Chrisandra's Best of Both Worlds Roadtrip: From Astoria via Olympia around the Peninsula to Victoria

Aloha all,

October in the Pacific Northwest means the nights are longer than the days now. If you just want to know where we spent our nights during the past two weeks, this will be a quick read for you. We spent nights in Joy…

…at a cheese company,
…at the only fort on the US mainland that was attacked in World War II,
…at the “Dismal Nitch”, where Lewis & Clark apparently spent 6 dismal days
…at a cranberry & blueberry farm,
…at a winery with a mermaid museum,
…in the driveway at a friend’s house,
…outside a closed national park,
…inside an open national park with hot springs,
…and at three campgrounds on Indian reservations.

It will be a slightly longer read if you also want to know what we did during the daylight hours, which includes a day trip to Canada and a dam that’s not there anymore.

Astoria, Olympia, Victoria...
...these places don't just sound pretty

But let’s start where the last blog post left off: On the Oregon Coast:

We stopped at the Tillamook Creamery again, because it’s fun when you can walk through almost any grocery store in the country and say: “We’ve been to where that was made!”. They revamped their self guided factory tour, so now it’s even more obvious how awesome Tillamook cheese & ice cream is. They make a pretty convincing argument that the cheese is creamier just because it’s still a farmer-own co-op. We also visited the Blue Heron Cheese company, because they also serve wine and because they let us spend the night “for free”. Of course those “free” camp sites come at a price, if you also have lunch, buy some cheese and taste the wine.

Tillamook Creamery, the cheesiest
factory tour we have done

We have friends we don’t see for years, but we know it’s just like the good old times when we reconnect. That’s also true for our friends Meriwether and William. First we went to their reconstructed Fort Clatsop. This is where they spent the winter on the Pacific Coast before returning over the Rocky Mountains to tell Thomas that there is no easy northwest water passage. The fort is a National Park Service site, but we were lucky and got there one day before the government shutdown.

Fort Clatsop, where Lewis & Clark
spent their winter on the Pacific

Luckily, the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center at Cape Disappointment is a state park, so we were able to re-visit this site, too. Apparently, we do need to go back to these sites every 15 years because there are plenty of things we either missed the first time around or simply forgot. Did you know that Lewis was accidentally shot by one of his team members? Or that “Cape Disappointment” (which is located right at the mouth of the mighty Columbia River!) was named by an early explorer who was disappointed that there was no river…huh???

Cape Disappointment
as seen from Waikiki Beach, no kidding!

I was most surprised to learn about a journal entry by Meriwether Lewis on his 31st birthday. Here he was, chosen by the president to lead this epic adventure, viewed today as the most important expedition to open the American West, most of it previously unknown to non-natives. They had just made it to the continental divide and had already discovered and sent back numerous plants and animal species unknown to science at the time. But in his journal entry that day, he laments that he ‘had done very little to advance the information of the succeeding generation.’ Makes you wonder what expectations he had for himself…

Rogue Brew Pub on a pier
at the end of the Astoria Riverfront

The town of Astoria seems to have it all: A unique location at the mouth of the Columbia River, a riverfront boardwalk, great restaurants, multiple breweries, a great view from the Astoria Column and several interesting museums, including the excellent Columbia River Maritime Museum with the Lightship Columbia. At the local history museum, there was an advertisement from about 100 years ago, when Astoria had only about 10,000 inhabitants: It proclaimed that “unless the laws of gravity will cease to govern the forces of the earth, Astoria will be the largest city on the Pacific Coast.” Do you want to guess how many inhabitants Astoria has today? Despite gravity still doing its thing, they are down to 9,906. I am surprised that this cute town is not more popular, but we are not willing to make it 9,908.

The Astoria Column,
nice to look at and nice to look down from

I believe more than half of the things I know, I know from traveling. Put cranberries on that list. We’ve been drinking that juice for decades, but we had no idea what a cranberry plant looks like, where they are grown and how they are harvested. Now we have spent a night at a cranberry farm and got a tour at the very cute Cranberry Museum on Long Beach. So hit us up if you want to know why John Deere doesn’t build a cranberry harvester or what the difference between dry and wet cranberry harvesting is.

Everything you always wanted to know
about cranberries, but will you dare to ask us?

Other than for berries, Long Beach was also a highlight for chowder. We had been on the hunt for the best clam chowder since we hit the Oregon Coast. But all the research did not matter: The best clam chowder was at a random restaurant called "The Lost Roo" in Long Beach, where we went simply because that's where the battery of my scooter died.

Bike & scooter ride on Long Beach

We went to the Westport Winery only because we talked to the volunteer at the Lewis & Clark museum for about two hours. Besides answering all our questions and telling us that he had never seen anyone spend so much time in the museum, he also recommended this harvest host location. Little did he know how perfectly the Westport Winery was for us: It had everything: Wine, martinis, gardens, dogs, art, a mermaid museum and even a Maui connection: The owners are the previous owners of Lahaina Divers!

Who would try a "Flight of Fancy" for just $10?

Have you ever been to a Mermaid Museum?

