Coolest June on Record

It's official.  We experienced the coolest June ever recorded!  Big, big news and we are super excited. Many toasts have been exchanged! We have just completed the 3rd month of June living in an RV, and by far, it's been the coolest--hence the record.  Of course, the persnickety person may claim that this record is based on a very small data pool, and is, therefore, nothing to crow about.  But we beg to differ, and will put it to you fair-minded folks out there to judge:
     June 2011--We were living in our Cardinal 5th wheel in Austin waiting for our house to sell.  Austin experienced one of its hottest and driest summers that year, with over 100 days over 100 degrees.  The A/C rarely stopped running, and was often unable to reduce the inside temperature below 85 degrees.  That was hot!!
     June 2012--We were making our way through Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio in our brand new motorhome.  Everywhere we were, heat records were being broken with temps in the 90's and 100's.  Our new rig was better able to maintain a comfortable inside temperature, but only with the A/C units running almost non-stop--sound familiar?  We were beginning to believe that we were jinxed somehow.
     June 2013--We began the month of June near Portland, Oregon in our now 1-year-old motorhome, and continued moving north through Washington until we were less than 15 miles from the Canadian border.  The number of days we had to run our A/C can be counted on very few fingers; in fact, we had to run our heat pumps most mornings to get the chill out of the rig.  Daytime highs were in the 60's and 70's, nights were in the 40's and 50's.  We felt like we were in a dream.  We're putting it down in our record books.  Now on to what we did and saw while in this dream.

When we think of Seattle, the images that come to mind is the Space Needle, Starbucks coffee, flying fish at the Pike Place Market, and Microsoft.  The first three made our 'to see' list; HeM's disdain for Microsoft kept it off the list (but we did drive past the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation building, and saw a small amphitheater that was donated by them).

The Space Needle was the first stop.

As we were riding up the elevator to the viewing platform, the operator/docent mentioned several facts regarding the Space Needle's height, construction, etc.  HeM can tell you all about that.  All that SheM remembers is that the operator made a general arm gesture in the direction of Lake Union and Lake Washington, and mentioned that "there are the houseboats where Sleepless in Seattle was filmed".  That's one of SheM's favorite movies.  She never did see the houseboats, but not for lack of trying, craning her neck and scanning the lakes anytime we passed by them.  You'll have to use your imagination as she did to spot them in this picture.

We visited the Pike Place Market.  Maybe SheM is just getting old (and she is!), but she found the market to be just very crowded and full of the same kind of miscellaneous 'stuff' that is found in every other flea market setting across the country.  That is, except, for the bakery where we found some wonderful country bread baguettes.  And it wasn't sourdough--we've burned out on sourdough since that's all we've been served in almost every restaurant we've frequented in the last 2-3 months.

The famous flying fish market was a must-see.  Of course, it was everyone else's 'must see', so there was a constant crowd around it.  We thought about having a fish thrown for us, but found a salmon at a better price at a competing fish market so we chose economics over theatrics.

The first Starbucks establishment is in Pike Place Market.  We stood in line for 15-20 minutes for our remembrance latte and espresso (SheM and HeM, respectively).  Oddly, it tasted just like any other Starbucks.

So just how much coffee can a community consume?  We're all familiar with "a Starbucks on every corner", but here in the Pacific Northwest, it's really the case that there are local coffee stands/shops EVERYWHERE.  And they seem to stay busy all day.  Another note of interest is that the ethnicity of the restaurants seem to be mostly Asian (no surprise) and Mexican (surprise).  We don't know exactly what we were expecting, but we didn't think we'd see so many Mexican restaurants this close to the 'other' border.

Our last outing in Seattle was to a sculpture garden not far from the Space Needle.  It was for the most part a disappointment.  We saw only a few sculptures, but there was one that took up a lot of the space anyway.

The furthest north we parked Roamin (we've named our RV--is that normal?) was less than 15 miles from the Canadian border in the small town of Ferndale.  The flowers are gorgeous up this way.

We used Ferndale as our base to visit the San Juan Islands and Canada.  We took our car on a ferry over to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island.

We drove the perimeter of the island, making our first stop at Lime Kiln Point Park, aka Whale Watch Park.

Unfortunately, the whales were nowhere to be seen that day.  We drove on to a sculpture park (yes, we decided to try another one) on the northern end of the island, near Roche Harbor.  This truly is a sculpture park, with over 100 sculptures spread over 19 acres.

Next stop was a winery, of course.  How long has it been since we've been to a winery?  Too dang long! San Juan Vineyards is in a picturesque setting of an old schoolhouse and garden.  The wine is not California-quality, but then few are (in our humble opinions).

