Normally, when I know I'll be out of town, I get a few blog posts ready and schedule them to post when I normally do. Earlier this year, the trip out of town was totally unplanned, so I didn't get a chance to do it, and this time I had every intention of scheduling posts, but that it didn't happen. This latest trip was planned, it was mostly a business trip for DH that kind of took on a life of its own.
The scooter quilt I made last was raffled off at Amerivespa in Portland, Oregon. DH had a vendor booth there.
If you look at his table, you can see some of the luggage tags I made for sale too. My sister made a bunch of stuff for him too.
I had finished all the luggage tags on time, I had most things ready to go, then DH decided to leave a day early. That day I lost? That was the day I had planned to prep the blog posts, and wash out the refrigerator, and do a few other misc. things. Needless to say, none of those extra things got done. (I did, however, wash out the refrigerator when I got home before buying groceries)
Leaving that day early was the first way the trip took over. The original plan was to go to two scooter events in Oregon (which we did) and we were supposed to be gone a total of 17 days. Since we left a day early, we didn't have to drive quite a far each day, so we did a little bit of sight seeing on the way.
The first side quest was to Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. The rock formations there look like they are from a science fiction movie on another planet.
We stopped at Shoshone Falls in Idaho. They are often called the Niagara of the West and are actually taller than Niagara Falls.
We also stopped at the Columbia River Gorge just before we got to Portland.
We did the Amerivespa event, had fun talking to a bunch of people, including some people we've met at other scooter events, and then we had a few days before the second event in Seaside, Oregon. We did go see my brother in Vancouver, WA while we were in the Portland area.
Well, if you've got time to kill in Oregon, the best thing to do is to go to Crater Lake National Park, right? We thought so.
Snow in June? Yes, we actually saw quite a bit of snow on our trip. Crater Lake has no tributaries, it is formed purely by snow melt into the volcanic cone. Just because the lake has no tributaries, doesn't mean there isn't water around. We lost count of how many waterfalls we saw.
From there it was up to Seaside. We passed Cannon Beach which has Haystack Rock, a memorable part of The Goonies movie.
Goonies Never Say Die!
The Tillamook cheese and ice cream factory was on the way, so we took the factory tour. These cheese curds were amazing, and so was the apple crisp ice cream we got. They even gave us some cheese to take with us!
I took this pic while sitting on the balcony of our hotel in Seaside. We were right on the beach, and it was the first time I've been to a beach in June with not a swimsuit in sight. The temps were mostly highs in the 50's while we were there, but the lows were much lower. we even saw a few snowflakes mixed in with the rain.
Before this trip, I had been to 49 states but DH had only been to 44. We have plans to go to Alaska, and DH needs Alaska too, but here we were in the Northwest, and in this trip we had already hit Idaho, Oregon, and Washington State, which were three of the states DH needed, so now he's at 47. The other states he needed besides Alaska? Montana and North Dakota. Now we live in Arizona, and most of our family lives east of us, so when is the next time we'll be this far north, in the western part of the US??? We don't know, and if we take a big detour on the way home, we could indeed go to Montana and North Dakota. OK, so it added an extra 1500 miles to the trip home, but hey, this is about as close as we'll likely ever be.
Now for the epic side quest. We had seen some stuff in Idaho, and still needed to go through Idaho again. We had been to Crater Lake in Oregon. I told DH we should see something in Washington besides my brother, so we looked at a map and I navigated us to Mount Rainier National Park. Normally before we take a trip, I do my research, and plan out what we're going to do and see. Well, at this point we're totally winging it, and since we were avoiding the interstate highways as much as possible, I rarely had cell phone coverage, so even doing some research on the fly wasn't easy.
Mount Rainier National Park was awesome!!!
Where Crater Lake is a dormant volcano, Mount Rainier is an active volcano. When we first entered the park, the forest was so thick and green! It was rainforest and moss was all over everything. There was so much moss on the trees, instead of seeing much bark they looked green and furry. Ferns covered the ground. It seemed like around every curve there was another waterfall, you were either at the top of one looking down, in the middle, or at the bottom depending on your elevation at the time. We saw elk and a bear while we were in this area.
We left Mount Rainier and crossed into Idaho again. DH and I agree, Idaho does not get enough credit, it is beautiful! We were talking about what to do in Montana, and my first thought was Glacier National Park. It was really far north though, and to go there, we really needed to cross Idaho on the interstate, which we didn't want to do. Again, as navigator, I'm looking at maps, and while in my head I always associate Yellowstone National Park with Wyoming, I realize you can access it from Montana and Idaho too. HMMM, a chance to go to Yellowstone? Sure, why not?
It's kind of funny, we've been to Volcano National Park in Hawaii, but here were were, hitting yet a third volcano on this trip. We saw several steam vents, but skipped Old Faithful because the traffic was awful near there. We drove most of the loop, and saw a few bison, but not that many. We got a great view of this groundhog, he was only a couple feet away from me. If you like fly fishing, Yellowstone is the place to be, so many fly fisherman camping in the park. The weather the day we were there was crazy. It started out sunny, got overcast, we had slushy hail and rain, then it was sunny again.
I looked at hotels near Yellowstone, but when even the Super 8 is $350 per night, we opted to drive on and sleep elsewhere. We ended up spending three nights in Montana.
Is there anything to do in North Dakota? Sure there is, we opted for another National Park. Theodore Roosevelt National Park is in North Dakota, and we knew nothing about it before we went. Turns out there are multiple sections of it, the Elkhorn Ranch section is where Theodore Roosevelt had a house, but it's only accessible with four wheel drive, which our minivan doesn't have. The north section is mostly scenic, but I felt kind of robbed of wildlife at Yellowstone, so we did the south section of Theodore Roosevelt National Park which is known as the wildlife section. It delivered!
Wild Horses
Now DH and are tied at 49 states, and we both just need Alaska to have all 50 US states. We still saw some great stuff on the way home. We went to Sturgis in South Dakota so DH could see the motorcycle stuff there. Colorado is always a good drive. We went through more of Wyoming and New Mexico as well.
In total we were gone 23 days. We went to two scooter events, drove almost 6,000 miles, hit 5 national parks, we saw a bear, bison, wild horses, pheasant, big horned sheep, musk ox, a bald eagle, pheasant, wild turkeys, deer, pronghorn, and I'm sure more that I can't name right now. It was an epic adventure, with lots of unplanned side quests, but aren't those types of adventures the best anyway?
I know this post was photo heavy, but these are just a few of my photos. I'm not much a picture taker, DH took literally thousands of photos this trip. In case you were wondering, our favorite national park this trip was Mount Rainier, hands down!
I'm back home and just starting to get back to a routine. I've got a couple of deadline quilts to work on, plus I want to start cutting out Christmas presents I've got planned to make. Quilty posts to come!
