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Canada/USA with Lily

August - October 2018
A 39-day adventure by Hannah Read more
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  • TravelerCanada/USA with Lily
    Day 4

    Canada 1

    August 28, 2018 in Canada ⋅ 🌙 11 °C

    Guess I will give this blog thing a go - peer pressured myself into it…

    Day 1 - Saturday 25th August 2018

    Flight

    Flight was pretty horrific but survived so can’t really complain. Had turbulence pretty much the whole way and the plane wasn’t really designed to be a long haul plane and the flight attendants didn’t seem particularly prepared for the crazy turbulence (although comments after I arrived led me to believe it’s fairly common to be very turbulent from Australia to Canada and they were just intact rude/used to getting away with poor customer service). There weren’t any shutter on the windows so sun came straight in for the first 7 hours and then it was freezing for the rest of the trip. The TV screens weren’t the privacy screens you usually get on long haul flights so if you were trying to sleep and didn’t have an eye mask you just got flashing lights from everyones screens around you. And then because of the turbulence the cabin crew never brought the drinks tray around - your options were water, water, or more water. No hot drinks (which I was pretty desperate for once the temperature dropped) or anything. Food was a bit sparse too, had one meal right after take off, a small sandwich about 7 hours in, and breakfast an hour before landing, no other snacks or meals throughout. Also, I swapped seats with someone because they were a family of four (two adults, two kids) and they hadn’t been able to get seats together and they wanted to split the parenting duties over the flight and preferred to sit together. Anyway, didn’t matter how many flight attendants we both told they still sent all my vegetarian meals to the family instead of me (they kindly brought it up to me every time). Anyway it’s over and it could always have been worse. I watched a lot of movies - kept waiting for the turbulence to drop off so I could sleep but never happened. Gave me a chance to catch up on things I meant to see back when they were in the cinema but never got around to. Landed in Vancouver, absolutely breezed through everything. No more landing cards - just insert your passport to be scanned and on you go - and had to show it all to someone to confirm I hadn’t lied about anything but she was more interested in my holiday plans from a ‘have a chat’ sense than a security sense. Collected my bag, handed someone my piece of paper saying I had nothing to declare - she didn’t even look at the paper before waving me through. I got through so quickly I had about an hour to wait before Lily arrived to pick me up.

    Vancouver

    Lily picked me up no dramas, made our way to Pete and Mitch’s place. Was probably partly thanks to the jet lag but really struggled getting my head around being on the right side (both inside the car and on the road) even though I was expecting it. Gave up trying to look the right way pretty quickly and just trusted Lily to do it all (thanks Lily). Arrived pretty easily and Pete and Mitch got us set up before they were off to help Mitch’s mum prepare some things because she is moving soon (I didn’t catch the full story). We got set up a little bit and then got on our way quickly (Lily hadn’t had breakfast yet because she had been dropping a friend off at the ferry and then picking me up straight after at 8:30amish). Caught a bus into downtown Vancouver. Lily warned me that I would probably be a bit surprised by some things. Marijuana is going to be made legal in Vancouver as of October but apparently it’s pretty much treated as if it’s legal anyway and making it actually legal is just a formality, so there were heaps of “Medicinal Cannabis” shops under varying names around. Also, the number of homeless people was horrific. Which is apparently fine because it’s “not illegal to be homeless in Vancouver so that’s where a lot of the homeless end up” - because legality is a sure fire indicator of whether or not it’s good or right. Most of the locals are pretty numb to it - Mitch and Pete both said it was awful and a lot more should be done about it but agreed they were just so used to it that they only really thought about it when they had friends or family come and stay with them from out of town. Which is fair - plenty of awful things happen in Brisbane that I don’t even think about. Got some food, managed to buy myself a rain jacket (highly necessary as it had rained all morning and was predicted to continue raining the next day), and then just had a walk around downtown. Was a very miserable day because it was raining and also very smokey from all the fires going on over here, but was nice to walk around and see things and start to get used to how things are done around Vancouver. Had to catch a bus back around 12-12:30 because I was getting head spins after not having slept for so long. Ended up having a 2 and a half hour nap before getting up and trying to work through some trip planning with Lily. I was useless at it because I kept dozing off so Lily did the bulk of it. Mitch and Pete came home around 4pmish and turns out Mitch’s mum had given up on packing and they’d gone to a brewery tour, so they both opened some beers and sat having a chat with us. Ended up ordering thai for dinner and having a few glasses of wine and learning a bit more about Vancouver from a locals perspective (was also nice because they obviously know and love Australia too so it felt like proper insiders look because they understood it from our perspective too). Pete works for Apple and Mitch works in marketing (maybe for google? I think, just based on her comments?) so Pete had the home set up like a smart home (without having to have it professionally set up) so he would just casually turn the TV on with his phone and pull up pictures on the TV from his phone about what we were talking about or provide background information whilst we were talking. It was a really fun night, and I’m grateful we got to stay with them.

    Day 2 - Sunday 26th August 2018

    Slept really well (10 hours! More than I sleep at home) but woke up exhausted. Another miserable day. We walked up to a cafe (about a 20 minute walk away) to have breakfast and then had a bit of a shop around and got groceries and what-not. Eventually walked back to Mitch and Pete’s and got back home around midday. Was chucking it down and cold the whole time we were out so spent a solid chunk of the afternoon just doing some trip planning (at this point we had only booked one night in America the rest was just loosely planned). Was still feeling really tired, so to avoid having an afternoon nap we ended up going for a walk about 4pm (was still overcast but rain had stopped). Went for a good long walk around the area and discovered there were some nice little parks that overlooked the harbour. Got home around 6pm and cooked dinner. Mitch and Pete were both at work (apparently if you’re not a workaholic in Vancouver then you’re not going anywhere worth going). Did some more trip planning and I tried to fight off the jet lag as much as I could.

    Day 3 - Monday 27th August 2018

    Slept rubbish - woke up a lot thinking it was morning and struggled to get back to sleep. Lily didn’t sleep much better - adjusting to having someone else around so almost every time I woke up, she woke up. Was a bit of a slow start as a result. Managed to get going eventually and stepped outside around 10:15-10:30. Was an absolutely gorgeous day. Caught a bus into the city and then went and hired bikes. Made our way to “Canada Place” and rode along the water front until we made it to Stanley Park. Had a few stops. There were Totem Poles which were the British Columbian Indian’s (a word I thought we weren’t supposed to use anymore but it was what they had written on the plaque) coat of arms that are created to represent either a real or a mythical event - eg one of the totem poles was dedicated to an ancestor who survived the great flood and gave the people the first canoe. It was pretty interesting but there was so many tourists (I know I know - us being there was contributing to the problem) that it was almost impossible to read any of the signs or get any good pictures. We didn’t stop too long there, got on our bikes and rode on. We had to ditch our bikes for the next stop and walk up through a bit of a first path to see ‘Beavers Lake’. It was pretty - but no beavers (nocturnal so guess we can’t complain). Apparently they think within a couple of decades Beavers Lake won’t exist. Water Lilies had been introduced to the lake in 1937 (apparently there were both native and introduced species of water lilies in the lake but there wasn’t any signs to indicate which was which) to beautify it (it was very beautiful, so I guess mission accomplished) but the waterlilies were contributing to the lakes rapid decline (my understanding of it was that because the lake was cut off from the ocean and any water sources it would naturally begin to shallow and then eventually the forest would reclaim the land, but the huge population of water lilies were increasing the speed of this shallowing). We stopped and had a snack around Beaver Lake as we could find somewhere in the shade. Wasn’t hot per se but the sun had a bite to it. Was cold when we were riding but definitely didn’t want to sit in the sun. It was only about 23º - made it a really lovely day. Rode on till we reached the “beach” side of Stanley Island and stopped for lunch. Managed to find somewhere that actually knew the difference between a cappuccino and a latte AND had vegetarian food. Was pretty tasty and nice to get off the bikes. Coffee tasted full of sugar even though I didn’t ask for any, but honestly was decent - better than what I’d had so far. Managed to get a seat in the shade that overlooked the water. Finished the rest of the park with a few more stops (at a lighthouse, once or twice to take a few pics of Lions Gate Bridge etc etc) by which time it was almost 4pm (Stanley Park is supposedly 10km if you stick to the seawall, which we had done minus a few detours and stops) so we headed back to the bike stop. Was started to feel really tired now - and sore - but was glad we had got through the whole park. Dropped off bikes and went and did some shopping/looking around in Vancouver. Eventually made our way back to the bus and headed home. Got home and did a lot more trip planning (the last of it), then had a later dinner around 9pm, packed up backs etc and went to bed.

    Day 4 - Tuesday 28th August 2018

    Another awful sleep but assume I will eventually adjust. Up at a good time as we had to be at Granville Island by 10:30am and needed to get all our stuff packed up and in the car. Took a bit of time getting everything sorted but then had a goodbye with Pete (Mitch was already at work) and on our way. Had to stop in and get ice as Lily doesn’t have a fridge but does have an esky. Just stopped in at a servo - sorry gas station - and then were on our way pretty quickly. We ended up a little bit like (3-5 minutes - nothing significant) as it’s difficult to find a park. We lucked out in the end and managed to get one in a 3 hour zone - which meant we didn’t have to pay. Met up with a group tour we were doing - I forget the actual name of the tour itself but it was a Foodie Tour (we walked around Granville Island eating food basically). We did a typical ice breaker introduce yourself, who you are and where you’re from and what your favourite food is. Everyone was from America except for one couple who was from Newcastle, Aus. Can’t escape Australian’s anywhere. First stop was a restaurant that served us surgeon fish, roast veggies and a sweet potato pate (keep in mind sweet potato’s in America/Canada are typically white, not orange), paired with a “breakfast wine” of pinot grigio. There was one women who laughed for about five minutes straight when the tour guide referred to it as a breakfast wine - apparently it’s easy to get your head around having donuts for breakfast but completely hilarious to think about having any kind of wine at breakfast time. Anyway wine and fish and veg was delicious (and just a sample size so enough to really enjoy it but not so much to be full (or tipsy) from it). Next was coffee. Shop was called JJ’s or something like that (because the owners name is Jonathon Jr). It wasn’t too bad but it definitely wasn’t regular coffee. The blend of the day was an ethiopian blend that had lemon and something else in it. Personally could really taste the lemon (Lily couldn’t get past the coffee taste but she doesn’t like coffee so not really surprising), and lemon isn’t something I’d necessarily want in my coffee every day. Still, was interesting and nice to try. Next was a bread place (A Bread Affair) where we had a cashew and flaxseed bread, and a cranberry and ….something bread. Both were delicious but the cranberry one paired with some cheese (the place we went next was a cheese and meat board tasting) was amazing and we were really tempted to go back and get some (ended up not - not sure what we can take over the border). Next place after bread we had a meat board. I obviously didn’t have any of this but Lily said it was all really good. There was a truffle salami on the board that she said was her favourite thing that we had on the whole tour so it must have been good. After the meat we had a cheese board - wasn’t anything to write home about but was still better than what you could find in the supermarkets here (nothing was dyed orange and nothing looked plastic!). Next we went in and had some fresh cherries. They were amazing. Tour guide told a story about how she now warns all her tour groups that cherries have seeds in them because she once had someone from America ask what the crunchy bits were (the seeds). Possibly made the story up to get a laugh but either way it’s easy to forget that fresh produce and a variety in your produce really is something we take for granted. After the cherries we had iced white tea lemonade, and then on to some honey glazed donuts (so delicious an dry favourite on the tour). After the donuts we went and tasted some traditional maple syrup which was incredible. Finished off with some almond dark chocolate snap (that’s probably not what it’s called by all I can remember about it was that it was delicious and the tour guide says they all refer to it as crack).

