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Portland to Vancouver
We headed inland, back to the I5 to speed things up for the drive through the rest of Oregon and Washington, stopping off in Portland, making a detour out to take in the sight & story of Mt St Helens, and then headed straight up to Vancouver.
Now Portland is a pretty cool city, alive to its history and setting, with almost a European feel, and seemingly full of freaks, hipsters and rednecks. We had some fun eating from their street vans and a great time in what must be one of the world’s greatest bookshops (Powells Books), but it’s still all just a bit too much like hard work dragging kids sightseeing around a city.
As is getting in and out of them. We bumped into a couple of Aussie retirees a few days ago, travelling around in their RV, and had a bit of a yarn as you do, and just as we were about to part ways, the bloke took me aside for a quiet word, man to man, about his GPS equipment (a Garmin Nuvi). He carefully demonstrated all of its features, and then, very seriously, with the womenfolk out of earshot, told me straight – ‘you really need to get one of these – it might just save your marriage’. I smiled and nodded politely at the time, but in that last 20 minutes, driving into Vancouver and trying to find the RV park at 11.30 at night, I was starting to think he might just be onto something…
And after what must be our longest drive yet, dragging the kids around Vancouver the next day was getting to a bit much. While we had a nice little wander in Stanley Park (and found the back door to the acquarium to see the seals and Belugas for free, which was pretty cool), the main reason for spending the day in Vancouver was really just to relive our favourite memories of when we lived there all those years ago as poverty stricken backpackers – the pizza slices and poutine…
The years had faded a few of the details, though, and we had forgotten till we got off the bus that all the best pizza parlours are actually in the red light district. (We somehow got off the train in the seediest part of town in Portland as well, so I’m thinking the kids might be getting a bit of a one-sided view of the NorthWest – as Evie calls out in her shrill 6 year old voice “Why are all these people are sleeping on the footpath, Daddy!?” “Aaaahhh – let’s talk about that in a minute, shall we…” – whilst simultaneously attempting to divert their attention from the strip clubs and seedy establishments we’re walking briskly past…)
The Oregon Coast
| It’s the little things that make all the difference – a flat parking-place to sleep, a fresh loaf of bread, a dry pair of socks. And after a fruitless pre-breakfast elk-hunt in the rain, we are all out of the latter. While we tried stocking up on everything we thought we’d need for the trip before setting off from LA, I’m not sure that they really know what rain is down there, and outside of Disneyland, we’re not sure that they actually have any children.
So after 3 days in the rain in Northern California, the children look like a bunch of bedraggled waifs, Digby is still wearing a pair of crocs in the freezing rain, Angus’s raincoat is about 3 sizes too small, my shoes have given up any pretence of water resistance, and I think we are all a bit over tramping through dark, damp redwood forests in the rain to look at big trees. But crossing the border into Oregon was like flicking a switch – suddenly the sun came out, the landscape opened up, the surf breaks gently onto golden sandy beaches instead of dumping onto steep black sand, the trees reduced to a sensible size, there is no sales tax, and even the people seem friendlier. So first stop was Brookings to go shopping. Up here in the Pacific Northwest, they’ve developed hundreds of words for ‘rainproof outergarments’, so we were finally able to find some sensible waterproof insulated boots for Digby and myself, some levelling chocks for Winnie, and some nice bread for lunch – really everything our hearts desired. So with the sun still shining, we carried onto Bullards beach, had a lazy afternoon around the campsite and got an early start to clamber to the top of the lighthouse the next morning. A bit further up the road, we detoured off to the Umpqua valley and finally got to see some Roosevelt Elk lazing about from some viewing areas over the riverside meadows. Then back to the coast along to Seal Cave, where we descended into a vast sea cave with a few dozen lazy sealions, and hundreds more outside sunning themselves on the rocks. There are state parks, coves and beaches that worth stopping to explore all along this part of the coastline, and we stopped briefly at Stonefield beach where Evie and Fiona found agate crystals amongst the shingles, and Digby found treasures of his own (more driftwood!) before stopping for the night to camp in a alongside the ocean at Tillicum beach. |
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