Northwest USA, 2011

Because of MANY requests…OK, OK…one or two, here’s your Stardate report for the first half of the first trip.

Two years ago, we agreed to do the 2011 West Coast America trip, the same trip we did in 2009 (which was the inaugural trip). That trip was a bear…there’s another word that starts with a “B” that better describes it, but I won’t use that word since this is a family publication. Anyway, back in our more ambitious days, we had asked to tailgun the Northwest USA trip but were turned down because the trip already had a Wagonmaster and Tailgunner assigned.

So, one day we were sitting watching television (probably some hunting show) and the phone rang. It was the office (Adventure Caravans). They wanted to know if we wanted to Wagonmaster the NW USA trip. WTF????

I thought we already had this conversation. As it turned out, the people that had been assigned as WM’s had to back out due to family problems. OK, why weren’t the assigned Tailgunners moved up? They were established Wagonmasters in their own right. (We didn’t ask. We thought about asking, but didn’t). After a day or two of deliberation, we accepted the challenge. It would be a harder trip since we hadn’t done it, but we have been to most of the places on previous excursions. Besides, we are professionals!

Now we have triple the work to do. The West Coast America (WCA) trip would be fairly easy. We have done it, but there are many changes. That equals 1¼ trips worth of work. The NW USA trip equals at least the remaining 1¾. We started getting things organized. After a few phone calls, we then re-organized what we had organized. We then re-re-organized after a few more phone calls. We were now afraid to answer the phone and let the answering machine pre-screen our calls. After a month or so, we thought we had a handle on both trips.

D-Day (Driving Day) was approaching. I was juggling rehab appointments (from two shoulder surgeries), fishing trips, a hunting trip and a visit to the vet to make Choka (Claudia’s kitten) into an “it” instead of a “he”. Choka was just five months old but he weighed 12 pounds. The doctor kept saying “That’s a BIG cat!”. Choka came through the surgery fine and we left five days later. First stop…Sam’s Town in Las Vegas. Despite her best efforts, Claudia dropped about $40 into the slots. I dropped $20 at the buffet, but got a great dinner for my money.

We drove to the Elk’s Lodge in Bountiful, UT for five nights before moving to the KOA in Salt Lake to start the trip. Six of the couples there had travelled with us before so we all had a great reunion and reminisced about old times. While in Salt Lake, we visited Temple Square, heard the Mormon Tabernacle Choir , went to the Hoagle Zoo and had two ice cream socials at the RV park.

We moseyed out of Salt Lake after four days and headed north to Meridian, ID. The highlight of our stay was a guided tour of the Old Idaho Penitentiary. Our guide was the son of one of the guards who had worked there so he had personal knowledge of the goings- on and knew some of the prisoners that were once housed there. Great tour!

We then moved on to Pendleton, OR. Now, when I think of Pendleton, I think of great woolen shirts and blankets. We did, in fact, visit the Pendleton Woolen Mill. It was shut down for maintenance but that made the tour better. We could actually hear the guide. If the mill were running, we would have had to wear headsets with radios in them. After the mill tour, we headed for the Pendleton underground tour. I found out that a lot of the “ladies” that inhabited the area were seamstresses. The police kept raiding the “hotels” in the area and always found that the men in the rooms with the “seamstresses” had no pants on. The “ladies” seemed to always be hemming the men’s pants when the police arrived. They had an intricate alarm system to alert all the residents when outsiders were entering the premises. It gave the ladies just enough time to grab the men’s pants and start working on them. After the underground tour, we ate lunch at Crabby’s and headed for the Pendleton Roundup building for a self-guided tour of rodeo memorabilia.

On our second day, we visited the Tamastslikt Cultural Institute. That’s OK. I can’t pronounce it either! It was a big building of injun stuff. The displays were really professional and nicely done.

Our next stop was the Peach Beach RV Park in Maryhill, WA. This park was at a beach, a rocky one albeit, but still a beach and had an extra-large, double-huge peach orchard adjacent to it, hence the name, “Peach Beach”. We visited the Goldendale Observatory,

a replica of the Stonehenge Memorial and the Maryhill Winery for a little tasting party. We visited the orchard and bought about forty pounds of nice ripe peaches and I prepared a delicious peach cobbler in my largest Dutch oven, a-la cowboy style!