This furry fellow joined as for our walk
through the gardens at the Westport Winery

Of course we went to Olympia to see our 39th state capitol building. We loved that town, not just the capitol building. Our visit was almost foiled by a random act of vandalism in the capitol the night before, but they only had to close one floor for repairs and we were able to get an excellent guided tour.

Great tour at the
Washington State Capitol

We learned that the Washington State Capitol is the largest masonry dome in America. I’ve actually been on top of the largest masonry dome in the world in Florence Italy, but I was blissfully unaware of that distinction at the time.

Largest masonry dome in America

There was also an interesting exhibit about a statue of Billy Franks, a native American who peacefully fought for fishing rights for his tribe. He is scheduled to replace one of the two statues from the State of Washington at Statuary Hall in the capitol in DC in 2025 or 2026. But since this is a native person replacing a white man, I wonder whether this will happen during the current administration. Not the most pressing problem, but a sign of our times.

Port Townsend

Port Townsend was another one of those towns that was destined to become the biggest city on the west coast, but didn’t. You can still see the ambition in the grandeur of some of the old buildings. We couldn’t quite get ourselves to spend $260 on a whale watch tour from there, since we can also see whales from our lanai back home. We actually started our whale watching season early this year from along the Oregon and Washington shores. But we always enjoy a boat ride, so we spontaneously jumped on a ferry from Port Townsend to somewhere and back.

Our $9 cruise to somewhere

It can be sad when friends move away from Maui, but it also gives us another place on the mainland to visit. Our friend Greg went on a quest to find a place for his retirement that was safe from droughts, blizzards, hurricanes and tornados. He landed in Sequim on the Olympic Peninsula. We think he did very well: It’s a beautiful area and checks off one more important criteria: His driveway is over 24 feet long and level.

Fun round of disc golf with Greg & John

Another Hawaii Ultimate player moved just a few miles down the road from Greg. We got to spend an afternoon visiting John’s art studio and playing a round of disc golf together. Turns out he is the slightly better disc golfer and the way better artist. If you ever need one, he makes spectacular wood and stone sculptures.

The talented John Strohbehn in his studio

From Sequim, it’s a short car and ferry ride to Victoria on Vancouver Island. What a beautiful town! We did not just tour the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia (our #2 of the “Canadian state capitols”), we actually had lunch there. Apparently, it’s the hottest lunch spot in Victoria. We also took a stroll through Beacon Hill Park and a long walk from the Inner Harbour to Esquimalt.

BC Parliament building in Victoria

It felt good to be in a country with less insane political drama for a few hours. I knew that Canada is still part of the British Commonwealth. However, I did not noticed the irony until our tour guide mentioned that the official head of state of Canada is King Charles: This coming Saturday, we will take part at a “No Kings” protest here in America. Currently, so many of us wish our democracy was as stable and our leaders as (relatively) sane as they seem to be in Canada….where they actually still have a king.

Did you know that Canada didn't have
its maple leaf flag until 1965?

Victoria isn't called the City of Gardens for nothing

With Greg we also went to the local history museum and to the Port Angeles Crab Fest, but without eating any crab there. I don’t want to sound like the old grouchy (or rather crabby?) guy who tells you that a hamburger used to cost a nickel…but $70 for a small crab on a paper plate, really? I guess a lot of people are still doing very well, since there was a huge long line for those $70 crabs.

Back in 2010 we were in the Elwah Valley during what they called “The Last Dam Summer”. This was just before the largest dam removal project in American history. They took down two dams the next year. One thing worked out as planned: The salmon have returned and after a century of being blocked, salmon are running up the Elwah River again. One thing did not work as anticipated: Restoring the natural flow of the river also restored natural flooding events. Four years after the dam was taken down, a flood destroyed the bridges on the road up the valley. But that just meant that we were able to go on a beautiful hike with Greg that took us exactly to the spot where we were during that dam summer of 2010.

The Last Dam Summer 2010

The Elwah River now!

You might have noticed that we have not found yet another new place we want to move to in a while. That might be because it’s getting cold here! We were able to warm up a short while in the hot springs at Sol Duc in the Olympic National Park. Nice soak, but apparently we were not the only ones freezing, it got pretty busy in those pools.

Sol Duc Falls at the Olympic NP

We took the detour to Neah Bay to explore a part of the Olympic Peninsula we did not know. It is home of the Makah Tribe. Like so many native tribes, they were also pushed off their homelands and decimated by western contact, but at least allowed on a small part of their original tribal lands.

On the way to Cape Flattery,
the most northwestern point on the US mainland

We enjoyed the little hike to the most northwestern point of the mainland at Cape Flattery, seeing two wild otters play in the waves and visiting the very informative Makah Cultural & Research Center Museum. The pre-contact Makah settlement in Ozette was covered (and therefore preserved) by a mudslide about 500 years ago. This museum displays the plentiful artifacts that were uncovered during archaeological digs in the 1970s, a story reminding me very much of Pompeii.

Second Beach at La Push

Now we are in La Push, on the lands of the Quileute Tribe. In case you have not been here and have not seen the “Twilight” movies: The rain forest and the beaches are spectacular here. I am not saying this is where the name “La Push” comes from, but they did get a big “push” from the Twilight movies, it’s still a wild and beautiful place, but a little more developed.