We could not have asked for a better day weather-wise.  Clear skies and temps in the 70's.  That perfect weather was not to last.  Finally, the wet northwestern weather we had expected caught up to us.

And it rained for the better part of the week we were there.  We did venture north of the border into Vancouver for a day.  We visited the Museum of Anthropology and was impressed by the displays of totem poles and other large wood carvings.

When lunchtime arrived, we looked for a local restaurant.  Again, we were surprised to see as many Mexican restaurants as we did.  We figured that as long as we're across the border, we should have border cuisine, so Mexican it was.

After lunch we drove out to Capilano Suspension Bridge Park in North Vancouver.  There has been a suspension bridge across the Capilano River since 1889 which loggers used to get to and from their homes.  The bridge spans 450 feet.  It has, of course, been improved since those days and is now a major tourist attraction.

Walking through the rain forest park was really nice, and crossing the bridge was not as scary for SheM as she thought it would be even though it did bounce and sway quite a bit.

We had fully intended on making a visit to Victoria while here, but weather and logistics didn't work in our favor.  We'll keep this on our 'to see' list for another time.  Our last outing was to take a scenic drive south of Ferndale called Chuckanut Drive.  It follows the shoreline and offers nice views over the water.  We headed to La Conner which is a small town featuring local artist works, and we found a nice wall hanging to add to Roamin's décor.

We've said goodbye to the Pacific Northwest, and are headed to Spokane.  We look at the weather forecasts with record heat making its way to eastern Washington--temps over 100--and see that we are heading right into it.  This will be a very rude awakening from our record cool, dreamy June.

Northwest Washington (Mt. Rainier/Olympia/Tacoma)

We've spent the past week in the pleasant little resort town of Gig Harbor, Washington.

It's northwest of Tacoma, across the Tacoma Narrows bridge.  I'm sure we all remember seeing videos of the original Narrows bridge where it is twisting and rolling due to its instability.  There are now two bridges--one northbound and one southbound.  The northbound bridge is the older of the two, and even though its stability is greatly improved over its predecessor, there are still instructions to NOT change lanes while driving across it.  We didn't.

The RV park was fine.  We would have preferred paved sites, but since it didn't rain much while we were there, the level gravel was OK.  The sites are built on a hill, so each row is on its own terrace.

Just down the road from the RV park, there is access to the Cushman Trail, a city-owned walking/biking trail.  We enjoyed walking the paved trail with its many uphill/downhill slopes.  The immediate 900' 10% grade uphill stretch got the lungs puffing, and the 1300' 8% grade stretch was a challenge, but we wish that we had access to just such a trail all the time.

Along the harbor in town, there are several restaurants and wine bars.  One in particular, Morso, advertises that for every 1/4 inch rain that falls in a day, their happy hour is extended one hour.  It didn't rain the day we were there, but after a couple of glasses of wine, we really didn't need any more.

We took a drive out to Mt. Rainier National Park.  We chose the sunniest (or least cloudy, as it turned out) day to make the trip.  The scenery on the way up to the visitor center in Paradise was lovely, as it has been in all the national parks we've visited.  This picture was taken from the top of a waterfall looking down, just to be a little different from the many, many pictures we've taken along the way.

There is still so much snow toward the top of the mountain, it looks like winter.  Now that school's out, we're seeing more families at the parks, and lots of kids were enjoying playing in the snow that day.  We, too, couldn't resist walking out in the snow simply because it's been so long since we've had the chance.

The sunny day we had hoped for was simply not in the cards.  We hung around the visitor center for a while hoping the clouds would lift long enough to get a quick picture of the summit.  The best we could do was this picture of a postcard showing what it would have looked like on a clear day.  We're including the actual picture we took as comparison.

We finally gave up and started making our way back down the mountain.  After going less than a mile, we noticed that several people had made hurried stops at an overlook and were aiming their cameras in the direction of the peak.  We stopped quickly too, saw the clouds finally lifting a little, and got the following pictures.

We visited Washington's capitol building in Olympia.  What a difference from Oregon's capitol!  While Oregon displays mostly practicality and functionality in their capitol, Washington presents quite a lavish display.  There is marble EVERYWHERE, and is extremely ornate.

An explanation for the marked difference between the two states could be timing.  Oregon's capitol was built during the Depression, and Washington's was built during the 20's--money, money, money.  There were a lot of reporters milling around the capitol that day.  Turns out the state legislature is having a very hard time agreeing on a budget, and the press was waiting for answers.  How strange for a governing body to have such difficulty.  Perhaps Washington State should look to Washington DC for guidance on how to work together and make good decisions on matters of importance.  Hmmmm.

