coast through our neighbor to the north. Too soon, too soon, my Canadian summer has come to an end. From here, it's one last ferry through the San Juan Islands, where my adventure will continue Stateside. See you on the West Coast!