After two days in Maryhill, we moved on to Cascade Locks, OR, stopping enroute for a ride on the Mt. Hood Railroad. One our second day, we climbed aboard the “Columbia Gorge”,

a true old sternwheel riverboat for an all-day tour that took us through a 60-foot lift lock twice. We went downriver as far as Multnomah Falls before turning around to return to the dock. There was a bunch of spectacular scenery, some very pretty scenery and some just plain pretty scenery. It was all eye candy! We saw eagles, osprey’s, seagulls (rats with wings) and swallows. Fun day!

On our third day here, we visited the Bonneyville Hatchery and Dam. Our dam tour, not “damn tour”, was really interesting. Our tour guide was a ranger by the name of Claudia, not my Claudia, another Claudia. She wasn’t as cute as mine but she did give an outstanding tour. We got to go right inside the power generating portion of the dam and visited the fish ladders and the salmon-counting station, manned, or in this case “womaned”, by two college co-ed volunteers. They had to hold me back when I saw the size of some of the fish going through the counting window.

We pulled out the next day and headed for Castle Rock, WA, the home of Mt. St. Helens. Now, I would give y’all a detailed description of how much the flora and fauna has improved and prospered since our last trip here except for one little thing. It seems that Claudia took our car over to the Visitor Center about five miles from the park to pay our entrance fees. When she returned to the car, the “giddiup” worked, the “whoa” worked but the “back up” went “neigh”. She put it in (forward) gear and limped back to the RV park. After several phone calls over two days, we made arrangements to leave the car at the park and pick it up after this trip is over. We will pick it on September 13^th and drag it to Tillamook to a tow yard. They are going to pull the transmission, take it to Portland to be rebuilt and then put it back in, all before the 22^nd when we leave for Newport, OR…or so they say! We shall see. The rest of the group went on the 99-mile round trip drive to see Mount St. Helens.

After Castle Rock, we again headed north and stopped in Kent, WA at the Seattle South KOA. We toured Pikes Market and saw the “Flying Fish”

where the fish mongers throw the salmon from the ice-filled display cases to the guys behind the counter where they are caught right out of the air and prepared for sale or shipment. It’s quite a show! We also toured the Space Needle, the Boeing factory and the Museum of Flight. The Boeing tour and Museum of Flight ranked high on my “Whoopi-O-Meter” but barely lifted the pointer on Claudia’s. Oh well! On our free day, most of the group boarded a tour boat and headed for Blake Island where we went to a First Nation salmon luncheon and show. It was a great lunch. The salmon were prepared by staking them out on cedar stakes and staking them around an alderwood fire,

cooking them for precisely 45 minutes on the fleshy side and an additional 15 on the skin side. They were de-freakin-licious!

Our next stop was Canada! Welcome to Burnaby! We did a bus tour of Vancouver and threw a Welcome to Canada party for the guests. We then went to Langdale via our first ferry crossing and then Powell River where we did a hatchery tour and a luncheon cruise. After Powell River, we headed for Qualicum Bay to visit a scallop farm and then on to Chemainus where we did a tour of the murals that were painted all over the town. We toured by horse-drawn trolley and I soon remembered that I have recently become allergic to horses. I was sitting in the front seat and could soon barely see. My eyes were red, watering, hurting, mostly closed and I was miserable. The first thing I did after the trip was to head for a washroom and soak my eyes with lots of cold water. I soon returned to a near-normal state.

After Chemainus, we headed down the island to Victoria, where we are right now, and settled into an outstanding RV park right on the water. We have float planes coming right over us to land on the water, cute little water taxi’s

putting all over like little tiny toy boats and flocks of Canadian geese honking right over us. They are flying so low you couldn’t shoot them. There wouldn’t even be enough left of one for a sandwich if you hit one square. There are also many “float homes” here.

These are two and three-story houses built on concrete floats or barges like in “Sleepless in Seattle”. I could live in one! We did an open air bus tour of Victoria, went to the Empress for High Tea, visited the Parliament building and finished off by visiting Butchart Gardens.

Tomorrow, we return to the USA.

That’s it! Now you are all caught up. As you probably noticed, I started paraphrasing toward the end of this musing. Sorry!