2nd week, San Fran to Seattle

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The second week was a little quieter with not so many major sites to visit and not so many people on the tour. In fact we only had 4 travelers so there was lots of room on the bus to spread out and I had a tent to myself. The attractions were the Redwood forests in Oregon, Mt St Helens, Crater Lake, Oregan Sand Dunes, some water falls and Mt Rainier. The highlight was Crater Lake which was spectacularly beautiful. As you can see from the photos, the water is very blue and we were lucky to have a cloud-free day. Apparently the hiking path was closed due to snow but somebody must have torn up the sign so we hiked for about two hours to get a better view. The Mt St Helens was also interesting although you can't get that close. It was a pretty huge amount of dirt that was blasted off the side of the mountain and nicely captured on film since they new it was about to go.

The Sand Dunes area is all about tearing around in some form of ATV. My choice was a low running dune buggy which was a hell of a lot of fun and unlike the quads, didn't feel like it was going to tip over. We went along the beach but the most fun was had traveling up and down the sand dunes hoping that there wasn't somebody parked at the top.

Silver Falls was outside Salem, the capital of Oregan and 10 falls in one walk was just too much excitement for one day so we only visited 7 of them.

Mt Rainier is not far from Seattle and is another one of their volcanoes waiting to blow its top. Again the snow put a stop to any treks so we just popped into the visitors centre and looked up to the 14,000 ft peak.

Now I am in Seattle and have spent a few days checking out the local attractions. Nothing too exciting. Went to another ball game (baseball) on Sat night but it was a pretty low scoring match and only 2 home run hits. To date I've done the Science Centre, Aquarium, Boeing factory at Everett where they make the wide body planes and checkout out some night life on Sat night. You have to carry your passport around here to get into the pubs, I guess that's US law gone insane. Tomorrow will be the museum of flight and a harbour cruise as they are included in my city pass.

Looking forward to heading off to Canada on Wed and not having to set up camp every night this time. Hopefully there will be a fun bunch on the trip.

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Comments

[Burtyboy]

Nice Buggy
Hi Dave, Seattle fish don't look too inviting. Prefer a nice bit of barra! Dune buggy looks like a heap of fun. All that snow and heading into summer? ...although the lake day seems like it was perfect. Nice to keep up with your travels. Burty