Oregon Coastal Scenes

We were traveling rather leisurely, in no hurry. Our overall theory was that Boris and the Brits eventually, sooner than later, would open up to "amber" countries like the US, and that, with the barrage of flights Vicki had booked, we'd eventually get to Britland and make good on our Bloomsbury apartment rental for the summer. After Rainier, we planned on visiting the east side of Mt. St. Helens and exploring there for a few days. Alas, when we got to the turn off, all the east-side Mt. St. Helens roads were closed. Still too early in the season.  So we shifted gears and decided to chance the Oregon coast. It was reportedly already very crowded with campers, and we'd visited more than once in recent years, but we like coastal scenes, and Oregon's are some of the best. 

Western Washington roadsides are covered in gorse, very colorful
but nasty weeds we first encountered in Ireland; this was our only
picture of them

The coast begins

In Tillamook we stopped, again, at the Blue Heron French Country
Cheese store, which permits free overnights 

Driving from Tillamook I saw a sign advertising "U-Pick'em

Oysters" and then this lovely oyster and clam shoppe; I bought

a dozen, which I later devoured; without bloodshed

Later that day we began encountering much fog

Thus

And thus

Old friend Devil's Churn

Rainier, 2

We camped three nights at the relatively low and warm Ohanapecosh campground, just inside the park. It was Memorial Day weekend, and we were grateful just to have a legal place to park. We did some day hikes, twice to Silver Falls and then also the much shorter Ancient Trees trail. These in addition to driving up to Paradise to see the mountain.

Among some big trees

Duly noting the warnings; also "drop, cover, hold on" from New Zealand

A hot spring very near the campground

Me, laughing

Silver Falls; actually a long series of cascades

S

Us, there

Another day, another hike, out to see the old trees

A rare small area never logged

Of course I felt it my patriotic duty to have a Rainier beer

Lest anyone be concerned, the forest products industry is doing
just fine these days...

Mt. Rainier, 1

Our next goal was Mt. Rainier, which we'd visited in 1972 and then again in 2001 or so. This required passing through Yakima, which occasioned many 1972 memories...an evening at the drive-in movies, among other things, and my first viewing of what later became a favorite movie...The Fearless Vampire Killers (Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate; and Jack McGowan)...and some of the best junk shoppes ever, up to that time, including one with a B-17 bombardier nose bubble. How do I know all this, you ask? Well, Memory spoke, and I also consulted my travel journals from that time, which I always carry with me. Digitized, of course. My whole life, 4TB, the size of a deck of cards...

Thus

And thus

Anyhow, after a night in a disused campground in the national forest,
we drove on up to the national park entrance

Resolving to camp at maybe a lower elevation

Hoping to re-do this picture of me, in August, 1972, gazing upon
the great mountain

It was at this point, however, that we learned that my Pixel 3
phone/camera had lost its ability to focus; perhaps it was trying 
to tell us you can never go back...

A few days later, and with an actual camera, we managed this
shot; but it just wasn't the same...

Anyhow, a few pix of the mountain...from Paradise

"Ye icefalls! Ye that from the mountain's brow, Adown enormous
ravines slope amain...Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge..." (Coleridge)

Lëävënwörth, Wäshingtön

After a few days' rest and reorganization, we returned to our loop visit of the north Cascades, this time route 2, east, en route eventually to Mt. Rainier National Park. Nice montane scenery, a gushing river, and then Lëävënwörth, a touristy town, modeled after something in the Tyrol, I guess. I couldn't resist snapping a few pix.

But first, some interesting decor outside the Tulalip casino

And more rhodos

Leavenworth, nice, almost Bavarian setting; the pix are self-narrating...

On Whidbey Island

The weekend of May 22nd-23rd we spent visiting one of Vicki's high school classmates, Lynn B. and her husband Ken, at their beautiful home in Oak Harbor, on a bluff overlooking the water back to the mainland. We were wined and dined and wined some more, given a great tour of the island, Lynn and Vicki catching up, and Ken, a retired USN captain, bringing my knowledge of naval aviation up past the gasoline era (c. 1945). He was an Intruder pilot, XO on a couple of the super-carriers, commanded a base, and administered a war college, among other things. It was a great weekend.

From their bluff, looking back toward Mt. Baker

One of our outings was to Penn Cove; the marine museum there

So if you know mussels, you know Penn Cove mussels...

Dinner consisted mostly of a huge pot of steamed mussels and
then salmon grilled on a cedar plank; I was in heaven

Lynn and Vicki at Fort Casey

We were missing the Rhodo riot we love in England, but got to
see a pretty good one in Washington

At the Captain Whidbey Inn

Back at the house, a resident eagle surveys his domain 

An A-6 Intruder, subsonic, long range, low altitude, carrier-based; Ken
flew one of these and was XO on the carrier Independence during the
filming of Flight of the Intruder, which we watched one evening; not
your daddy's navy, as one might say

Interim Update

We are in York, UK, staying at the Lighthorseman Pub, a drunken chorus of "God Save the Queen" still resounding from the floor below after England's 2-0 defeat of Germany in the European Cup football series. It promises to get quieter with Sweden playing Ukraine in the evening match. 

How we got here is a longer story, mostly about Vicki's ingenuity and persistence. Long story short is that the UK recognizes Iceland as a "green" country--the US is still "amber"--and Iceland will let anyone in who has had both COVID-19 vaccinations. So we ventured to Iceland, not exactly on our bucket list but nonetheless well worth seeing, and spent 11 days in a very small rental van camper, touring the island, the Golden Circle, the Ring Road, Reykjavik, etc. And then, after the required pre-flight COVID tests, passenger locator forms, and such, we flew on to Heathrow, more tests, and a rental car ride here, en route to Edinburgh, to collect our belongings from the camper (Le Duc) we sold last summer. It's still in storage. The longer story will appear on the website, in due course, under the heading of "Vicki's Practical Guides to World Travel." It's quite a story.

It's been a few weeks since I posted anything on the blog, and even then I was a couple weeks behind. There are a dozen or so posts recounting our May and June travels in the US and then a dozen or so more recounting our visit to Iceland. And now England is underway. We spent today walking old York and touring the Minster, which we'd not seen since 2009. Lots more pix to select, edit, caption, and so on. But I promise to get better. Next week we'll begin two months in a London (Bloomsbury) apartment, and there should be some time then when we are not in motion. Stay tuned.

In the main room at the Lighthorseman; there were 2 or 3 other rooms, plus the
beer garden, all celebrating...we were in Croatia for much of the recent World
Cup series, and so are not unfamiliar with world football culture...