Twilight

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Today we pulled out of Portland, made a pit stop at a foggy Mt. St. Helens, before dropping our luggage at the night’s hotel and heading into downtown Seattle to return the rental car. After one last tour through Pike’s Place Market and impromptu stop at the Elliot Bay Bookstore Café, we took a somewhat shady bus ride back to the hotel and here we sit. Tomorrow we return to the Midwest: for me, it’s just a rest stop before next week’s NYC trip; for Andy, it’s the return to home and everyday life.

Saturday’s rest day proved highly effective: it’s been a busy couple days. On Sunday we had a chance to catch up with a friend. After brunch in a restored Victorian house, we headed out to the Multnomah Falls. Located about a half hour outside of in the Columbia River Gorge, Multnomah Falls attracts pretty much every Oregonian and their grandma on a sunny Sunday. On the ride out to the falls, we caught a great glimpse of Mt. Hood in the distance. Unfortunately, the pictures Andy snapped of the mountain turned out about as well as my pictures of Mt. Rainer from my Sept. 2008 trip to Seattle.

I swear, there are mountains in those pictures . . . somewhere.

While it certainly wasn’t meant as such, this trip’s turned into something of a Twilight trip. Multnomah Falls which plunges 542 ft and then another 69 ft makes a cameo appearance in the Twilight film during the baseball game.

It’s a steep mile-long hike with 11 switchbacks to get to the top of the cliff where the fall makes its dramatic drop. Wood sorrel and trillium dots the cliff's side.

Headed back to the guesthouse for a round of National Parks Monopoly and a cookout in the backyard.

We weren't quite done with the Columbia River Gorge. Yesterday we did a circle tour of sorts, out of Portland, down around Mt. Hood and back up into Portland via the Columbia River Gorge. Although it was apparently snowing on top of Mt. Hood - we didn't get spectacular views, we had some nice hikes in the Multnomah Falls: one at the Horsetail Falls where you actually get to hike underneath the rock the waterfall plunges off of and another short poke through a gorge.

Had a lovely dinner at Jake's Famous Crawfish in downtown Portland last night. Today we took a slight detour to see some Mt. St. Helens stop. It was far too foggy to see any of the blast zone (a real pea-souper, so to speak) but we had a nice stop at the interpretative center near Silver Lake. We will have to go back sometime when the view is better.

We've seen a ton over the last week and a half. I'm anxious for a chance to catch my breath, but there's a part of me that sad to see the trip end.

Rainy Woods and Snowy Words

Thursday, April 8, 2010

It’s a scientifically proven fact: you can take the girl out of Minnesota, but the snow is going to come with. As a somewhat naïve college sophomore heading off on a semester in Ireland, I was determined that a spring semester (February – May) would be a breeze compared to the Minnesotan winters I’d been experiencing for 19 years. I was wrong. 35 degrees and rain is cold when all you have is a sweater and a rainjacket to shield you from the dampness. This is evidenced by the Hard Rock Café sweatshirt I bought that February in Dublin when it started to snow and I found myself a wee bit chilly. It didn’t just snow in Ireland though: snow swirled through the Parisian Boulevards on one weekend trip, a foot of snow fell while I was in Germany and my April weekend in Yorkshire also saw snowy hillsides. I have seen snowmen in Hyde Park. On Tuesday, it spat snow on us at the top of Mt. Constitution on Orcas Island. So I was not at all surprised to watch the beach that looked like this:

Transform into this a few moments later:

Whatcha gonna do?

The snow is more an amusing phenomenon than an annoyance or a hindrance. Sharp little hail pellets sent us running for shelter a couple times today, but other than that the snow had little impact on our day.

Yesterday turned into a transit day. We took the ferry from Seattle to Bainbridge Island and after a bookstore and bakery stop in Winslow, we hit the road to the Olympic Peninsula. After a brief stop at the Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center in Port Angles, on the north side of the Olympic National Park, we continued on our anti-clockwise tour of the peninsula. We paid our National Park fees at the dropbox next to the Elhwa Ranger station. Despite having been keen to get out of the big city of Seattle, we hadn’t really prepared for a day on the road. If I’d been thinking, I would have bought a bag of groceries and thrown some big bottles of water in the backseat. Maybe not the best planning, but we did find a lovely beach along the Straits of Juan de Fuca that reminded me of Clew Bay.

After yesterday’s frustrating lack of planning, we drew a plan for today and hit the ground running this morning. We grabbed some groceries in the Forks grocery store and headed up to the wild Rialto Beach. All the signs about potential tsunamis were a little disturbing!

We left Rialto Beach and headed to La Push where we had a great three-mile round trip hike to Third Beach (where the snowy beach pictures are from.) Along the path we found all sorts of little wonders.