    After the tour ended we went and bought a few things (more donuts, some of the bread that we thought we could eat before the border corssing, some more of the tea) and then headed to the library. Printed out everything relevant for our trip to the USA (took a couple of hours to sort it out) and then headed on to our AirBnB in White Rock (just outside Vancouver). Met Gerry, got settled in, and then headed out to the beach to have dinner and watch the sunset. We were trying to finish off food before border crossing so just had egg sandwiches with avocado. Lily also had some alcohol she wanted to use up that we couldn’t take across the border so we had some red wine with our egg sandwiches. Bit of a step down from the food and drinks we’d had this morning but was enjoyable all the same. Got to enjoy being by the sea (no beach to speak of) and Lily and I had a good chat and catch up (that wasn’t focused on making plans etc). Went for a bit of a walk after dinner and then back to AirBnB just as it was getting dark. Gerry came and sat with us for a good half hour once we had gotten back. She’s a lovely older lady who had a lot to say and a lot of very strong opinions but she was never rude and luckily none of her opinions were too offensive (she had a bit to say about how bullying and “people killing eachother” can be tied back to the fact they no longer teach religion in schools but redeemed herself by saying “mind you that Trump isn’t helping”). She used to be a nurse, and her husband is an incredibly keen sailor. She says they used to sail from Canada to Australia once a year (or once every two years) and she really loves Australia and she wishes the people were more passionate about things (like the environment and recycling) because we have a near perfect situation to completely change the world (I’m putting words in her mouth but she kept coming back to how good it was that our country was made up from convicts and we could basically write our own rules because we “weren’t really a colony because we were outcasts” and we do a lot of things right but it’s crazy that we are so laid back about really important issues). She was really fun to talk to, to be honest, and she had some good tips and advice for our trip into Oregon.

    Will leave this here - will have to work on keeping these shorter. I feel like I haven’t said anything but also said too much so these will probably get shorter the further into the trip I get (when I run out of energy for them).    Read more

  • TravelerCanada/USA with Lily
    Day 15

    USA 1

    September 8, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☁️ 14 °C

    Day 5 - Wednesday 29th August 2018 - into Washington, USA

    Woke early but took awhile to organise as we knew we had to have things in order for the border crossing. Tried to sort out everything - ate a lot of fruit for breakfast to get rid of it. Still had to pull over at a “gas station” to chuck some things, but needed to get petrol anyway so it all worked out. Got to the border crossing and joined the queue. Took about 20 minutes to get to the front. The guy asked some questions, they scanned the car and took our picture, and then he gave us a slip and told us to pull over into the carpark and follow the directions of the guard in there. We parked and headed inside as directed and….stood in line for almost an hour. There was a heap of people inside waiting to be processed, some clearly foreign but some definitely American, so it wasn’t super clear what had singled us out to go inside. Anyway after waiting for forever we just had our fingerprints taken and did a retina scan and provided them with some more details of what we were doing and then were sent on our way. The whole process set us back about 90 minutes. We then stopped for lunch which was fine - just had some sandwiches at the first roadside place we could find (bought the sandwiches as we had no food after the border crossing). Drove on and everything as fine until outside Seattle. There was a three car pile up that had just happened so getting through took a long time (close to 2 hours). Thought we were on our way smoothly but then coming out of Seattle we hit more traffic. Another bad car crash but right as we were about to drive past it they stopped us (for five to 10 minutes) whilst they cleared the last of it and drove the tow trucks away (from what we could see it looked like two trucks had collided). That added about another 2 hours to the trip. About 6pmish we pulled over to have a breather and to grab some dinner. Also went for a bit of a walk to stretch our legs, get away from the car, and also because there was a walmart nearby so I could buy a connector for my phone (Lily’s car has an added stereo system for playing music from devices but of course it uses an aux cord to connect to it and apple got rid of the headphone port on phones after the 6 so my phone couldn’t connect to her system but she hadn’t prepared any playlists so we hadn’t been listening to anything really). After that got on the road and drove…and drove….and drove….and drove… started to really get to us about 10pm (me especially as the jet lag kicked in and we still had a few hours to go and I started to feel really sick and worked up about how long we’d been in the car) so we searched on the navman and found the closest accomodation which was an Inn. Pulled over and parked and asked if they had any availability…one room left. So lucky. The guy on the counter said they’d had a whole heap of people check in during the last hour. Maybe they all also got caught in the Seattle nightmare. Checked in, sorted ourselves out, tried to calm down. Managed to make myself sick but seemed to settle down after I lay down and had some time to chill out. Slept terribly but I sort of suspected it. I was too tired to fall asleep and didn’t get to sleep till about 2am. Woke up a lot throughout the night too. Anyway, at least the day was behind us and the bulk of the drive out of the way. Only had another hour of our drive left and the planned drive we’d had for the day was only about 40 minutes to an hour.

    Day 6 - Thursday 30th August 2018 somewhere in Oregon, USA

    Lily went down to the free breakfast and brought me back some food (awful American breakfast with sugar in everything) and I packed everything up. We got on the road in much better moods than the night before and feeling okay again. It was very overcast and a little bit rainy (but not enough to worry about). We made good time and made it to Fort Stevens (where we had meant to camp the night before) so that we could explore the area, which was our original plan for the day anyway. We walked to a shipwreck on the beach which, as Lily commented, wasn’t “even worth taking a photo of”. You would see one post remaining of the stern and some of the bow (in fact almost the entire remaining wreck was a tip of the bow). We did end up taking a few pictures just because we were there and then decided to go for a walk on the beach (we had thought we would have to hike a bit to the shipwreck but it ended up being less than a 3 minute walk from the car, so we had all our boots etc on ready to go anyway). Was pretty interesting walking along the beach to be honest. There weren’t too many people about probably thanks to the weather and the fact it’s a Thursday. There were some people flying their kites and walking dogs but to be honest it was windy and overcast and a bit miserable and I suspect even if the sun had been shining it still wouldn’t have been particularly inviting. Not that that would stop people I’m sure. There were a lot of dead things along the beach - dead crabs (torn apart presumably by birds), dead birds (not one or two, I’m talking at least 6-7 that we saw on our half hour walk), washed up jellyfish etc etc etc. Was interesting for us as tourists, but I can’t imagine living here or coming here as your summer beach location. I guess if I lived here I wouldn’t know any different and would probably think it was amazing - after all I have no complaints about Mooloolaba and we put up with blue bottles every year.

    After the shipwreck we headed off to our next location - Seaside, Oregon. A horrifically unoriginal name that made it really annoying to look things up about the area. I’m going to wait to post this until after we leave the coast (with the convenient excuse that we genuinely don’t have any good wifi at any of the places we’ve stayed) so that this doesn’t panic anyone - but along the Oregon (and presumably Washington) coastline they are almost more prepared for a tsunami than we are for a fire. As we came into Seaside, Oregon we passed a sign warning us that we were entering a tsunami zone. As we continued to drive through there were signs indicating “tsunami escape route”.

    We stopped for a quick, late, lunch - which was average. I had a caesar salad with salmon, Lily had a BLAT sandwich. My stomach is really struggling to adjust to the food. I’ve definitely felt off/not 100% since arriving because I’m usually really good at home (or just lazy) and mostly eat fruit, veg, sometimes pasta, rice, and fish, all home cooked and rarely eat out. Have been finding even buying groceries isn’t always a guarantee it’ll sit well in my stomach because of the sugar content. When I ordered my salad she asked if I was happy for them to crumb and deep fry the fish (SALMON!?!?! WHO DEEP FRIES SALMON!!!!) and I must have pulled a face I guess because I certainly hadn’t figured out what I was going to say before she quickly said “if that’s a problem we could always just grill it” which I was much happier with. Even so the salad came out doused in so much mayo it took me a little while to realise there was cheese mixed into it. Anyway it’s not as bad as I was making it out to be and it filled me up which is the main thing. Couldn’t handle the portion size and only ate about half of it but she happily boxed up the rest for me.

    After lunch we found our campground and upon checkin the ranger gave us a walk through of what to do in the event of a tsunami (wait out the earthquake and stay as low to the ground as you can and wait for it to pass, as soon as the tremors stop you can either follow the map to the closest tsunami meeting point or “you can do the sensible thing” as the ranger put it, and just run as fast as you can to the closest hill/mountain. They estimate you have about 20 minutes after the earthquake hits before the tsunami will hit land. The rest of the instructions are about what to do when you get to safety, basically wait until someone official tells you it’s safe - don’t just assume it’s safe after 20+ minutes with no tsunami and don’t just assume it’s safe after the first wave hits.

    Our campsite is an RV site because Americans love spending money on these incredible RV’s that are basically houses on wheels that they then drive around (sometimes with a car being towed behind) with and pay $100’s to park every night and however much to run, and no one in America seems to camp in an actual tent unless they have to. Certainly our site wasn’t partially well set up for camping - there were 10 camp sites (compared to hundreds of RV sites) and they were so small they told us we couldn’t park our cars in the campsite but had to pull in and unload and set up, and then move the car out to the carpark. Caused a bit of panic for us because we had been intending for me to sleep in the tent and Lily in the car but still right next to each other. We tossed up the idea of us both sleeping in the tent but it would have been a tight fit so we figured we would just have to deal with it. Set up the tent and then sorted ourselves out a bit. Lily started to get antsy because “we hadn’t done anything today” but I suspect we were both a bit worked up about the unexpected sleeping arrangements and now nervous about what the next 4 and a bit weeks were going to look like when so much had “gone wrong” already (bit dramatic but we were both exhausted still, everything felt monumental the later in the day that it occurred!). We ended up going down to the beach and going for a really good long walk. The sun had come out at this point and it was actually really nice - just a bit windy. It definitely helped us wind down a bit and then on the way back we grabbed some groceries for dinner. We ended up just getting a veggie platter (it was just a ‘tray’ with carrots, broccoli, celery, and snow peas with a tub of hummus) because Lily was still full from lunch and all I wanted to eat was some veggies without oil or dressing on them. We sat in the ‘clubhouse’ (which we laughed about endlessly because driving an RV wasn’t wanky enough you also needed to have special clubhouses to go to when sitting inside with your family and built in platinum TV and couches and heating got too much) and took advantage of the free wifi to do a bit of planning for the next day. Got pretty worked up at bedtime again as Lily set up the car in the parking lot and I had to walk down into the dark by myself to the tent. Got ready for bed and sat in the tent for about 10 minutes getting even more worked up like an idiot and ended up just taking a valium. Almost immediately calmed me down and I had a long moment of “you LOVE camping what is your problem?” because jet lag and the day caught up with me and I fell asleep almost instantly.

    Day 7 - Friday 31st August 2018 Seaside, Oregon

    Woke up feeling amazing - felt like the best nights sleep. Fitbit (when I loaded it later on the wifi) said I actually slept shockingly (woke up a lot and only had light sleep) but I only remember waking up a few times (when it started raining and any time I started to get a bit sore or cold in the position I was in) and I felt like I’d slept well which was the main thing. No doubt the valium messes with my heart rate a bit which makes fitbit a bit inaccurate and also one of the many reasons my doctor said to only take it when I feel like I absolutely have to! Most of the time knowing I have it as an option is enough to help.

    Despite the rain in the night it was sunny when we got up and actually a nice temperature. Lily brought her gear down to the tent and we had a cooked breakfast and just took our time a bit. After that we packed up (we left the tent set up but took everything out as the camping area was very secluded and we weren’t sure how safe it was to leave stuff there) before heading off for the day.

