Leaving Alaska apparently did not mean that I would stop traveling for a while because Ma Conchelos and I had planned a much needed mother/daughter west coast road trip. En route to said road trip, I decided to visit old friends in Vancouver as they were fairly abundant there. Below are photos of my comrades.
Above: Dawn on the ukulele
Above: Heather, me and Genevieve
Gen and our all-you-can-eat-sushi receipt. Okay, so the sushi followed closely behind my friends as a reason to stop in Vancouver. I don't know if the receipt is legible enough but all of that cost us $30. Absolutely brilliant except that we may have had to stagger home feeling a little unwell afterwards.
Friends of Gen and I. Leah on the left has recently moved to Halifax, which I'm jealous about. And Graham on the left is a friend that I met in Halifax who currently lives in Vancouver.
Gen and I. We've known each other for twenty-two years!Seattle to San Francisco
From Vancouver, I caught the bus to Seattle where I met up with Ma (Mary) Conchelos, after a much delayed flight. We stayed with a friend in West Seattle (I think) with a great view of the sound. Sue also gave us a great tour of the city during our stay. These houses below were down the street from Sue.
During our brief stay in Seattle, we met up with my friend Frank who had been my hiking partner in Denali. He lives in this funky part of Seattle called Fremont which really seemed too good to be true with art everywhere. They have a pretty fun website if you want to check it out http://www.fremontseattle.com/.
So Frank gave us a tour of Fremont after we met up with him and his folks (visiting from Germany) at the Lenin statue. I mean, of course there's a statue of Lenin in this hip hip city. As an aside and being that I'm currently back in Antarctica, I should mention that, of course there is also a bust of Lenin at the Pole of Inaccessibility in Antarctica (http://www.stuff.co.nz/4344635a10.html).
Seattle is a mecca for cyclists of course and when we went to the Ballard Fish Ladder to visit with the ambitious salmon, we came across this sweet ride.
Below: Salmon at the Ballard Lock
Below: Lilies by the lochs.
And now I find myself back at the South Pole which means internet time is limited and slow and blog updates will probably be even more sparse. Should have finished this one while I had all the interweb access in the world I suppose....
These photos below were taken at the sculpture park in Seattle. A really remarkable place to wander around. The image below was covering this huge wall in the entrance building.
This one is of the city, taken through glass that had images of clouds superimposed on it in different colors. The panes of glass ran along the length of a walkway that ran over the railroad tracks.
Pike Place Market. This is the stand (or maybe one of the stands) that guys throw fish around at.
From Seattle, mom and I rented a car and headed into Eastern Washington and down to the Columbia River. Below are some sights from the road of the vast and very flat landscape. What a difference when you drive over the divide, leaving the lush green for this arid landscape.
Yes, we rented a prius.... so hot! Though I'm still convinced the mileage wasn't what they claim.
Bridge over the Columbia River
We stopped, too briefly in Portland, Oregon and hit the key location, Powell's Books, where I would be happy to live in a corner and read the days away.
Then, we drove over to the coast, meeting up with some old trail crew friends on a beach near Florence. Sometimes I really have my doubts about cell phones and then there are the unknown health issues but they do become convenient when two people are on the move and trying to meet up in random locations! Below is one of the bits of whale we saw near Depot Bay. We pulled up at a bluff to get take a photo and ran into a retired couple there that was parked at Depot Bay for a month, counting whales. They had gotten off duty an hour earlier and so they headed down the road a mile to this location to, yes, count more whales! What a great volunteer opportunity.
I'm not sure exactly where some of these photos are except to say that they're on the southern Oregon coast.
Lighthouse near Depot Bay
This boat, the Mary D. Hume, came home to rest in Gold Beach, Oregon. She served as support to a cannery and, I believe, was used as a whaling vessel in AK. She has an interesting history and her story can be found at http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2264.htm.
And then we arrived at the big trees in Northern California. We drove down that oh so windy coast, admiring these huge beasts which dwarf their eastern relatives.
I think we saw these elk somewhere near the Avenue of the Giants. What you cannot see on the right is the house that they are parked next to and the twenty folks taking pictures. These guys were unfazed.
Not sure where the picture of the car coming out is but this is one I took while driving through one of the big trees. It wasn't far from Mendocino and was possibly worth the $5 we paid. The bathrooms, however, were attrocious. Glad I wasn't in an SUV and I wonder if they keep cutting the square whole bigger as our vehicles get bigger.
Our last stop before San Francisco was in Mendocino to hang out and visit with my friend, Brian. Before a schedule change, we had planned to stay at Jug Handle Creek Farm and Nature Center which is up the road from Mendocino, in Casper. We stopped by to visit and what a great place. They put people up in the house and these funky outbuildings (see below) and school groups come out and learn in the nature center. http://www.jughandle.creek.org/about_us.htm
Jug Handle's resident wild turkey population is below
Coast by Mendocino
Brian and I (and Abby the dog)
Me and mom braving the cold water.... as children frolicked in it, evidently without freezing.
And our last stop was Berkely/ San Francisco. We stayed with mom's cousin in Berkely and spent only one day in the big city. The trip was a tad short for all the ground that we covered. A little bit of a scheduling error on my part. But we did get a good and tiring ramble around San Fran. So bloody hilly!
A family friend, Gerald, met us in Berkeley and gave us a wonderful tour or part of downtown San Francisco. I don't think we'd seen him since 1985!
This was probably my favorite part of the city. It's the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. How's that for a mouthful. They have a collection of historical vessels that you can go aboard. They also have a restoration program and people were working on painting and rigging while we were there. Also, a school group had just shown up to spend the night on board one of the ships and were getting oriented as though they were new hands on the boat. I don't know if they had to swab the decks but they did have to learn sea shanties in preparation for the trip. http://www.nps.gov/safr/
The Golden Gate Bridge
All the bikes parked at the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station in Berkeley.And there you have it, some photos from a whirlwind trip down the coast. It's interesting looking at these photos of lush green landscapes now that I'm back in a barren white one!
