Grants Pass, Oregon

Oh no, whats happening here.......... Why is our truck parked near that "other" trailer...... We really bought it because the cat needed more room for exercise! We lost our hydraulic brake unit in the airstream at elevation 5600 feet near Crater Lake and went to Siskiyou RV in Grants Pass while Airstream sent a replacement part. The dealer was nice enough to accommodate us with hookups right in their yard for us to stay. Maybe a marketing ploy? Not really, we were planning on stopping there anyway, the brake failure just firmed up the plans.
2010 NuWa Hitchhiker Discover America 345, our new traveling home! Never a dull moment, Life's too short, etc.. hahaha...

Crater Lake NP, Oregon

Crater Lake is an amazing place. It was a volcano that collapsed and took 1500 feet of altitude off. The peak fell into itself and replaced the magma and left a big hole. The Island in the middle is Wizard Island which is actually a new cone in the making. Lava flowed out and sealed the bottom of the cauldron and over the years rain and snow melt filled creating the lake. There is allot more to the story but this was the short version ;-)

The water is incredibly blue and clear its hard to describe until you see it. The deep part of the lake is over 1900 feet deep

Wizard Island

One of the million chipmunks begging for food at the visitor center. He was begging me... I won't be fooled...

Seaside, Oregon

This is one of the many stops for this too........

Sea Lions everywhere in the harbor. You can hear them barking!

There were some very weird items in the shops along the waterfront.... Who buys these things?

Astoria, Oregon

Maritime Museum in Astoria was really worth a stop (Thanks Heather!). We spent most of a day exploring the museum and the history of the Columbia River and ships and shipwrecks crossing the bar.

This explains a bit about the Columbia River Bar. They show movies of the standing waves and what fisherman and ships need to got through. What was amazing is the Pilots that go out to board the incoming ships. These Pilots board moving ships climbing up on rope ladders from the Pilot boat coming along side. Professional Pilots need to bring the large ships through the bar and the ever changing channels.

Coast Guard has a facility that they train in the surf on the bar. They figure if they are trained here then they can handle rescues anywhere else.

Old Lightship that you could board at the museum

Columbia River Gorge, Oregon

Traveling on the Historic Columbia River Highway the views never stop. Some parts of the road are so narrow like the bridges we could go through one at a time.

Multnoma Falls.

Paddle wheeler leaving the locks on the Columbia

No, we haven't got lost....

Bad or none-existent WiFi. Also one other small thing, we bought a new 5th wheel RV ;-).... Been in Grants Pass, OR hooked up to services waiting dealer prep and some items being added. We found after months of travel and more to go in our future it would be nice to have more room and not be stepping on the cat every time we move around! While we really love Airstream they just don't make a model floor plan that we felt fits our needs into the future. We will certainly miss the "Silver Twinkie" but we must move to bigger and hopefully better things.
I have some pictures to upload from our trip to Crater Lake and will when we get decent WiFi. When we leave Grants Pass our intended destination is Crescent City, CA or somewhere near to visit the Redwood forests hopefully this weekend.

Mt. St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, WA

Hard to believe, another frosty day in WA.. 48 degrees up at Johnston Ridge

Having "only" happened 30 years ago and remember watching it on TV this is incredible to see first hand. The observatory is 5 miles from the crater and even though we had low clouds you can see the bottom of the crater. This was the "blast zone" side where 1500 feet of elevation disappeared when it blew out this side.. The days leading up to the main eruption was interesting where people we told to leave their homes then they pressured authorities to go back and get their stuff because nothing was happening. They made the first round and not the second trips to their homes... Harry R. Truman was the guy that lived on Spirit Lake and refused to leave and perished with the blast. They said in the days before the main eruption the side of the mountain was "bulging" about 4-7 feet a day. 57 people died in the blast. Its worth looking up the story on the net and watching the time lapsed video leading up to it.

Trees in the blast zone were "shattered". It was amazing to see 6 foot thick tree stumps ripped apart like this. The power of this was incredible. It's scary and amazing to think about.

30 years earlier this was a forest, today it looks like we are in mountain desert... If you enlarge the picture you can see a small part of Sprit Lake in the center. Mt St Helens is to the right. The land slide that was the mountain went from right to left OVER that ridge you see.

As far as you can see it looks like this until you get further out of the blast zone Weyerhauser Company planted new trees about six months later. The entire landscape was just blown down trees for miles and Weyhauser came in to salvage them as fast as they could. They said an average of 600 truck loads came out a day and 1000 loggers were hired to complete the salvage.

Olympic National Park, WA

Oh OK now we know what to do if we see a Tsunami at the beach.....

Ruby Beach. Another nice beach on the Pacific in the NP and lots more sea stacks

We would never be dressed like this at Ft Macon in NC in the summer.... Brrrrr.

Olympic National Park, WA (Mora)

We spent the afternoon hiking on Rialto Beach (Mora). The "beach" is not like we would see on the east coast, its covered with lots of rounded rocks and not lots of sand. But what is there is course and dark in color. And lots of driftwood...

How can they call these tree's driftwood? You can barely see Debbie sitting on the log in front. The tree is probably 6 feet thick or more! The signs say stay out of the surf when rough the driftwood can be dangerous.... Ya think?? 6 foot thick logs bouncing around in the surf?
What amazes me about the beaches here is that they are full of logs that have washed up. Being a boater, I can't imagine hitting one of these things floating just under the surface!

Looking out to the Pacific

Lots of Sea Stacks here. Another thing we never see on the Carolina coast.

Olympic National Park, WA- Misc.

This Sitka Spruce is over 270' high!

Highway 101 wraps around the park. Cresent Lake in the background

Cresent Lake

Highway 101 looking toward Olympic NP

Olympic National Park, WA

Sitka Spruce trees throughout the rain forest are huge.

Everything is covered with moss with the yearly 140-200 inches of rainfall

We mean "everything"

Port Angeles, WA

This was our view from Salt Creek Park run by Callum County. Overlooks the Strait of Juan de Fuca. We could watch all kinds of ships coming and going from the Pacific Ocean to Commercial ports like Seattle.

The park had hiking trails all around the bluffs overlooking the water

When the tide was out you could explore the tide pools