    Drove to Ecola Point and tried to do a hike to Indian beach, but the trail had washed away in a storm in 2016 (although the first sign we read said Winter 2017 so not sure which). Wound up on a beach anyway and it was very pretty, except lots of dead things again. We tried googling why and the general consensus is “don’t know”, the theory being tossed around is a virus or potentially a storm but from what we could see this is a phenomenon that’s been occurring since 2014 and they don’t believe a storm/bad weather would produce the number of dead birds that has been recorded. It put us off going for a swim though, that’s for sure.

    We ended up driving to Indian Beach and doing a different hike from there, going to a lighthouse lookout. We had been looking at doing a hike to Tillamook Head but it was going to be 4 miles. On the way to the lookout there was a WWII bunker (we think - there wasn’t any signs at the actual site but the maps indicated WWII remains and it was very bunker like).

    After we finished the hike, we went and got some groceries and then went for a walk on the beach to checkout Haystock Rock. Supposedly there are puffins on it but it was very sunny and whilst there were definitely a lot of bird life around the rock they could have all been seagulls for all we knew. Went back to the campsite and did laundry. We cooked dinner on the balcony to the laundromat and then went to bed.

    Hopefully will have this caught up in the next couple of days now that we have access to electricity and maybe even some wifi!    Read more

  • TravelerCanada/USA with Lily
    Day 16

    USA 2

    September 9, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☁️ 16 °C

    Day 8 - Saturday 1 September Seaside to Pacific City

    Today we packed up and had last last minute wifi checks to see what there was to do on the way etc before heading off to Pacific City. We drove along the ocean view road - similar to the one in Victoria I guess - and we had some pretty good weather so was pretty spectacular. We stopped at Hug Point and did a walk along the beach and checked out the caves and rock pools in the area. Was a bit overcast whilst we were there (cleared up by midday) but was still very pretty. One of the caves was an actual cave (and not just a hollowed out section in the cliff) and we had to get the lights out and crouch down a little bit to get into. It was pretty cool except that it smelt (there was a tarp in there so not sure if someone had been sleeping in there) and we were getting dripped on the whole time and then two families came in after us and it was too crowded for us all in there (not that they seemed to notice that) so we mostly just went in had a look and went straight back out again. Lily found this bit really interesting (because of the rock pools) and we did spend a bit of time looking at everything and exploring.

    We drove on and eventually stopped at a viewpoint to have some lunch. We just made egg sandwiches (we had boiled the eggs at dinner the night before in prep) and set ourselves up. Lots of people but not much respect for the area. People jumped over the wall and just walked around the view point (even right up to the cliff edges) but most people were pretty good and were in and out (stop for a photo and off again straight away). Some pretty stunning views but that was typical for the whole day (and it was starting to clear up whilst we were eating lunch so was extra nice.

    Drove on and made it to Pacific City. We weren’t super sure what our accomodation would be like - staying in an AirBnB so we decided to go and check in and the head out again after we knew what facilities we would have access to. Was a bit of a ways outside of the city (about a 20 minute drive so nothing too far) and navman really struggled to find it. We thought we had driven past it so pulled into the next available driveway….which turned out to be the place we were looking for! Parked and headed inside and was greeted by Irma, our host. She showed us to our room and showed us a bit of the house (she had a lot to say and loved to say it) before we got our stuff out of the car and got settled in. Irma loves antiques and history so the house was well maintained (she was very sad telling us that the original framework for the doorways had been stolen before she bought the house but one doorway still had the original framework that was all hand carved and she just had to show us).

    We went and got some groceries - just a premixed bag of salad, some croutons and dressing, and headed down to the beach to eat and watch the sunset. It was absolutely freezing on the beach, about 14ºC and very windy, but the sky was mostly clear and there was some rock formations out in the water and it was very pretty. Ate dinner and then packed it all away and went for a walk down the beach whilst the sun set. Stayed long enough for it to fall dark before heading off. As before, everyone can just drive onto the beach, and most did. Lot of idiots. The general rule I’m getting for America is that everything is against the rules but you can still do it anyway, it’s only a problem if it ends up causing a problem or if someone takes a problem with it. Eg there is currently a total and absolute fire ban in Oregon because it’s extremely dry (I think they might be in drought) and lots of wind (also, there are fires burning all around the West Coast so I imagine resources are stretched pretty thin - we have a heap of QLD firies, and presumably other states have also sent people, posted over here at the moment working on a big fire in Southwest Oregon and in California) but you can light a fire anywhere you want really so long as you keep in inside a fire bin/circle which is a portal mental ring, so everyone had them set up on the beach right next to their cars no worries.

    So as you can probably imagine that there was no rules for beach use and people just drove down because they could in whatever vehicle they had (no one let their tires down either or did any proper prep). Whilst we ate our dinner there was a guy who went around towing people off the beach (when they inevitably became bogged) and he probably made a lot of money doing it. There was a mazda 3 that got stuck whilst we were eating and they just about dug their entire way out of the beach so that they didn’t have to pay to get towed. After we had packed up the tow guy was working on a van. They were still working on it after we got back from our walk down the beach and had called in a bigger tow truck to pull him out.

    After the sun set we went back to the AirBnB. There was supposed to be wifi but Lily couldn’t connect at all and mine only worked some of the time and was slow when it did work. We put the TV on and managed to get the start of a Harry Potter movie. Watched that and then went to bed.

    Day 9 - Sunday 2nd September Pacific City

    Didn’t sleep very well but we were very cold so think that was why. Left our room and Irma was there talking to some other guests. She got us set up with breakfast - made us some pancakes and fruit and coffee and tea etc. Whilst we ate she talked to us about the house and furniture that she’d been collecting over the years (she had a lot of pictures of the original house she showed us as well). She told us she has a storage container full of more antiques and she rotates the furniture out every 6 months because she’s worried that daily use might damage it (as in she removes all the furniture and moves in the stuff from the storage shed etc and rotates it so it’s not being used all year round). She was most proud of a bedside table that she had found in Seattle that her daughter-in-law looked up and found out only 35 of them had been made in the world. Lily found her chatter a bit much for first thing in the morning (which, to be fair, she did have a lot to say and barely paused for breath, our only real input was to nod and keep eating) but it was all pretty interesting so was fine for me. She recommended a few places for things to do but admitted she didn’t get out much in Pacific City and her suggestions came from guests that had stayed their and it might have just been their preference/taste. She seems to be huge into her family (and probably a huge family to match), she was hosting a wedding the next weekend that she was pretty excited about and she had nieces or grandkids show up as we finished breakfast that she then fed as well.

    We then went out and got a few things (Groceries etc) as we weren’t sure we would have the opportunity later. We then went for another walk along the beach (Were it was still freezing) and then went and did some horse riding.

    Had a pretty good time horse riding. I think my horse was a bit overweight because my knees hurt pretty quickly from trying to keep my heels down and toes turned out. My horse, called Nasta, was definitely an arsehole. There was only one other horse in the group that my horse liked, called Pistol, but she only liked him if he stayed close to her but behind her. Which worked out well for the guy riding Pistol because my horse was the only horse Pistol liked as well - one of the others in the group had never ridden before and his horse went walk about and Pistol tried to bite him and nearly bucked his rider. The guys running the tour got it under control very quickly and kept us in a tighter line after that. Was still a good ride down the beach and then up into the dunes. Was chatting to the guys running the ride and it sounds like no one actually lives in Pacific City - everyone lives outside of the city and commutes in, and the area itself is for tourists. I’d organised the booking over email(which they don’t normally do - everywhere in America seems to want us to call them to book, which we obviously can’t do) and he was telling me we had gotten pretty lucky because they had decided to stay overnight in Pacific City the last two nights because they wanted a break from the hour commute and that’s why they’d been able to respond to my emails so quickly after hours. He seemed to think it was fairly common and based on what Irma had said that morning I would say it is pretty common.

    After our ride ended, we went and got lunch. We tried one of the restaurants and they told us there was a 2 hour wait for a table (it was 2:30pm at this point so we said no thank you and moved on). Ended up going to a place that seemed to be a mix of everything (I would have classified it as TexMex but they did fish and chips and chowder and things like that as well so wasn’t very clear). We only waited about 30 minutes in total (lining up to order and then for food to be made) so we were pretty happy.

    After lunch we went back to the beach and climbed up the massive sand dune. It was pretty horrific to be honest because it was so windy. Sand got absolutely everywhere and climbing up it felt too hot to wear a jacket but you didn’t want to take it off because you would just get whipped by sand. Eventually made it to the top and stayed up there long enough to take a few pictures before going back down.

    Debated doing another hike, but our poor nights sleep was catching up with us. We ended up walking through the markets for a short while and then headed back to the AirBnBaround 7:30-8pmish. Made some dinner (just using up the leftover salad mix from the night before) and then spent some time sorting out photos etc before having an early night. Lily had found some spare blankets so hopefully a better night ahead of us.

    Day 10 - Monday 3rd September 2018 Pacific City - Florence

    Had a much better sleep but got woken up by the sound of water dripping. Turns out someone was having a shower upstairs and had left the shower curtain outside the bath and it had flooded their bathroom and leaked down into our room. Lily went and let Irma know and it got sorted out pretty quickly (and was mopped up pretty easily with a few towels). Breakfast was a full cooked breakfast (bacon, scrambled eggs, toast, home made hash browns, as well as fruit and coffee and tea as always). I obviously didn’t eat the bacon but it looked like proper butcher bought cuts - it was thick cut and crispy and it’s probably the kind of would have liked back when I did eat meat. Lily says she usually doesn’t like scrambled eggs but she actually really enjoyed that breakfast.

    There were other guests at breakfast with us this time - a family of three, mum, dad, and son; and another couple - and we had a chat. They were all “local” in that they lived in the surrounding states (Washington and I think Montana? Got a bit confusing as they had all moved around within the west coast a fair bit and talked about a few places) so was interesting to chat to them. Was pretty funny talking to them actually, getting to experience how self-focused their education was. They had a lot to tell us about America - which we obviously appreciated. But anything outside of America was a mystery. For example, the family of 3 was moving to England in three weeks because of work and their son was super excited to “meet the queen” and asked if he could meet the king as well and the mother and father had a bit of a debate about whether or not there even was a king (because how did Prince William and Prince Harry exist if there wasn’t one but they had never heard of the Queen being married so there probably wasn’t one but England didn’t do that sort of thing - have kids out of wedlock - so maybe there was one after all?). We said the queen had married but he had recently stepped down from official duty (Rather than getting into a huge conversation about how the monarchy works and why they hadn’t ever heard of the king of England) and didn’t bother talking about the rest of it and they were very shocked that we knew anything about England and Lily said “Well we are still part of the commonwealth” and got some blank looks so I clarified “we basically still report to the Queen” which made a lot more sense to them for some reason. Sharp learning curve in their future.

    We then took off to pack and get sorted and then headed out (with a “quick” goodbye from Irma) and drove to Florence, Oregon. It was a pretty big drive (four and a half hours) but we broke it up with a hike in the middle and a lunch break. The place we hiked to was called “Gods Thumb”, presumably because it stuck out of the cliff side like a thumb and I guess because we’re in America and god is everything. It was a pretty intense hike but worth it. Was very windy at the “thumb” part of the hike and was actually a bit freaky. We made our own path at one point because we weren’t comfortable with how close to the edge the actual path was when it was so windy, and climbing the ‘thumb’ part was an actual climb (hands and knees to get up and our descent was very slow using hands again) …but was good when we got there!

