I Wonder as I Wander…

This trip took us to Seattle and then to Vancouver, WA. I was all excited thinking I could go into Canada and Victoria Island—until they told me Vancouver, WA is actually right by Portland, OR. We ended up flying to Seattle, because it was much cheaper than going to Portland—and was only a couple hours of driving.

We got in on Thursday evening and headed south for Vancouver. Since we were two hours later, we were hungry so stopped to eat at a Black Angus. Obviously they specialize in steak—and it was really good. It was dark by the time we got out of the restaurant, so we didn’t see much the rest of the way. We basically found our hotel and went to bed. The next morning, we had some time to explore, so we drove to Mount St. Helens. It was beautiful—a lot taller than the other mountains around it and totally covered with snow. Really pretty!

We couldn’t get too close, because the road was blocked by snow. I would love to go back some time when we could drive up as close as possible and then do some hiking. We were reading the literature and one trail goes up several thousand feet in 5 miles. (I don’t think we’ll do that one). There were several huge bridges that we crossed and we went up around 3,000 feet. We saw one deer and a herd of elk. The one nice thing about being there at this time of year was there were no crowds. In the summer, it would probably be bumper to bumper traffic and tons of people.

We stopped at a visitor’s center and they had glass that was made from the volcanic ash. I guess during the summer the artist works right there. I love watching glass blowers—it is really neat. We bought our Christmas ornament there—a bulb blown from St. Helen’s ash.

On Saturday, the region did a service project at Fort Vancouver. The park rangers explained that the Fort was established by the Hudson Bay Trading Company. It was never a fort to defend anything. One of the things they did was establish gardens where they grew vegetables and herbs. So we helped with restoring the gardens—there were 6-8 older ladies who were master gardeners. We had about 80 people in our group—6-8 went off to chop and haul wood for the lady who made bread every day. The rest of us were divided into a couple groups—one went down and started smoothing out piles of dirt that had been dumped into flower beds. The group I was with had the job of digging out herbs (and weeds), filling the beds with dirt and replanting the herbs. They had made some new concrete walkways and needed to fill the beds up to the walkways. They had about 15 yds of dirt that needed to be moved. Bob was one of the guys who shoveled dirt into wheelbarrows, then several guys would bring them (some actually running) to the beds where we would spread it out. We were only there for two hours, but one of the ladies said we did more than they could have done in a couple months! And, what made it even better is it was a beautiful day!

At lunch, they ran out of food—We said ‘what do you expect—you sent everyone outside to work hard—we came back starving’. For the banquet that evening—the host chapter had a Hawaiian luau. It was really good—the dessert was a coconut cream mousse on a macadamia nut crust.

We finished around 1 pm and our flight left at 12:40 am—so we had quite a bit of time. We drove over to Long Beach and walked along the beach for about an hour. The ocean is so beautiful. I could sit and watch the waves roll in and out for hours. It certainly makes me think of forever!

We stopped in Olympia on the way to the airport and found a restaurant that was recommended to us—the Oyster House. I had clam chowder and a seafood stew that had a tomato base and lots of clams, oysters, crab, halibut, salmon and mussels. It was good, but I think I would have rather had it just plain and not the tomato base—it made it pretty rich. Bob had the fish and chips.

We were both upgraded to first class and even got to sit by each other. But we slept through the service, so the only benefit we had was the bigger seats and the foot rest (which I love). We got into the cities at 5:45 am—had breakfast at the airport and then caught the flight home. We stopped at the grocery store and then headed for home.