HeM's dad liked to imbibe a beer or two from time to time, and Olympia beer was one of his passing fancies.  We were in Olympia, so we thought it would be fitting to find a bar and have an Olympia beer in his honor.

The beer in the picture, unfortunately, is not Olympia.  It's a locally brewed pale ale.  When we asked the waiter for an Olympia, he told us that they had none.  In fact, he said, they have a hard time getting any Olympia given that it's now brewed in San Antonio.  Our response:  "SAN ANTONIO!?  Git a rope!"

In looking for attractions in Tacoma that interested us, we settle on the Museum of Glass.  This picture shows the museum and the associated 'bridge of glass'.

The exhibits in the museum featured Australian and Pacific Northwest artists.

There is active glass blowing at the museum as an educational tool.  And there are exhibits of glass art that was created by local children.  A couple of examples that were created by some 10-year-olds:

When we walked across the bridge of glass, we found some familiar work by Chihuly.

We had seen a large display of Chihuly's work when we were in Oklahoma City last year, and again in Mesa this spring.  The bridge connects the glass museum to the state history museum and Union Station.  Union Station is now longer operating, but is open for visiting.  It has it's own collection of Chihuly glass.

And it has Washington's liberty bell replica that was ordered from France in 1950 by the US Department of Treasury.  Each state, territory, and Washington DC received one of these replicas, and most of them are displayed near state capitol buildings.  We've seen a couple of these bells in the other states we've visited, but there is something about Washington's bell that is special.  You're allowed to ring it! HeM took liberal advantage of the liberty.

Northwest Washington has many attractions that neither of us have had any prior opportunities to experience.  Our plan is to spend three weeks in this part of the state before beginning to move eastward.  This ends the first of those three weeks.  During week 2 we're going to focus on Seattle and its immediate surroundings.  For convenience, we're moving to a park that's closer to Seattle.  It will be a short trip--approximately 65 miles--so it will be an easy travel day.

City of Roses

We were in the Portland, Oregon area for 10 days.  Of those 10 days, only the first 4 were rainy.  The rest were sunny and warm--in fact, almost too warm as it got to 87 a couple of those days.  (Our Texas family & friends will have no sympathy for us.)

We're glad that it did stop raining so that we could fully appreciate the beauty of the International Rose Test Garden in Portland's Washington Park.  It covers 4.5 acres and is full of roses, their blooming period peaking around the first week of June.  We were very glad that they were on schedule this year.  We actually made 2 trips to the gardens--the first trip was the first sunny day we had.  The roses that had bloomed were rain-weary, and the bulk of them had not bloomed yet. We decided to make a return trip the day before we left the area giving the roses as much time as possible to soak in the sunshine and for all those buds to open.  It was a good plan.

We were parked in Wilsonville, south of Portland.  Salem is not far from there, so as we usually do, we visited Oregon's capitol building.  We found it to be much more under-stated that any of the other capitols we've visited.  A local told us that the Oregon Pioneer statue on top of the building is re-covered in gold leaf every twenty years.

We took a drive along the Columbia River east of Portland.

We saw several waterfalls, but the most impressive was the Multnomah Falls.  The upper falls and lower falls together total 610'.  We walked up to the bridge and felt the chilly spray from the falls.

We took a drive along the Oregon coast.  The section we drove was picturesque, but it wasn't as rugged as we were expecting.  Perhaps we needed to drive further.

One of the stops we made while driving along the coast was in Tillamook.  There is a popular tourist attraction there--the Tillamook Cheese Factory.  We had eaten all of our Ohio Amish cheese a long time ago, so thought we'd give Oregon cheese a chance.

Between you and us, the Amish cheese wins hands down.

The highlight of our visit here was taking a helicopter tour to Mount St. Helens.

Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, so it's been a little over 30 years in recovery.  There is still a definite debris field downhill from this volcano.  In fact, this debris is 150'-200' deep.

The amount of vegetation that is re-establishing itself there is impressive.

Animal life and vegetation have both made a much quicker recovery than the scientists had expected.  Spirit Lake which is just north of Mount St. Helens and was greatly impacted by the explosion, has started to recover although it still has a long way to go.  In the picture below, the gray areas on the far edges of the lake are actually logs that were blown from the surrounding hillsides during the eruption, and are still there on the lake forming log mats.

At the peak of Mount St. Helens, you can see the blown-out crater.  In the middle of it, you can see that the lava dome is still forming.  As we flew over, we could see a couple of smoke vents.

We enjoyed our brief stay in Oregon.  This morning we left the state and moved to Gig Harbor, Washington.  We plan to visit Olympia, Tacoma, and Mount Rainier from this base over the next week.