    Carried on until we got to Florence, which was a nice town although we were outside of it. We checked into the site and we made the decision to get fire wood (they have a huge problem with the pine beetle over here so on top of not being able to just get your own wood because everything is a national park, you also can’t carry around wood you’ve got from one area to a different area so we put off getting wood unless we thought we could use it all in one night). This was our first site without any electricity so we thought we’d indulge and have a fire. After we bought the wood Lily decided it would be fun to go and get marshmallows and have toasted marshmallows for dessert - when I suggested maybe we have s’mores (since we were in America). Did a quick grocery run and have another drive through the old part of town before heading back to campsite.

    After dinner whilst we were making s’mores (which - for any one not familiar - is graham cracker, chocolate (usually a Hershey’s bar) a toasted marshmallow and then another graham cracker to make a little sugary melted sandwich) we had a racoon pop his head out at us from the nearby tree. Little reminder to us to make sure all our food was put away properly at the end of the night!

    We had a lovely view of the stars and was good to sit around the camp fire and reminisce. Then off to bed!

    Day 11 Tuesday 4th September 2018 Florence - Coos Bay

    Actually had a really good nights sleep before taking our time packing up. We spent a bit of time in Florence doing some admin work (eg we booked Salem and some of the mountain areas) before driving to Coos Bay. Went straight to campground and checked in and set up. Seems ‘sand duning’ was the popular sport and the main reason for the camp ground (literally just riding a quad bike in the sand dunes) so we were a bit worried about what our stay would be like and if it would mostly be people there to party, but it is what it is.

    Not a lot to say about Coos Bay - it was a very depressing area. We think it is mostly kept alive by the logging industry, but everything was very run down and not very nice to look at/drive through. Still, we had a drive around to check the place out and we searched for a nearby beach and went for a short walk on the beach. There was a lot of smoke around so we assumed there must be fires in the area, so we tried to not stay outside too long. As we were leaving the beach a large party of young people (can never guess anyones age over here, they could have been in high school or they could have been in college) were setting up a picnic and bonfire night so obviously the fire ban is in full affect here too.

    Went to a restaurant called Shark Bite and had fish and chips for dinner which was actually the best meal so far. You could tell the chips/fries had been made from real potatoes and not just from a packet and the fish was decent (crumbed but not deep fried). Also had coleslaw which was surprisingly good. Service was also really good - seemed to be almost the only restaurant on the street with customers in it but it was veeeeery busy, they could only sit us at the bar, so obviously a popular local spot. We then just went back to camp ground and tried to shower but half the showers were “under maintenance” (the doors were completely webbed over with spiders so not a lot of maintenance going on) and it was a single stream of water blasted out and no hot water. We didn’t realise until we were already in there using them, so I took one look and decided I was going to just use wipes to have a “shower” with and headed back to the camp site to wait for Lily, but Lily braved it and had a go. She got back to the campsite and I assumed her shower must have worked better than mine (because she had clearly actually had a shower) but first thing she said was “that was horrific”. Hers had worked the same as mine and she had mostly just splashed herself with water and breathed through it (the cold).

    The campground was a bit of a party ground as we suspected and it didn’t really quiet down until 1am. Still, it was somewhere to stay and it could have been worse.    Read more

  • TravelerCanada/USA with Lily
    Day 25

    USA 3

    September 18, 2018 in the United States ⋅ 🌙 4 °C

    Day 12 Wednesday 5th September 2018 Coos Bay - Crater Lake (drive - 4.5 hrs)

    Woke up pretty tired (understandably) and knew we had a drive ahead of us. Packed up and got on our way, but stopped at a starbucks for a coffee (for me) and hot chocolate (for Lily) as we were both running low on energy.

    Got on our way and spent most of the day driving (was four and a half hours to Crater Lake). We were a bit delirious because of how tired we were and we ended up having a bit of a karaoke day in the car (I had downloaded a new playlist on spotify called “roadtrip sing along” and it delivered a lot of wonderful songs we could be idiots about). We stopped and did a quick hike at a place called Watson Falls to try and keep ourselves awake and motivated (and to break up the driving) before back on the road to crater Lake.

    There was nobody at the gates when we arrived at the national park so drove straight through. Was some spectacular views as we drove along (we drove up and around the top part of the crater before coming down near our campgrounds). We didn’t stop, but there wasn’t a lot of need to as we got good views as we drove. A few times I had to just not look out the window though as they aren’t too fond of their roads having shoulders and I assume they can’t have barriers up due to the snow they get (Is that a thing? either way there aren’t any barriers along the roads). A lot of sheer drops directly beside me. Lily was frequently too afraid to look because she was worried if the car swerved even slightly that it would be all over for us.

    Arrived at our campsite and set up. Was very desperate for a shower at this point so we deliberately picked out campsite to be within walking distance of the only “comfort station” in the entire area that had showers. I suspect if we’d been staying in in hotels up until this point we would have been disappointed with the showers, but after the cold/no showers from the night before they were heaven.

    Warnings for bears everywhere and campsite had a bear box provided so I got my first crash course in how to camp where there are chances of bears. Was actually hard to get my head out of Australia-mode because at my apartment DMR never answered anyones complaints about the red back infestation so it has become a habit of mine not to stick my hand anywhere I can’t 100% see what might be there (I always check places I can see too, like car door handles and the bins before I touch them, always check shoes before putting them on etc etc) so had a bit of a phobia of opening the bear box because you need to stick your hand up inside a metal sleeve/slot and pull down on the lever inside the slot. Anyway I hated it every time I did it even knowing that we didn’t have to worry about spiders here.

    Had dinner, and then lit a fire and had another lovely night under the stars. A fair few shootings stars too, although we took awhile to realise we were likely under a very popular flight path (so many planes went over that had us wondering what they were). Lily made the comment “it’s not as cold as I thought it would be” which was the curse that this trip clearly needed.

    Day 13 Thursday 6th September Crater Lake
    Absolutely froze all night. I ended up wearing socks (I hate wearing socks to bed and don't even like wearing them around the house but this was a must), two pairs of pants, a shirt and a jumper to bed, as well as sleeping bag, sheet, and blanket doubled up. I actually was okay if I didn’t move (and kept the warmth cocooned) and kept my head ducked down inside the sleeping bag, but my muscles get very achy on the air mattress if I don’t change position often enough so was pretty hard to do. It wasn’t the best night sleep but also wasn’t the worst. I actually think I faired better than Lily did in the car because she had confidently cracked the window to get some fresh air, whereas I had a tent, and a cover that had a non-negotiable inability to crack anything. She said the first time she woke up from the cold she felt like she might as well have been wearing nothing. She put on a few more layers but damage had been done by the open window so not a very good night for her.

    Had a bit of a surprise/confusion when getting out of the tent in the morning. Was covering in white stuff. For a quick second - thanks to the cold - I genuinely had the thought “has it snowed?” before noticing that it was very ‘misty’ and could smell fire a bit stronger than just the remains from the campfire. Whole tent was covered in ash and so was the car, but no one else seemed alarmed so just set about having breakfast as usual.

    Set off to the information centre/visitor centre to get some ideas about what to do today and initially had the windows down to try and get the smoke smell out of the car. Quickly discovered that it was less smokey at the campsite than everywhere else (possibly thanks to the trees) and had to put windows up pretty quickly. Visibility was low and could smell smoke even with the aircon on.

    Checked out what was going on at the information centre and was told basically not to worry about fires as there weren’t any in the immediate area, it was caused by fires from around the larger area, some were lightning fires, some were expected campfires and there was only one big fire which was burning in southwest of us near Medford (Australia has sent firies over for that fire so it was a big one). Lots of warnings to be very careful about the smoke and smoke inhalation. Apparently the way to ‘test’ if it was safe enough was if you could see ‘clearly’ for 5 miles you were right to do whatever and monitor your own body, if you could see for 3 miles keep kids and pets inside but adults were probably fine doing nothing strenuous again just monitor, and it you could see for only 1 mile or less stay inside no matter what. Which was great for us because we 1) had no idea what 1 mile or 3 or 5 miles even looked like and 2) we had no inside to stay at. Debated whether or not it was safe to stay at Crater Lake but they were predicting it would start to clear up by midday and thanks to the colder weather it wasn’t unbearable. We opted to do some gentle hikes and see if it cleared up.

    First hike we did was about a 20 minute one and it was okay. Did a few others that were 20-40 minutes long as well. It was definitely harder to breathe with the smoke but it felt worse doing nothing because you just focused on it. Lily hated it because her favourite part about hiking is the views or wildlife/being able to see things. We couldn’t see anything on the hikes and not a lot of wildlife around. Not to mention she got out of breath on the hikes which she was horrified by. By midday though it was definitely starting to clear, and where we sat for lunch had a lot of chipmunks around. They’re very cute although I’m sure they’re a pest to someone.

    After lunch we did a hike to some falls which was a bit longer (just over an hour) and by the time we reached the falls the smoke was definitely clear enough to not impact on anything. Was a very gentle hike (almost all flat) so Lily was keen to do something a bit more challenging at this point. We hiked back to the car and drove to another spot at the top of the crater. Did a hike called ‘Watchman’s Overlook’ and it was pretty challenging (for me, not for Lily) — hiking to the very top of the crater. It was only about an hour but was well worth it, although it was still too smokey to see the other side of the crater clearly, we were very confident it cleared the 5 miles test.

    We debated staying to watch the sunset but there was a presentation/talk we wanted to go and watch that night at 8pm, and as sunset was about 7:45pm we thought it would be cutting it too close. Went back to camp instead and had a shower and cooked and ate dinner (where we had a little stellar jay join us for dinner, sitting on one end of the bench, and got to watch a squirrel preparing it's food for winter) and then headed over to the amphitheatre section of the campground.

    Talk was really interesting - about how Crater Lake formed and what made it ‘unique’ whilst also making it ‘similar’ to other lakes inside volcanoes. First thing we learned was that ‘Crater Lake’ is a misnomer. Craters are formed by meteorites (although I note the dictionaries have been updated to recognise these as ‘impact craters’ and allow that volcanoes can have craters too, which every other website seems to disagree with), volcano caused ‘craters’ are actually called caldera’s, therefor Crater Lake would be more accurate if it were called Caldera Lake. Mind you, Crater Lake was originally called Giiwas by the Native Americans, who were here supposedly 7,700 years ago and witnessed the eruption that caused crater lake (believed to be 100 times more explosive than the 1980 eruption of Mt St Helens). Then the whites came along and called it a few unbelievably imaginative and unique names (Deep Blue Lake, Blue Lake, Majesty Lake) before it was eventually called Crater Lake in a local newspaper article in 1869 and the name just stuck.

    I won’t bore you with all the other details of the talk because then this whole post would just be about Crater Lake, but was a really good one. The ranger who gave the talk was a retired geologist who was understandably very scientifically focused. Gave a lot of facts about the lake and discussed a lot of 'unexplained' things that they weren't able to provide answers on why it happened/how it happened even today, so interesting to hear.

    After the talk we were freezing cold (despite wearing heaps of layers) so a very brisk walk back to the campsite (About 10-15 minutes walk but the cold might have made me exaggerate that time). Lily went to the toilet whilst I lit a fire. Fastest I’ve ever lit a fire (I literally chucked down some newspaper into the fire pit without bothering to scrunch it, grabbed all our kindling and chucked it directly on top of the newspaper, three logs tipi’d on top of this mess and lit the newspaper in as many places I could). Took me less than a minute but was warm in less than 5 and that’s what I was going for. Patrick would be horrified but Lily and I were very happy with it because it was a lot colder than it had been the night before and we were dreading bed time.

    Had the last of our s’mores and stayed by the fire as long as we could. Eventually had to go to bed though, and we went quite reluctantly.

