Days 63 & 64, Weds and Thurs, August 17 & 18

Spent these days at the Whitefish KOA catching up. I’d intended to get my blog up to date on Weds but got to talking with some fellow motorcyclists and just ran out of time. So I re-upped for one more day to get the blog done. Thankfully I’ve now got it 100% up to date. I’m finding that it’s a HELLUVA lot of work to keep my journal updated and keep my posts equally updated on the web. Definitely worth it though!
Actually the timing of this stay at the KOA has been perfect. There were thunderstorms forecasted (correctly) for yesterday and this morning which would have made a trying to tour around Glacier rather inconvenient. As it is, I've been enjoying nice warm showers and free biscuits and gravy breakfasts here at the KOA.
Another thing I’ll miss from this KOA is the company. I met two very interesting people here. I met Mark Cederquist, a RN from North Atlanta who doesn’t even remotely fit any of the stereotypes of an RN, on the first day I was here. He and I have spent a lot of time just talking and enjoying good company. Mark is in the middle of a 4 week trip. He rode up here on his Kawasaki Nomad and his wife is going to be flying in to join him in Glacier for a couple of days, during which time they’ll be staying in the lap of luxury (his wife likes to stay first class when she’s traveling!) The second person I met here, I met on my second day at the campsite. Christine Hart was a practicing physician and after 15 years decided to quit. She’s doing a similar trip to mine in her car, towing a little flat bed trailer. Christine and I had a marvelous time comparing notes about our trips. We were both pleased to see that the amazing show of good will that each of us had experienced during our trips wasn’t an anomaly but rather, apparently, the norm. She’s only 2 weeks into her trip so she had a lot of questions about whether I found that people’s good will persisted throughout. You bet it does!

world's biggest hydro electric turbines inside of Powerhouse 3. Each of these is over 80 feet in diameter and the combination of the 6 of them spinning at 72 revolutions per minute shakes the entire building.

Another shot of the dam. It's hard to believe that water used to pour over the spillway 20 feet deep before installation of Powerhouse 3

Grand Coulee Dam. If you look at the top middle off the picture, you can just make out the pipelines that feed water from Franklin D. Roosevelt Lake up into Banks Lake

Day 62, Tuesday, August 16 (my birthday)

One thing I’d noticed yesterday as I was driving along Banks Lake is that it has damn at both ends. To me this seems very strange. Putting a damn in a river allows you to back up water behind it, but for there to be a dam at both ends of a lake means that the water has to be pumped into the lake. I figured I had to have missed something last night, but it turns out I was absolutely correct. Banks Lake was created at the same time Grand Coulee Dam was created. The purpose of Banks Lake is to feed the hundreds and hundreds of miles of irrigation canals needed to keep central Washington from being a desert. Washington’s rolling plains have an interesting combination of having wonderfully rich soil, but not enough water to make it arable. Enter Grand Coulee Dam and Banks Lake. Several of the hydroelectric turbines in the dam are actually used to pump water from the Columbia River up hundreds of feet over a ridge to fill Banks Lake. The amount of power needed to lift that amount of water must be staggering, but then again the Grand Coulee Dam is the largest dam in the US and one of the largest in the world. Electric power to lift the water isn’t exactly lacking.
I took a tour of the dam this morning and found everything about the dam to be incomprehensibly big. While Franklin D. Roosevelt Lake created by the dam isn’t nearly as big as Lake Mead, created by the Hoover Dam, the amount of water flowing through the Columbia River significantly dwarfs the amount in the Colorado River.
Grand Coulee dam was built in two stages. In the initial stage, the dam was created as a gravity dam (the weight of the concrete holds back the water rather than the shape of the dam as is the case with the Hoover Dam) straight across the river. At that point water used to come over the spillway of the dam 20 feet deep. But then demands for electricity increased and it was determined and another section of dam was needed. The second section, built at an angle to the first section holds 6 of the worlds largest hydro electric turbines. Here’s kicker…each of these turbines passes more water than the entire Colorado River! After construction of this section, called the 3rd Power House, all the water that had originally flowed over the spillway was diverted through the turbines and the spillway now stands dry.
Prior to the occurrences on 9/11, tourists used to be able to drive their cars across the top of the dam. After the security issues created by 9/11 tourists are now restricted to a guided tour of the 3rd Powerhouse. That tour was still enough to leave me awestruck by the enormity of the project. Each of the 6 turbines I mentioned in the previous paragraph is over 80 feet in diameter and the entire building shakes with the force of the water cursing through them. It’s truly a sight everybody ought to see. I realize construction of the dam caused great problems with migratory fish and with the tribes of Native Americans both displaced by the lake and whose source of food, the fish was eliminated by the damn but I’m still left in awe!
Leaving Grand Coulee Dam this at about noon today, I headed East across the Washington, and Idaho and into Montana in order to make it to Glacier by this evening. Unfortunately, the weather radio is predicting thunderstorms all day tomorrow so I’ve chosen to stay at a KOA just outside of the park and catch up on my correspondence and this website for a day or two while the rains clear.

moon rise over the rim of Banks Lake

Banks Lake has an interesting origin that I covered in today's journal entry. It's beautiful at sunset.

Banks Lake, just above Grand Coulee Dam in the late afternoon sun.

