Belated Hello from the West Coast

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Hello from the West Coast! I've been meaning to write this for a while now, but have not had much time to do so. So here's the scoop:

I arrived in Seattle on Tues. night, and managed to pick up my luggage at the carousel. I was worried with a connecting flight that it might not make it, so I planned accordingly. Apparently, when you do that, your luggage arrives fine. 😊 I hopped the Light Rail train into downtown, walked the 2-3 blocks to my hostel and only had to fend off two weirdos who spoke to me. The first guy I pretended I just didn't understand and told him "Je ne comprends pas." when he asked if I was okay. The other guy asked for money, but I just went into the hostel and told him I had no spare money.

The hostel was okay, and they had little curtains around each bed to keep out the light from anyone else. I tried not to make any noise when I got into my room, but I'm sure I did anyway. It was a bit hot (no A/C) but each bed had its own little fan as well as light.

The next day I headed to get a few things at Target (like Cherry Coke Zero, water, granola bars) and fill my cooler with ice. I then headed to Mount Rainier National Park. That was interesting, as I wasn't really sure where I was headed to, due to my lack of pre-planning. I had my GPS unit, but couldn't get Mount Rainier to show up on the POI (Points of Interest) listing. I had to find a town nearby to plug into it, but had difficulty with that since I couldn't find my maps. Eventually I got there, and did a drive through the southwestern part of the park. Quite pretty, but nothing AMAZING like I find in Arizona.

Thursday, I headed to Mount St. Helens, after doing some more shopping. (I realized what else I had forgotten in my rush to pack.) That was pretty cool once I knew the backstory. I never realized that it erupted out of the SIDE of the mountain and killed so many people. (59, I think?). Anyway, I thought it was neat to see.

I arrived in Portland last night, and called my friend Deana (who I lived with in France) when I got here. I saw her briefly last night, and then joined her and her kids today when they went to the Rhododendron Gardens. I enjoyed seeing her, as I haven't seen her since my friend Dan's wedding in Banff in 2006, and then previously at her wedding in Yellowstone in 2001. I did walk around Portland a little last night, saw most of the downtown area this morning, and tried to do some shopping here because there's no sales tax in Oregon.

The worst part of this trip has been my plugged ears. They don't clear easily when going up and down the mountains (or flying on a plane) and it's quite uncomfortable at times, not to mention hard to hear! I hope that with another good night's sleep that I'll be that much better again tomorrow.

Tomorrow I'm off to Columbia Gorge and then down to Crater Lake in south Oregon. It will be a lot of driving to get from one to the other (5 hours, I think) but I think I can manage. I just have to make sure I'm on the road pretty early.

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Comments

[michelle]

sounds like you've been able to pack in a good deal already, sue -- kind of ironic that it's not possible to find MOUNT ranier on the GPS....you'd think that would be a very obvious point of interest! good luck with the long drive....as long as you've got enough cherry coke, you should be FINE! have fun --