    Day 14 Friday 7th September Crater Lake - Smith Rock

    As expected, very cold night. I ended up wearing two pairs socks, three pairs of pants, two shirts, two jumpers, and wrapped a scarf around my head twice; as well as the usual ensemble of a sleeping bag, sheet, blanket doubled up. Was a very long night to be honest. The same principle applied of trying not to move all night but I found moving out of the warm patch was cold enough to wake me up regardless of if it was moving a leg or rolling over. One of the times I woke up was because the last time I’d moved I’d dislodged the blanket enough that it eventually fell off me. Put it back on and spent half an hour jiggling up and down trying to warm up enough to go back to sleep. I glanced at my watch around then and it was just after 4am and I was immediately relieved I only had to do this sleep-charade for another couple of hours. It probably would have been fine if we’d been properly prepared but the sleeping bag and tent were both summer gear and I had packed for late summer with some layers for colder days (I packed a few jumpers, a scarf, and some thermals and that was about it, I'd bought some stuff at walmart as well which is mostly what I wore in the tent because it was warmer than the stuff I'd brought).

    Anyway up and going at 7am, Lily slept a bit better with the window closed all night. Also went to bed wearing a lot more layers. Said she slept pretty rough but better than the night before.

    We headed back to a few of the places we’d been the day before (any accessible by car) to re-take some photos when you could actually see the things we were taking photos of. Then headed off to Smith Rock. We had also bought a bird book the day before because we’ve seen a heap of birds and had no idea what they were. I spent a lot of the drive trying to determine if we were looking at something interesting (luckily we usually were) or if we were looking at another damn crow/raven.

    We arrived at Smith Rock around 3pm as it was only a 3 hour drive (we also stopped for lunch and a stop so I could have a ‘coffee’ although I use that term lightly and had a few stops along the way to check the area out, as well as grocery stop and a stop for fuel). It was like we’d travelled to another planet. Was 32ºC, and duuuuuusty. Warnings everywhere to take more water than you thought you needed. We just did a gentle hike around the base area of the rock, which was incredible. Lots of people around but was still very peaceful. We couldn’t get over, though, this massive natural formation wasn’t in the middle of nowhere as it would have been in Australia (probably there was indigenous legends about it but there is zero respect or regard for that here, much like Australia 20 years ago and certain places of Australia today) but literally backed onto peoples properties. It was a national park but signs up everywhere about what was an okay place to park your car vs what was trespassing/blocking someones driveway. Walk was still very nice and you didn’t see any of that whilst you were in there. Kept our eyes peeled for a cougar (sighted less than a month ago on the same trail we were doing) but no luck. Lily was very disappointed, although we did see a blue tailed skink (we learned the next day that these are incredibly rare).

    We went to the campsite to set up first (about 40 minutes away) and then headed to the grocery store because we had been planning to make veggies, tuna, and pasta in a béchamel sauce but what Lily thought was flour in her food container turned out to be sugar. So off we went to the grocery store to get some flour. After that back to Smith Rock to cook and eat dinner whilst the sun set over the Rock. Absolutely stunning views, and dinner was successful (although had to be cooked and cleaned very quickly as we had less time than we expected before the sun set).

    Back to camp and on the way saw an owl (which our handy bird book tells us is a great horned owl) which we were pretty excited about. We made some plans for the next day, had a ‘shower’ using wipes as there was no actual shower, and went to bed.    Read more

  • TravelerCanada/USA with Lily
    Day 27

    USA 4

    September 20, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 16 °C

    Day 15 Saturday 8th September Smith Rock - Salem
    Woke up and got up as early as we could so we could get under way before the heat set in. Was another dodgy night sleep as it was still hot when we went to bed so falsely believed we wouldn’t need a million layers but temp dropped as it typically does in the desert and was freezing again. Also was super windy and the dust was fine enough that it somehow got into the tent thanks to the wind so I had really bad sleep apnea and three or four hours sleep. Lily slept a bit better although she had to keep the windows shut because of the dust so was pretty warm start to her night before the temperature dropped.

    Had breakfast and packed up tent etc and made it to Smith Rock by 8:45. Was still about 18ºC at this time of day so we set out on a hike. Took us about half an hour to do the ‘hard’ part of the hike, which was aptly named Misery Ridge Trail. I had to have a 20 minute sit down and my reflux meds once we got to the top as it had seriously tested me. I think the problem was that the entire thing was incredibly steep ‘climb’ up the rocks with absolutely no shade or shelter. A few points on the way up I wasn’t 100% sure I could actually complete it or not. Was glad I did though, and even more of a relief to watch from the top as everyone else (including the regulars who were there to rock climb) struggled with the hike. After I recovered we went on to a joining hike that was just a loop trail (that would take us a long scenic way back to the start). There were heaps of rock climbers and ‘slack liners’ - easiest way to describe slack lining would be like tightrope walking cross high ropes. They had harnesses on, but for the most part they were just walked across a rope bolted between two seperate rocks with huge drops below. We watched one incredibly impressive lady slack line what must have been 100 metres from one section to the other with nothing below. By the time she finished a pretty big crowd had gathered so she got a pretty enthusiastic round of applause. Lily and I were both very impressed but both agreed we probably wouldn’t (and couldn’t) do something like it. As Lily said, you would have to be crazy to do that for fun.

    After we finished our hike (about 3 hours after we started Misery Ridge Trail) we hopped in the car and got on our way to Salem. We stopped for some lunch for but then was a pretty smooth run on to Salem as we had just over a 3 hour drive to get through. Arrived in Salem and found the place pretty easily. Checked in and had showers (and skyped families each). I wasn’t feeling very well (heat stroke) so I skipped dinner and just did went through my endless photos, also booked some things because Lily was having a bit of a panic about things we hadn’t organised yet, and then had an early night.

    Day 16 Sunday 9th September 2018 Salem - Portland

    Got up and went to free breakfast, then got organised and did laundry. I slept really well, but Lily had been really worked up about organising everything so she couldn’t calm down enough to sleep so wasn’t feeling too good this morning. Afterwards had a drive into Salem centre and walked around. Not a whole lot to see and even less people around to see it. Supposed to be the capital of Oregon but it was super hard to plan - I googled “things to do in Salem” and the top 10 list that came up was all things in Portland.

    Went and got some lunch and ate lunch in the park. Was some live perfomances/music happening so stayed to watch. Was average, to be honest, but was still good fun and everyone else seemed to think it was awesome. We then got on our way to Portland.

    Easy drive - about an hour and no traffic. Checked in at AirBNB using self check in (just using a pin) and got ourselves a bit organised. Couldn’t get the wifi to work so ended up just driving into town to see what we could find for dinner. It was about 7:30-8pm on a Sunday night but it was absolutely dead. We found a park very easily (in the middle of the city) and there wasn’t anyone on the streets, and lots of places closed. Ended up at brewery and had some of their “late night menu” food which was actually delicious (marinated cauliflower and mac and cheese balls) and a beer recommended by the bar tender which was also really good.

    We also could use their free wifi to look up how we were supposed to connect to wifi at AirBnB - turns out instructions were on the app which we didn’t have. Anyway was easy enough once we had emailed the host. Back home to do some more planning, and then bed.

    Day 17 Monday 10th September 2018 - Portland
    Slept really well personally, but Lily really struggled (think she was over tired and then started to stress about not getting to sleep) but slow start to get going. Think our sleeping habits (and probably the travelling) were catching up with us as we were both exhausted despite having decent night sleeps. Eventually got going, catching a bus into town centre. Was supposed to be over half hour bus ride according to google but it was probably 20-25 minutes and was pretty straight forward. I really wish Brisbane would take notes on how other countries/places run their public transport because there aren’t many places I go to that have worse public transport than Brisbane (mind you to be fair, I don’t catch public transport if I can’t figure it out so maybe that’s my fault for not taking public transport in badly set up systems). Portland was very straight forward - a flat fee to ride the bus regardless where you were going (you could also use a hops card, or you could use your hops app to buy a ticket and show the driver, or you could even use apple pay, samsung pay, or android pay to buy a ticket as you hopped on). Bus stops were announced over a speaker as well as displayed on the screen as you came up to them and were titled based on the street they were on and the closest intersecting street to them.
    Once in town, went to information centre to get some maps and see if there was anything else recommended to do outside of the things we had already planned. We then grabbed a bite to eat from a street vendor (was AMAZING - was basically just an egg sandwich but best egg sandwich I’ve ever eaten) and headed down to a riverwalk. Based on reviews online and comments made it was a ‘must do’ location and I kind of expected something similar to Southbank - which turned out to be drastically over sensationalised. It was definitely a nice area, but a lot of homeless people had taken over the park areas, and under bridges, and the river wasn’t too nice to look at and was criss-crossed by these massive concrete and/or steel monstrosities of bridges. It also started to rain whilst we were walking along there so we probably weren’t in the right frame of mind to properly appreciate it.

    Our walk ended when it was time to head back into the streets of Portland and find a walking tour we had booked. Found it easily enough and got underway. This was one that went for 2 hours and it was honestly brilliant. The tour guide clearly loved Portland (had been born there and spent a lot of his life there) and history and enjoyed his job. The tour was pegged as an underground tour - both as a metaphorical term and as a literal term - as he talked about the ‘shady’ past of Portland and how it came to be (started out talking about how Portland was founded on the three “b’s” - beds, booze, and brothels, talked about ‘shanghaiing’ which was actually called crimping and how all these legends had sprung up about how the tunnels under Portland were built for crimping - which wasn’t true at all they were flood tunnels and you didn’t need tunnels for crimping because it was completely legal to do). We went back to the river walk Lily and I had just been on and he showed us all these little areas we had missed that were memorials for WWII. Portland had a huge population of Japanese - who ran local businesses and lived in the area - before the attack on Pearl Harbour. After, they were giving a month to liquidate their assets and sent to internment camps. According to the guide (who called the whole thing unconstitutional before he even told the story) Portland never really recovered and it’s only in very recent times that he’s been lucky enough to see Portland begin to diversify again (in terms of cultures and race), which really surprised me because even having been there less than 24 hours Lily and I had seen signs everywhere saying “In our America: All people are equal; love wins; black lives matter; immigrants & refugees are welcome; disabilities are respected; women are in charge of their bodies; people & planet are valued over profit; diversity is celebrated” - this exact sign displayed really proudly in front of peoples houses etc or store fronts. It was almost as common as the flag here (the flag was still horrifically common). A lot of stores had notices on their front windows “refugees and immigrants will always be welcome here” and things to that affect. So was really surprising to hear that it was a very white washed society until recently but I guess it goes to show that ignorance really is a choice for some when Portland appears to have risen above it without exposure (unless the interest in inclusivity was a recent movement due to exposure of different cultures and not an ongoing underlying ideology of Portland).

    After the tour we went back to some of the places we’d gone on the tour to check them out without a tour group around us, and then we went to one of the biggest items on my ‘must see’ list - Powells City of Books. There’s a bookstore in New York that Guinness Book of Records decided was the biggest book store in the world - but this was due to floor space and if it were measured on shelf space Powells City of Books would be the largest book store (new and used) in the world. We spent close to two hours here and in a massive show of self restraint I only bought five or six books. I honestly could have spent a lot longer there but we were pretty ready for dinner and having spent all day walking/standing we were pretty ready to sit down for a bit, too. There was a pizza place nearby so we thought we would go and check it out. Was actually really impressed with the selection - lots of vegan and vegetarian options, and everything could be made gluten free. Got two slices each thinking we’d never finish them (massive slices) but turned out to be hungrier than we’d thought and managed to finish both each easily.

