We're back! Sort of...

Hello friends and welcome back to the Gownezio blog! As mentioned before, we never know when our next stop we be sans wifi or cellular service, so we don't always know when we are going to drop off the map. We have spent the past four days seeing much of the natural beauty that the state of Washington has to offer. We are now in northern California at Redwood, but still have practically no signal. We have driven to Crescent City for dinner and are making use of the LTE service!

So, I invite you to please bring your seats and tray tables to their upright position, as we have a lot of ground to cover.

Wednesday, July 16. When last we met, we had stopped for the evening in Ellensburg, Washington (hate it), home of Central Washington University. Took us two solid hours to find a decent restaurant that wasn't closed due to it being the college off-season. And it's a, uh, little known fact the the streets of Ellensburg's famed downtown and historic district were laid out by a Boston native who felt that the original streets were way too simple. Yearning for something more reminiscent of his hometown, he created a system of streets and traffic patterns guaranteed to frustrate and befuddle all those who dare enter. True story.

So we packed up our things after one glorious night in Ellensburg, and headed west to Mount Rainier. Well, we were supposed to head west, or east; it's all very confusing. We had to stop at the RV store down the way, and were about 10 minutes behind Mom and Dad. We got out of the store and drove as quickly as was prudent to try to catch up to them. When we travel in caravan Mom navigates and we follow their big RV. Knowing that at some point we had to turn south to get to our destination, we wanted to be sure to catch up. It was about 40 miles out when I asked Liz to check the atlas. And it turns out that the road to the south was east of Ellensburg, and we had made an 80-mile round trip for nothing. There may have been a few tense moments. The boys were both in the RV with Mom and Dad, 80 miles ahead of us, and we only had Izzie. When I say it was tense in the car, let me just say that Isabella was silent for a sustained period of time. Those of you who know my darling princess should now fully appreciate just how serious the situation was.

As we drove toward the mountains, it seemed as though each mile was more lovely than the last. (*Side note: Liz and I thought it was pretty cool that one day we were on I-90, which runs almost past our house, and the next we were on US-12, which runs through our former haunts of Ann Arbor and Saline, Michigan.) But we reached a point, as often happens on mountain roads, that each mile was almost more terrifying than the last. Frequently on these roads, you will see yellow or orange signs with some variation on the “Warning: Falling Rocks” theme. In Washington, these signs simply say ROCKS in huge letters. As we were driving the cliff face up toward White Pass, we were beginning to have a good chuckle about all of these signs. Put on “Rocks” by Imagine Dragons. But then we noticed that the barricades were changing. On the mountain side, they had gone from no protection to standard concrete highway medians. Then, they added gabion, the stones-in-a-cage retaining wall for reinforcement. Then, the gabion became five feet tall and about eight feet thick. Then, we began to see where massive boulders had hit and deformed the gabion, sometimes pushing it and the concrete barricade six to eight feet and into our lane. Then, finally, the landslide hit. Fortunately, it was about 5 seconds and 150 feet in front of us. It started with just a trickle and a puff of dust and then, suddenly, we were blind from the dust on this cliffside road with cars coming up behind us. After a minute or two the dust cleared, and we continued on our merry way almost as if nothing had happened. Except that we don't make fun of ROCKS signs anymore.

We arrived at the Cascade Peaks RV park, which was just lovely. They have seven HUNDRED sites, but I don't think more than fifty of them were filled. We got to go on mile-long bike rides with the kids inside the campground. And it was up against the river, and just wonderful. Despite the rockslide and getting lost it had still been a relatively short drive, and the campers were set up by early afternoon. We headed into the park to (the aptly named) Paradise, spent some quality time at the visitor center, and then hiked around a bit on the snow-covered trails. Sarah and Isaiah joined us at the campground at about 8:00 pm, after driving to spend the day in Seattle, after Googling the address of another campground of the same name in Seattle. Oops.

Thursday, July 17. Today we went back to Paradise to hike to the Nisqually Vista. This is a really great spot where a glacier and avalanches and rockslides have carved out this massive chute, and there are waterfalls and water just pops out of the rocks in some places. We missed out on our next hike because the parking lot was full; but luckily there was space for us at the Grove of the Patriarchs. The prime feature of this 1000-year-old forest is the 200-foot-tall cedar trees. At “The Big Cedar Tree” all nine of us got in a big circle and stretched and stretched until we finally touched.

To get to the biggest trees, you have to go over a suspension foot bridge. We have done a bunch of these in the past couple of weeks, and they are always a little sketchy. At this one, there was a big traffic jam in both directions, as you are only supposed to have one person on the bridge at a time. Sarah and Isaiah decided it would be better to just ford the ankle-deep stream; except that it turned out to be waist-deep instead.

THERE IS A MOUSE IN THE HOUSE. Mom and Dad like to sleep in. It's a rule. But the nights are getting shorter and shorter and we have a new guest joining us on our travels. And he is bold enough to walk through the middle of their living room while they are sitting there, but too smart to take the cheese from the trap.

For Friday, July 18, Mom had recommended a hike for us that was, according the book, “the best day hike in Washington.” When she showed me the description, I read “Nachos Peak Loop”, and knew that it was the best day hike in Washington. It turns out that it is actually “Naches Peak”, and there is not, in fact, a taco truck at the top. You can imagine my disappointment. The hike started out all along the road, and it was pretty, but the road was there and the cars and the noise and blecchh. But soon, we started moving uphill. And it might just be the best day hike we've done. We gained a thousand feet of elevation, and the children (yes, those children) never stopped smiling. Never a complaint, never a moment that they didn't think it was the greatest thing ever. Amazing views of Mt. Rainier and it's neighbors, as well as Mt. Adams off in the distance. So good that when we got to the end, we turned around and did it again. No, that's not true.

A funny thing about visiting mountain and forest regions: mountains and forests are sometimes there instead of the roads you need. As the three-eyed-crow flies, our campground was equidistant between Mt. Rainier and Moutn St. Helens. But we were actually looking at a five-hour round trip from our campground to MSH. And so we got up on Saturday, July 19, and moved camp to Castle Rock. Our campground is one of these places that gets 9.5 and 10 ratings in all of the camper guides, but is just a parking lot. It was nice enough, though, but with one thing different: trains. There's a requirement, I think it's a zoning thing, that all RV campgrounds have to be within a ½ mile of train tracks. But this train was in the campground, right at the end of our row, three campers away from us. And came through every 10 to 12 minutes. But I digress.

We loaded everybody in the truck and head for Mount St. Helens. This is a special place for me as my mom worked as a camp counselor here in the 1960's. In my house, the imminent eruption in 1980 seemed to be always on TV. And it made quite a lasting impression. A few years ago we did make it to the eastern side to view the once-lovely Spirit Lake, where Mom's camp was. And it is just devastated. This time we made to the western side of the mountains and the visitor center. I can think of few places where the power of nature is more evident than here. But it really is amazing how life has come back, from the plants and trees to the large animals like elk and mountain lions. MSH could definitely be a full-day trip, and it's highly recommended if you ever find yourself in the Seattle-Portland corridor.

Sunday, July 20. Said goodbye to Sarah & Isaiah after eight days with us. Drove through Oregon to Klamath, California, and Redwood National Park.