Touring the Northwest Report and Photo Essay
Thank you for reading this Touring the Northwest report. It’s been divine!
Subscribers without photos- go to https://www.spottedtail.com/blog/, please.
Impressions from a couple of weeks of traveling on the Pacific coast highways, CA 1 and US 101. California 1 is petrifying in places. It’s often a narrow, twisty road with some sheer drops of nearly 1000 feet to rocks and the Pacific below. Semi-trucks and too-large RVs use it, as do motorists in a big hurry and (completely fearless) bicyclists, usually with panniers filled with camping gear. The cyclists may have my respect for what they are accomplishing physically, but with all that vehicle traffic I think they are out of their minds.
US 101 in Oregon is a little tamer. The views from both roads are equally fantastic, though. Both roads also have pull-offs for slower vehicles, to let the speeders by. I made much use of them!
Fog was our travel companion on both roads, as the pictures show. We saw a single sunset while there.
I write this from near Mt. St. Helens. We tried without success to find a good back way to the mountain- every avenue turned into a dead end and turn-around. We did get to see the mountain, but she had her head in the clouds…
The next day we went to the closest point one can currently drive to Mt. St. Helens. There is another, closer lookout, but the road was taken out by a landslide. The mountaintop was still in clouds, but we could see Mt. Rainier! Which was our next stop, anyway.
Our first day at Rainier was very foggy and wet. We visited waterfalls. The next day the fog cleared, the sun came out, and we had glorious views of the peak. We took a few hikes around Paradise, which is aptly named. I imagine it’s less paradisiacal in winter, though.
After two days at Rainier, we went back the coast- Westport, Washington, specifically. We’re here enjoying the beach and a down-to-earth fishing town, with fresh Dungeness crabs on tonight’s menu.
From here it’s up to the Olympic peninsula for several days, a place I’ve always wanted to visit. Stay tuned!
That’s the Touring the Northwest report. Thanks for reading!
Every day is a blessing. Don’t waste it- Go fishing! Go paddling! Go for a bike ride! Stay active!
John Kumiski
www.johnkumiski.com
www.spottedtail.com
www.spottedtail.com/blog
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