    After dinner we went for a walk back to a doughnut shop our tour guide had pointed out during our tour called Voodoo Doughnuts. Portland seems to be a city driven by its food culture because everything has been really really good and everything seems to be popular. There was a line out the door and up the street when we had walked past it on our tour but when we went after dinner the line was much much smaller. Bought some doughnuts and then headed back to the bus for a trip home. Was a bit harder getting the bus stop right on the way back because neither of us had looked up which was our stop, we just hoped we could guess based on recognising it. We came pretty close, accidentally getting off the stop before. It was fine though and the walk did us good - had to earn those doughnuts!

    Day 18 Tuesday 11th September 2018 - Portland

    Slept well again but still woke up very very tired. Gave Lil one of my tablets so she ended up sleeping really well although she said it made her feel very out of it/stoned (I always feel like it shuts my brain up and I can function properly so I guess that’s a fair comparison). I really really wanted to go out for breakfast because of the food culture in Portland - I wanted to try their coffee and see what kind of breakfast options they had (see if they broke away from greasy and gross and sugared to something actually edible). I had searched the night before places to go and found what I hoped would be a nice one called Gigi’s Cafe. It was along the same bus route we had taken before so we got ourselves organised and headed off. When we arrived, the place was closed because they were treating their staff to a relaxation retreat ….which sounds exactly like our luck. We actually had a pretty decent laugh because it was closed the days we were in Portland only (except for the day we were due to leave it would reopen) and that seemed to line up with a few things that had been happening over the trip.

    There was a bakery nearby that smelled amazing though so we went there instead. Coffee was okay but breakfast was amazing again (omelette inside a croissant for me - Lily had similar but also had a sweet treat for after). There was no where to sit but one women shifted a few things around on her table and we pulled some chairs over and were able to share the space pretty well. This seemed to be fairly common as two more guests were also able to do something similar at other tables around us.

    After breakfast got back on the bus into town and went back to the information centre. We were doing a hop on hop off trolley tour that I had looked into and we just needed to find out where to buy tickets etc. Found in easily enough and had some time to do a bit of window shopping before the next trolley came along. It was a pretty rainy and miserable day so we were happy to be inside in the warmth until the trolley arrived, and then happy to see the sights from the shelter of the trolley. The whole trolley tour (if you sat on it from start right until the end) takes about 2 and a half hours, a new one starting every hour, so we had looked ahead to see and try and plan which stops we wanted to get off at as there wasn’t enough hours in the day to do them all OR to just sit on the trolley. We hopped off at the rose garden, which was gorgeous, and tried to do the Japanese garden but there was a fee to get in and we both felt that seeing as we have both been to an actual Japanese garden in Japan we would probably be disappointed with it after having paid to see it. Checked out the gift shop instead and had a wonderful time there too before heading back to catch the next trolley.

    Was really nice to hear the information and history about things around Portland without having to walk in the rain, and the day started to clear up. One of the stops we got off at was the Riverplace which was probably closer to Southbank than the riverwalk the day before with restaurants and art pieces doting the walk. We stopped in for a late lunch where we had jacket potatoes and I had a smoothie and Lily had a glass of wine and then went for a walk. Was much more scenic and definitely a nicer area with the sun out, although again pretty deserted.

    Ended up catching the last trolley back into town. Lily wanted to do a bit of shopping after that for some more winter gear, and we hopped we would be hungry enough for dinner after that. We weren’t in the end, so we caught a bus out to the Cultural District because Lily really wanted to see it. I had done a little research and wasn’t really keen but neither of us were hungry yet and knew we had to have dinner before going back to the AirBnB so it was a good way to kill time. It was a 30-45 minute bus ride to get out there which was easy enough to sort out. It had been raining again the ride there but stopped by the time we arrived. It was definitely a very artsy area - street art everywhere and the shops were more independents (no chains anywhere) and specialised/boutiques but most were closed. Again there were no people around, and no where to eat (we still weren’t hungry though so wasn’t a problem. We had a walk around and Lily bought some stickers (she is collecting them from her travels) at this one shop that was open. Was a bit of a highlight to be honest because the shop owner had his cat with him in store so Lily shopped and I got to make faces at the cat until she allowed me to pat her.

    Started to rain pretty heavily so we went and caught a bus back into town (another 30-45 minutes) but we missed the stop to get off at by quite a long shot so had a 20-25 minute walk added to the end which was fine. Still weren’t hungry (too many carbs at lunch probably) but it was getting late (around 7:30) so we just sucked it up and walked into a ‘pub’ although Portland doesn’t really do pubs the way Australia would. It was very high end and we were worried we might have been under dressed - but it was still a pub and whilst some people were dressed up there were a lot who weren’t. We got a cheese board and a dip board. It was really excellent, three types of cheese all locally sourced, fruit paired to match the cheese, the dip board had humous and tzatziki and a pita bread and a whole heap of veggies for dipping. Our waiter was also hilarious so ended up being a really good meal and despite not being super hungry it was all so good we finished almost all of it.

    Caught bus home, and then spent the night packing up/getting ready to leave the next day.

    Day 19 Tuesday 12th September 2018 - Portland - Mt St Helens

    Up early and on our way - a pretty good night sleep again but as is now the standard we were still tired. We decided to have another go at Gigi’s Cage which was actually open this time (hoorah!). It was really, really good. I had the waffles with veggie patties and scrambled eggs, and a coffee. Lily had a veggie hash and a hot chocolate. The coffee still had that slightly burnt taste that all american coffee seems to have but it was still a really good coffee especially compared to what I’d been drinking so far. Lily’s hot chocolate was ginormous but she said it was really good.

    After breakfast we went to Forest Park - which is an urban forest reserve. It was basically a forest in a city (although it was technically on the outskirts) and was really weird to hike through it and listen to natural sounds whilst also still being able to hear the trams and buses and cars. Was still a really nice walk though and long enough to feel like a good bit of exercise without feeling over the top. Started to rain as we were heading back to the car, too, so timed it well.

    An easy drive on to Mt St Helens, where we got groceries on the way and stopped to get some petrol. When we checked in there was some things we had to sign and they made us put on these wrist bands but we didn’t really look at it/pay attention to what we were signing. Later found out we had been saying we understood we were within the blast zone of an active volcano and knew the risks and basically wouldn’t sue or try to recover any damages if it did explode whilst we were there.

    Wifi didn’t really work but it was reasonably late when we arrived so we mostly just had showers/cooked dinner/set ourselves up and then went to bed.

    (most of the photos are on my phone so I've uploaded two of our beautiful faces and will add more when I've had a chance to load all my photos to my laptop)    Read more

  • TravelerCanada/USA with Lily
    Day 32

    USA 5

    September 25, 2018 in the United States ⋅ 🌙 1 °C

    Day 20 Thursday 13th September 2018 - Mt St Helens

    Didn’t get much sleep as it was veeeery quiet. Still up and ready for a day of hiking at Mt St Helens. Got super rugged up as we knew it was going to be cold. I was definitely regretting not being more prepared for ‘winter’ style weather but Lily wasn’t really prepared either (had left a lot of her winter stuff in storage). From what we can tell and from comments that people have made, it was unseasonably cold and the snow has started a lot earlier than usual this year.
    Anyway, put on the layers we could and drove to observatory, stopping at some view points along the way. When we arrived we had to do another thing saying we were aware of the risks of hiking inside the blast zone of an active volcano.

    Did a walk around of the information area and was all pretty interesting, I remember being endlessly fascinated by volcanoes in high school but it’s funny what you forget. Looks like Mt St Helens was a bit of a (costly) leap forward for volcanology. Killed 57 people (3 of whom were inside the predicted blast zone with correct permits saying they knew the risks of being inside the blast zone) but provided huge leaps forward scientifically - eg in the lead up to the eruption they were monitoring the volcano and there were NO gas emissions - eventually determined that the gas had been trapped which eventually built up enough pressure that when the landslide occurred it triggered the eruption; also there was a hummocks affect that had been observed around other volcanoes but never understood why they occurred until this eruption where they learned that it was parts of the volcano (large chunks that had exploded out of the volcano and landed on the terrain without breaking); also the crater collapsed due to a landslide - similar features have been observed on other volcanoes but they’ve never understood why volcanoes with vertical eruptions might form that way. It’s also been really good for them because they get to see how and why areas recover after eruptions. They predicted that it would take at least a hundred years for any significant recovery to occur but after 38 years it’s significantly recovered. There were lots of factors they didn’t account for (some plants actually flourish in carbon dense soil and when they have no competitors it allows them to ‘correct’ the soil thanks to being the only plant growing there, also they didn’t factor in gophers - which were hibernating at the time of the eruption - returning to the surface unharmed by the eruption and contributing hugely to spreading seeds etc as well as deer and elk. They also have been able to observe and document the formation of glacier (in the crater of the volcano where the sun can’t reach).

    We did a guided hike which was really good. Our tour guide, Brittany, is a geologist and had a lot of amazing stories to tell about the volcano and all the things they had discovered. It was a little frustrating on the tour though, because a family of four, also Australian, were on the guided hike and they would NOT shut up about Australia. Brittany was very polite about it but Lily and I lost patience pretty quickly. It’s made me examine every conversation I’ve had whilst travelling that’s for sure! It was always very unprompted I think was the problem, eg the father would ask how college in America works and Brittany would get a sentence or two out before he’d be saying “see in AUSTRALIA we do it like this” and then would talk about how Australia does it until the next stop when Brittany would have to talk to the rest of the group; and when he says Australia he really means ‘Melbourne’ and really he only means his experience with university, because apparently there’s no such thing as student accomodation and you’re required to study from home and there’s only like 6 universities to chose from unless you count TAFE but no one counts TAFE. He has two young boys so I guess he would know best.

    Also a struggle as the hike wasn’t really appropriate for the two young boys - they were pretty bright and seemed interested, but it was a long time for them to stay focused and it was freezing cold (started snowing pretty early on) so every time we stopped Brittany would try and keep it quick so we could keep walking, but inevitably the two boys would ask a thousand questions which she had already answered in her story if they'd been listening, which they didn't always have the focus for. She had to cut the hike short in the end as we ran out of time to finish it. Was good aside from that, though, and I’m sure I’ve been there and done that myself and had other tourists annoyed that I was there.

    Thought about doing another hike after that one finished but it was just too cold. Problem with the cold is it really zaps your energy, and we still had an hours drive back to where we were staying. Decided to call it a day and drove back. Lily struggled a bit with the drive - which was the first time on this trip - but we took it slow and made it back alright. Early night to try and get some energy back.

    Day 21 - Friday 14th September 2018 - Mt St Helens - Mt Rainier

    Much better night sleep, and packed up and drove to Mt Rainier. Relatively easy drive, and Lily was feeling a lot better. We wasted some time trying to find the closest information centre but it didn’t appear to exist (GPS said it did but unless it was in the back of a shop it definitely didn’t) so had to go straight into Mt Rainier National Park, where there was an information centre located at the very top of the volcano (slight exaggeration but honestly it was just windy up and up and up). As we drove in, there was actually a ranger at the entry booth checking passes etc and she kindly gave us some maps and directions. Was absolutely gorgeous drive though - Autumn/Fall really setting in. Whole drive up was a mixture of oranges, reds, yellows, light and dark greens, with snowy mountains in the background and rivers and water falls along the roadside…was stunning.

    Got to the information centre and had some lunch then dressed up a bit more to go on some hikes. Did a couple (only about an hour each) and both were really good. Saw some deer and a marmot and got a closer look at the volcano. There were some falls we looked at where the water was running white, and Lily told me about how the closer to a glacier that the water is the whiter it is, and then it changes colour the further away it gets until it pools into that super clean looking vibrant blue lakes/rivers we had been seeing on our way up. Obviously there are some exceptions to this due to minerals and what not in the water but it’s still really cool to think about.

