PacNW (part two): On the Trail of Lewis, Clark, Astor, and more!

After waking up in Seattle, we were up and out early to drive a couple of hours to Mt. Rainier, just southeast of Seattle. On the way, my sister decided to try to further her love of coffee by chugging espresso, making the drive to Mt. Rainier feel a bit longer than anticipated. Upon arrival to the national park area, not much was open since there was still a ton of snow everywhere in drifts over ten feet high.

Olympic -- Portland

(More text to come...)

photos: Being in the land of espresso stops like this one, Leslie decided she wanted to start drinking coffee -- starting with a couple of shots of espresso; Mt. Rainier; me and Leslie with some tall snow drifts on Mt. Rainier; me in front of a "tree of history," complete with important milestones marked; and as far up Mt. Rainier as we could go, as snowy as it was (note the size of the drifts in relation to the car).





photos: A yummy fish and chips dinner in Port Angeles, WA; a foggy lake within Olympus National Park; being in the land of lumberjacks, we stopped at a small local museum to ask about giant trees and for a small photo op; a recurring theme on our trip: things we were really excited to see being unexpectedly closed, like every visitor center for Olympic National Park, thus cheating us out of stamps for our National Park passports; and me in the Ho Rainforest in Olympic National Park (note the size of the trees!).





photos: Me nuzzling another super huge and very mossy tree in the Ho Rainforest; stopping at Ruby Beach in Olympic National Park; me and Leslie at Ruby Beach, with me finally touching the Pacific Ocean and Leslie's first views of it; rock hunters at Ruby Beach; and one of the many tsunami evacuation signs we saw driving along the Washington and Oregon coasts.





photos: After driving pretty aggressively, we made it at last to the Lewis and Clark National Park and the recreated Fort Clatsop (where Lewis and Clark's expedition wintered before returning east); the site of Fort Astoria, John Jacob Astor's pacific trading post from the early 1800s (which also featured many notables from Mackinac fur trade history before the American Fur Company really established itself on Mackinac Island -- nerdy, I know); the view of the Columbia estuary from the Astoria "column-of-history;" view a little more to the West of the Columbia flowing past Astoria to the Pacific, complete with Lewis and Clark quote from their arrival at the Pacific; and the view from Ecola State Park, one of the most photographed beaches along the Oregon coast.





photos: Me at Ecola State Park; Multnomah Falls, the second largest year-round waterfalls in the US, from along the Columbia River gorge; from the Saturday morning market in Portland, I found a vendor who loves making things out of presidential commemorative spoons as much as I do; Jenny and I at the Portland market before we realized the palm reader was a total (and very boring) fraud; and me in front of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, featuring buildings that at times have canvas covering their frames to make them look like the schooner wagons used along the Oregon Trail.





photos: Jenny fording a stream at the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center; the view from the mountain in the middle of Portland with a view of Mt. St. Helens in the distance; and the neon sign that's one of the most famous landmarks in Portland.