    Bad weather was setting in so we didn’t hang around, instead heading off to find our accomodation. It was right at the entrance to the National Park (it cost a lot to stay there but was worth it for the proximity and it also had the added benefit of being the only place with vacancies when we were looking). Checked in no worries, the lady who checked us in was a lot of fun. She used to be an avid hiker and climber and talked us through a lot of different things she had done ‘in her youth’ at Mt Rainier. She was good to talk to and loved a chat.
    We had dinner, which was a bit of a mishmash of leftovers as we hadn’t had time to go grocery shopping, and then I skyped Emily. Was really good catching up with her and had the wonderful news that she was pregnant! Woohoo! 14 weeks, a girl, and so far all healthy. Thought it would be a high risk pregnancy but so far has passed all the tests (except for Emily failing the diabetes test which she’s really upset about but she did expect it due to all the problems when trying to get pregnant). After speaking to Emily we were just doing some organising for the next day.

    Was starting not to feel very well so I took a heap of vitamins etc including my elderberry which usually fights off colds before I get them, but sort of hoped it was just because we’d had the heater on (I’m really bad with heaters or air conditioners!). Lily opened a window and put a fan on for some white noise (another very quiet place so we were trying to be prepared) but I don’t think that helped me too much!

    Day 22 - Saturday 15th September 2018 Mt Rainier

    Had zero sleep, woke up feeling horrendous and was vomiting. Lil set off by herself for the day to do the hikes we had planned and I took a heap of medication and went back to bed. Was a pretty horrendous day but I really can’t complain, I haven’t even had a proper cold in awhile and I’m assuming thanks to taking the elderberry the night before I didn’t even feel that awful (took me most of the day to realise I had a fever - only realised because something had fallen off the bed and I had no memory of it doing so, so I checked fitbit and realised I’d had a 3 hour nap even though I really vividly remembered those 3 hours and must have just had a fever-dream the whole time). Lily came home about 4pmish and had gotten me a green tea which was the only thing I managed to keep down with any success all day and also was amazing on my throat. It sounded like Lily had had a pretty good day all in all, so was pretty sad to miss it although I knew I definitely wasn’t up for it. She saw a whole family of marmots and quite a lot of bird life. She went further than we had planned too, as well, because the trails aren’t very well signposted, but had to be careful of the weather (it was forecast to snow all day but it didn’t really hit until just after she got back). We were both really glad we had pushed ourselves to do the hikes the day before as it meant I got to see Mt Rainier and it meant Lily got to see a lot of it with good weather.

    I had a shower and took a heap more medication, including a melatonin which I haven’t needed in awhile but oh well. Seemed to do the trick because although I wasn’t miraculously better and I woke up every half hour, I managed to doze most of the night from about 10pm till 10am. Felt really sorry for Lily - she has a vomit-phobia so I think me being sick was just as traumatising for her. She kept asking if I’d taken my reflux meds (I had - no affect, as it wasn’t really reflux) and if it was anxiety making me throw up (it was definitely my stomach not liking food that was making me throw up), and I don’t think she got much sleep that night as she seemed to wake up every time I woke up even though I didn’t throw up again. Assuming it is a flu but hoping for the best.

    Day 23 - Sunday 16th September 2018 Mt Rainier - Seattle

    Woke up feeling like I hadn’t slept, despite the fact I knew I had. Was feeling a lot better (Actually felt hungry when I woke up) just exhausted and stuffy head. I stupidly hadn’t packed any cold medication (I actually did pack it at first and took it out of my medicine bag because “I haven’t used it in years”) so just took my elderberry stuff again. Lily emailed the Airbnb host to see if we could organise a second bed, just to try and keep my germs to myself, which he said he was happy to organise if we were okay with an air mattress.

    We drove on, stopping only to get lunch. We had some soup, which was a relief because it was about the only thing I felt like eating. I also bought some plain crackers to nibble on. Drive was supposed to be about 3 hours but surprise surprise there was traffic coming into Seattle. I’ll give you a moment to pretend to be shocked.

    Weirdly, as we started to come into Seattle, I did actually start feeling better. Still really tired, and my nose was still being annoying, but I started to feel a lot more motivated and actually up to doing stuff. We organised the next day, booking all our tours etc which took us a lot longer than expected, and then did a load of laundry each. Went out to dinner at a pub - had planned to eat out but it was deserted so we ended up ordering to-go and just coming back to air bnb to eat.

    Our host came home whilst we were eating and he had a good chat about things to do in Seattle - seemed really nice. We didn’t ask where he was from but he talked about when he “first came to Seattle” so had some good advice from a tourists perspective. He offered the air mattress as requested, but Lily wasn’t sure about how much space that would leave us and I had improved a fair bit that afternoon so she was less worried.    Read more

  • TravelerCanada/USA with Lily
    Day 37

    USA 6

    September 30, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 14 °C

    Day 24 - Monday 17th September 2018 - Seattle

    (posting this one day on its own as I should have posted it in the last USA post as after this we are in Canada again - so sorry for the short post! Except it's me, so it's not even short)

    Up and moving by 8 - feeling really rough again but definitely getting better. On a bit more of a schedule today as we had tours booked we had to be on time for. It was going to be an hour on the bus and take two bus changes to get to where we needed to be but only 20 minutes in an uber, so we justified the cost vs the time saving and booked an uber. We were in such a rush though that Lily booked an uber to pick us up whilst we were still getting ready because she was worried it might take them awhile to get there. Ended up arriving in under a minute and we had to run out the door half ready. This resulted in my leaving my jacket behind - but Lily had brought two so we made do.

    First up in Seattle we had a food tour. The one at Granville Island in Vancouver had been so good we were pretty excited to do another one. We met our tour guide - Kat - at the head office and got the usual safety course (we are in America, so we had to give her consent to save our lives by calling an ambulance or performing CPR etc if anything went wrong on the tour) and introductions. Once again, all American except us. We headed off to the first site - the Gum Wall. Apparently the second germiest tourist attraction in the world (the only one that beat it is the Blarney Stone) it is just a wall where people stick their gum to (apparently this started back in 1993). The story (according to Kat) is that it is rude to chew gum in the theatre so patrons one night just started sticking their gum on the wall on their way inside. Pike Place Market Preservation & Development Authority, who’s job it was to maintain the appearance and historic integrity of the market place, and whose office coincidentally overlooked the theatre, ordered the theatre to clean the wall. They did. The same thing happened the next night. Theatre was told again to clean the wall - they did. Third night it happens and the Pike Place Market Preservation & Development Authority tells the theatre to clean it again and they come back and say “actually, it’s on the outside of the building, isn’t that technically your job?”, and they were less than enthusiastic about cleaning it every day so they called it a tourist attraction and left it. This is all according to Kat, so I’m not sure how true or accurate that is but it does make for a really good story. They were cleaning it the week we were there (they clean it once a year now) to try and prevent the gum eroding the brickwork. Lily and I Were actually a bit grateful they were cleaning it because they were at the end of the week of cleaning and it smelt awful, no idea what it smells like usually but it was horrific.

    I won’t bore you with all the amazing things we ate (it was all incredible) but I will bore you with a bit of the history. Before Pike Place Market was created in 1907, farmers would sell their produce through a middle man. Partly due to the amount of time it takes to run a farm and partly because a lot of the original farmers were Japanese and couldn’t speak the language. Eventually the inevitable happened and the middle man jacked the prices up, charging the consumer exorbitant fees and pocketing the profit. They also ran a lot of scams (pretending there were shortages of certain produce so they could charge more etc) and the farmers only occasionally earned any of the profit, mostly they just broke even. Pike Place Market was created by the local council as a way to appease the increasingly angry customers and farmers. The farmers could set up a stall and sell directly to the customer. It was so popular that it took awhile for the supply to meet the demand (everything kept selling out by midday). It is one of the oldest continuously running markets in the world and is a heritage listed site (which means that you can only buy or own a stall in the market place if you are the descendant of one of the original market stall owners AND you work there - ie you can’t own it and franchise it to someone else). Unfortunately due to WWII, a lot (not all, but a LOT) of the original farmers were forced to liquidate their assets and move to an internment camp. To this day none of them have returned (according to Kat).

    Anyway, the food was amazing and it was really interesting to walk around learning the history.

    Once the tour ended we did go for a bit of another wander through the markets (there are 6 levels to get through so we hadn’t done all of it on the tour) before going for a walk to see if I could get myself a replacement jacket (weather seems to turn at night so Lily wasn’t sure if she would need two jackets - and she definitely did in the end). Managed to find an OP Shop although I’m pretty sure it was a chain OP shop and I’m pretty sure they’re actually called thrift shops here…any way got a nice jacket for a really good price and was pretty happy with myself. Lily also bought a handbag for a good price too.

    After that we had to hustle as we had another tour to join and weren’t 100% sure where we needed to be. Ended up finding it okay and arriving with about a minute to spare. The tour we were doing was called the Underground Tour - similar to the one we had done in Portland but obviously for Seattle. It was also pretty interesting, but the focus definitely seemed to be on the theatrics of it all so Lily and I didn’t enjoy it as much. It was definitely entertaining, but it ran shorted than we expected it to and wasn’t as fact heavy as we were expecting after the Portland tour. Also were a few things we wouldn’t have understood if we hadn’t done the Portland tour so weren’t super impressed with it (plus we spent a lot of time underground in the dust which did wonders for my cold).

    After the tour I was feeling pretty miserable because I was tired and fluey so we walked to our next destination (walking along the water front to try and get some of the view) and then just sat down for an hour in the sun. I definitely needed it and eventually worked up the energy to go to Chihuly Garden and Glass museum. It was pretty incredible the things they had done with glass and Lily and I were pretty blown away. Glass blowing seems to be an incredibly difficult art form and he had taken it to a new level.

    After the museum we went to dinner at a sports bar across the road. It was pretty rowdy thanks to a baseball game AND an NHL game playing at the same time (I have no idea if they were both live or not but everyone was very into it all and there were tvs everywhere so you wouldn’t miss a second of the action no matter where you were sat). I got salmon with potato and asparagus and I think it’s the first sit-down meal Lily and I have ordered on this trip that wasn’t drowned in oil. Was really really good. Lily got a burger and chips and said hers was pretty good as well.

    After dinner we had tickets to go up the Seattle Space Needle. Views were spectacular - could see right to Mt Rainier and there was no cloud cover for once. We stayed up and watched the sunset (about 7:30pmish) and then took some pictures of the city at night. Was just after 8pm so we decided to catch an uber home rather than try and figure out the bus situation. I think I was just too tired and Lily was too.

    Made it home safely, and just packed ready for the next day. We were both pretty nervous about the next day because we had another border crossing to get through - which was horrific last time. So we got completely ready the night before and tried to have an early night.    Read more

  • TravelerCanada/USA with Lily
    Day 37

    Canada 2

    September 30, 2018 in Canada ⋅ ☁️ 12 °C

    Day 25 - Tuesday 18th September 2018 - Seattle - Squamish

    Woke early (too anxious for a sleep in) and had breakfast. Sorted out the food we couldn’t take with us (fruit, again) and packed the car. I’m sure no one is at all surprised to learn we hit traffic on our way out - Seattle likes to keep its reputation. We were pretty slow to get properly under way because of this. Ended up crossing the border just before 1pm. Compared to the first time crossing the border, it was like chalk and cheese. We drove straight up, no lines. He checked our passports and asked a few questions (was more concerned about Lily than he was about me) and then waved us through. Whole process took 5 minutes.

    Continued on our way and managed to get lost leaving Vancouver. The navman has had a lot of issues on this trip (some of them we accept are user error but some of them are just stupid - like taking us one way so it can make us turn around and go the other). Only set us back a little, and made it to Squamish in good time. Once we arrived and checked in we spent a bit of time just recovering thanks to not sleeping very well and having a somewhat big driving day. Then we got ready again to go out. We went for a walk from the hostel (this was the hostel Lily was previously staying at and volunteering at) to the Chief (otherwise known as Stawamus Chief I think). Didn’t hike it at all - it was about a half hour walk from the hostel to the base. I was wrecked afterwards (still really feeling my cold) so we had a breather at the bottom. Lily did some stretches and then did some yoga - eventually I joined in once I was feeling a bit better.

    When the sun started to set we walked back and then walked and got some groceries. The clouds in the area cleared up and we got some beautiful views of the mountains (it was a fine day just some clouds around the mountains until this point). Cooked dinner and then went to bed.

    Day 26 - Wednesday 19th September 2018 - Squamish - Kamloops

    Made sure we didn’t dawdle in the morning and got on the road. It was a four and a bit hour drive to Kamloops so we didn’t want to ‘waste’ time. We took a bit of a detour for lunch because Lily knew this cafe that was apparently really good. I was pretty happy with it but Lily says it was better last time she was there and she wasn’t too impressed with it this time around. I have to admit I got really stressed when paying because I usually pay in percentages but it didn’t give me that option this time and I had to try and calculate in my head on the spot how much to tip (needless to say I overtipped just to be safe).

    We arrived and checked in easily. Weren’t super impressed with the accomodation - it was one big room with a bathroom and the windows didn’t open and you couldn’t keep the blinds open because it looked straight out onto the hallway. We decided to walk to the grocery store to get dinner because it was about a 25 minute walk away and we figured it might help us wind down.

    Definitely helped us feel better. We watched TV (we have been endlessly watching ‘Law and Order’ because it’s the only American show they seem to play that doesn’t horrifically irritate one or both of us) and then headed off to bed. We put the aircon on the fan setting - weren’t sure what else to do. I knew it would agitate the remains of my cold and Lily thought she might be fighting off a cold and was worried about having it on too, but there was no air getting into the room otherwise so we took a gamble.

    Day 27 - Thursday 20th September 2018 - Kamloops - Revelstoke

    I woke up feeling actually pretty okay. Lily woke up feeling not so good - said she couldn’t sleep very well and as expected the aircon had messed with her sinuses and she’d had to get up and have an antihistamine to see if she could get it to stop. Still, we got up and went to the breakfast provided by the hotel. Was very cold outside but this was probably more noticeable because it was very stuffy in the room (even with the aircon being on). Ate breakfast and then packed up ready to go. Was pretty quick as I hadn’t brought all my luggage in, just an overnight bag and Lily had also brought in the bare minimum.

    Was raining as we left, and continued to rain for the rest of the day. Arrived at Revelstoke quite early so went and ate lunch. We also went to the information centre to see what hikes we could do in the area either that afternoon or the next day.

    Went and checked in at 3pm and decided to just have a ‘day off’ because Lily hadn’t slept well and I was still getting over my cold. We went out to get dinner and sort out food for the following day but otherwise had a quiet one and an early night.

    Day 28 - Friday 21 September 2018 - Revelstoke

    Slept a lot better. Ummed and ahhed about how warm to dress - it was 14ºC outside and it is always a lot warmer when hiking but it was raining and we knew it was going to be colder on the hike we were doing as it was up a mountain. Erred on the side of caution and layered up as much as we could. Ended up being a very good decision as whilst we were driving up the mountain (about an hours drive) it started to snow. Continued to snow right up until we parked. Ended up eating our lunch in the car (we were very hungry and there were bears in the area so we didn’t want to carry food with us on the hike if we could help it).

    We struggled to motivate starting the hike as it was still snowing and even with all our layers we were still cold. I was really annoyed with myself for not buying gloves (I had bought a beanie and had brought a scarf from home for the flight and then got a lot of use out of!) but found that once we got going we warmed up enough that it didn’t matter too much. I was still feeling the affect of my cold (which I was very cranky about and impatient about because it was starting to feel endless even though I couldn’t complain seeing as I’d only missed one day of activities because of it) so was pretty miserable initially. It got a lot better once we hiked higher into the mountains ironically because it got colder - the snow became less slushy and ended up being a really really incredible experience (for me, anyway, although I think Lily really enjoyed it too). It was absolutely silent thanks to the snow, and just a completely different atmosphere because of this. Also helps that it was beautiful.

    We did a few different hikes once we had reached a higher point in the mountain and had some of the history of the area. Was a little disappointed that the cloud cover was so low - we didn’t see a lot of the views that were supposed to be amazing - but wouldn’t have had the snow experience if they weren’t so low so I guess you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Still got to learn about some Native American history and read up on the area.

    We finished up and headed back to the hike that would take us back down the mountain to the car. Noticed a sign about bears and stopped to have a quick read - it was asking people to not take the path back down to the carpark as there were bears in the area and to please take the shuttle bus back. Lucky we saw the sign after we had already hiked it (the same sign was at the bottom). Took the risk and hiked back down and was absolutely fine (we think we have natural animal repellent as we’ve seen nothing this trip - which is not completely true but feels like it when I think how much I saw last time I was in America!).

    Decided to treat ourselves on the way back and stopped at Tim Horton’s for a hot chocolate and a sweet treat. I’m not the biggest fan of hot chocolates and this wasn’t anything to write home about, but a hot drink was definitely something we needed and the sugar was definitely needed after shivering our way through however many hours of hiking.

    Another early night because we were pretty exhausted after being in the cold all day (and me from hiking - I don’t think Lily gets tired from hiking at my pace but I definitely do!).

    Day 29 - Saturday 22nd September 2018 - Revelstoke - Canmore

    I slept well but my nose was making me pay the price of being out in the cold all day the day before. Not that my cold felt worse, just a bit stuffy. Lily woke up in an absolutely terrible mood but she wasn’t sure why. Told me she slept fine so not sure. Probably just run down and to be fair travelling can be exhausting and she was doing 90% of the work by doing all of the driving. We had a quiet morning and a quiet drive to Canmore. We stopped at some falls - Takakkaw falls. Lily had done these with Helen and Peter and wanted to see how different they were when it wasn’t summer. It was raining and quite cold but it was still fine (for me). Lily said they were less impressive than the last time she had been there, much less water.

    We were going to stop at Lake Louise but it was raining and Lily wasn’t in the mood so we drove on to Canmore. It was still relatively early when we arrived so we went to do a hike nearby at Grassi Lakes. Was a pretty easy hike - made harder by my lingering cold and snow on the ground. I also managed to roll my ankle on the way down which set my back off so I was a bit nervous about how my back was going to recover. The hike itself was nice though and the views were incredible. The rain had stopped whilst we did the hike and whilst it was overcast it didn’t obscure the view.

    After the hike we went to Sharon’s (the place Lily had been renting when she was living here) who was kind enough to let us stay for our time in Canmore. No one was home when we arrived so we just got ourselves set up. We were going out that night so decided to have showers straight away - apparently the bathroom backs onto Sharon’s room so it wouldn’t be an option to have a shower when we got home.

    Still no one home by the time we left - headed off to go to some hot springs. Some of Lily’s friends met us there too. Was pretty incredible to be honest - the hot springs were about 40ºC in the water but it was cold enough outside that there was snow on the ground. It started raining whilst we were in there and I think it might have actually been snowing and then melting when it got close enough to the water. Was pretty fun but couldn’t stay in for too long (think we managed to last about an hour all up). Went and got dinner and one of Lily’s friends came along (Samantha). Lily worked with Samantha at Origin so they had a pretty good catch up.

    We went to a restaurant called ‘The Elk’ which I think the selling point was that they made elk burgers etc but obviously no good to me. Had a veggie burger which was honestly pretty good. Got home around 10:30-11pm and was absolutely exhausted to went straight to bed. Lily stayed up a little later and skyped parents but then went to bed as well.

    Day 30 - Sunday 23rd September 2018 - Canmore

    Woke up having slept very well - think Lily was the same. Sharon was home and up this time so we had a chat with her (Lily had a proper catch up and I was introduced etc). We then got on our way. We stopped at the library so Lily could print and prep some documents for her travels after our trip ended and then we stopped to get some lunch and snacks.

    Was a bit of a struggle to find some things to do that didn’t require equipment (it was very early in the season for it to be snowing - Sharon complained because usually September is the best month of the year because it’s very crisp out but also very sunny) but Lily had a hike she wanted to do to Taylor Lake that she’d wanted to do for awhile and she says it was rated as easy to moderate so we thought it would be fine without equipment. I have actually just looked it up whilst writing this to confirm the name and would like to note that it is rated DIFFICULT on the website I just looked up!!!! It claims to be 6.3km one way but fitbit says I had done 20.2km by the time we had gotten back to the carpark (some of that was from walking around this morning but that likely only contributed 2-3 km or less so I think they misjudged!!!).

    I found it incredibly difficult to do. Thanks to the snow and rain the whole track was mud, so we had some very slow and careful walking which was horrific for my back. It took a lot of core strength to stay balanced and had to try and stand off to the side any time we passed people. Got even worse the closer to the top we got as the mud turned to snow and ice and was difficult to remain upright. I really struggled mentally because my back was hurting so much and I wasn’t sure if I could do it (was also miserable because you had to focus the whole time because of the uneven terrain and I usually love mentally switching off on hikes and just enjoying the scenery etc so struggled on the way up).

    Also had the fun part that it took a lot longer than expected because we had to go slow. We didn’t reach the top until 4pm - and we hadn’t had lunch before we left because we were expecting to arrive more like 2pm to eat at the top. Was very hungry when we arrived at the top and we were both surprised to find we were freezing. We had stripped off during the hike as it was very hard work. By the time we stopped to eat I realised I couldn’t move my arms and fingers they were so cold. Immediately put on all the layers we’d brought but was very surprised that the cold had snuck up without either of us noticing.

    The view at the lake was incredible and with the hardest part of the hike behind me I was actually feeling a lot better. All my complaints above aside it was very beautiful landscape and I knew I would have enjoyed it a lot if my back wasn’t hurting so much. We didn’t spend a lot of time up the top as it had taken us so much longer than we expected. Was definitely faster going back down but to be honest I also think it was harder. A lot of sections I would generously call a controlled slide more than a hike down. The ice was a lot harder to navigate. I was a lot better on the muddy sections on the way down because it was easier to see good places to step down so I managed to keep up with Lily almost the whole way down. Had to stop a few times to stretch out my back as I was really struggling. Had to take my backpack off a few times too as it was even travelling up my back to my shoulders. Was really happy with myself though when we got back to the car - my mental game with my back is always the biggest problem. My physiotherapist says that sometimes my back pain is psychosomatic - sometimes it hurts because I think it should be hurting or it hurts because I expect it to hurt. Typically any time my muscles around the area of the injury get overworked I tend to struggle with the pain. To be clear - the pain is real, but it should be treated like the sort of pain you should push through like sore muscles. Was happy I’d managed to push through it and sure enough by the time we got home my back wasn’t even hurting any more (everything else was pretty sore still though!).

    Organised to Skype home, and then went grocery shopping for dinner. Had salmon and veggies because I was craving it and put on a movie. Just as we were finishing dinner, message from home about dad falling off ladder.

    Won’t go into the details but Lily was a wonder as she really helped keep me calm. Both stayed up until I was able to Skype mum and Kelsey (about 1am) and then took a valium (me) and went to bed.

    Posting this as I'm about to board plane so will have to post the last week when I get home. Will also have to load photos when I get home as the wifi here isn't quick enough to load them!    Read more

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