I literally laughed out loud when I saw this. When I was talking with Karen Torgussen at Crater Lake, she has almost the exact same picture of another failure somewhere else in the nation. I've gotta send her this picture...

I saw this in Eastern Washington. Look at the small print "Clean Up Project". Personnally, I'd say they've failed!

Me, the rig, and Mt. Rainier

The Nisqually River which is direct runoff from the Nisqually Glacier

Day 61, Monday, August 15

I left camp this morning by 8am and toured around Mt Rainier with the trailer for about an hour or so before heading East towards Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River. I checked on the prices of several campsites along Banks Lake but decided that I didn’t want to spend $30 for the relative lack of pleasure of being camped right next to a heavily used sportfishing boat ramp. I knew I’d seen a couple of parks a little ways back on Hwy 155 and one of the parks even had showers listed on its sign. Decision seemed perfectly clear to me…camp in a field along side the road (FREE is definitely the right price) and then head over for a shower in the morning. Total night’s lodging price? $1.00. Prefect.

mountain goats on top of Borroughs Mountain. Phonetically wouldn't that be "goats munching on burros?"

The top of Boroughs Mountain has the same flora, fauna, and terrain as the Arctic tundra

A view of Mt. Rainier from Boroughs Mountain

Day 60, Sunday, August 14

I broke camp at 7am this morning (I realize it’s redundant to say it that way, but it’s standard practice, right?) and headed over to Cougar Rock Campsite at Rainier. After setting up camp and ditching the trailer again, I rode around through the park and over to the lodge at Paradise Valle for a shower. From Paradise Valley, you can see the Nisqually Glacier very clearly. Speaking of clear, my timing for seeing Mt. Rainier couldn’t have been any better. The weather is crystal clear today with only a slight bit of haze. I’ve been told that at other times of the year, you can’t even see half way up the mountain because it’s socked in by fog and clouds.
I’ve never actually seen glaciers up that close before and was I was fascinated by how shear the leading face of some of the glaciers is. Reading some of the literature at the Paradise Lodge visitor center, I found out that it’s not uncommon for huge chunks to fall off these faces and several times in the past these falling chunks of ice have wiped out parties trying to climb the mountain. That’d ruin your day, wouldn’t it?
This afternoon I rode up to Sunrise Visitor Center and went for a short 8 mile hike over Boroughs mountains to get a shot of Rainier from the North East. It really amazed me what a huge array of flowers are in bloom right now above the tree line. The signs on the trail indicated that the flora and ground on which it was growing was nearly identical to the Arctic Tundra. What else can I say but “cool!”

My first view of Mt. Rainier and its glaciers

My standard picture. Me, the rig, and the mountain

Some schmoe, looking like a typical tourist, sitting on a wall in front of Mt. St. Helens

Spirit Lake. The gray mass you see on the far side of the lake is all the trees that were blown off the slopes and into the lake.

Looking at the trees you can clearly see the flow patterns of the superheated ash cloud that laid them to waste

the trees around Mt. St. Helens give unmistakable witness to the cataclysmic event that took place here. It's really powerful to see them all felled in the same direction across vast expanses.

two guys in clown suits!

Day 59, Saturday, August 13

I found out this morning that while Ironwood campsite has running water, what they lack is showers. I don’t know if any of you have had to chance to put your head into the same helmet day in, day out for 60 days, but I’ll tell you that if you don’t wash your hair every day, you’re gonna end up with a phenomenally smelly helmet. Nasty and definitely not desirable. Solution? Wash your hair every day in any way you can.. Result at Ironwood? An extremely cold hair washing and wash down this morning at the spigot by the side of the road at 7:00 this morning. The water was so cold it felt like it was burning my scalp. Let me tell you, if I wasn’t awake before that treatment, I sure as HELL was afterwards!. As I was leaving the campsite, I stopped briefly to speak with the camp hosts, an older couple, I’d guess both in their late 60’s or early 70’s. I’m embarrassed to admit that I wrote down their names and even their address, but for the life of me I can’t find the paper I wrote it on at the moment. I’m sure I’ll find it eventually. It turns out that he was preparing himself to be a clown in a local Lumberjack Day Parade and she was putting on his make up. After speaking with her for a little while she told me to hold on a minute so that she could get a picture of me and her husband in full garb. What she didn’t tell me is that she was going to bring me out a warmed up McDonalds apple pie and a half a loaf of banana bread. I’ve been given more free food this trip than I would ever have guessed before setting out.
Mt St Helens is one helluva sight. Even if you didn’t know what you were coming up upon, you’d certainly know that some cataclysmic event had occurred in the surrounding forest in very recent history. The forest that was literally laid to waste by the pyroplastic cloud is very eerie. Having driven through several areas of severe deforestation due to fire, I was used to seeing all of the seared and scarred trees lying on the ground What I’d never seen before is all of the trees laying down facing away from a common source. A source that had obviously exploded and knocked them all over. In a way, it looked like someone had gone over the hills with a huge hair brush aligning all the trees.
Getting a little closer another interesting phenomenon I noticed was how abrupt the edge of the damage was. Sort of the way the Cinder Cone at Lassen had deposited the rocks with a distinct edge, so also, the super heated dust cloud from St. Helens seemed to have simply stopped at a certain distance from the blast. There were sections of age old trees showing no damage at all right next to areas where all the trees had been charred and toppled.
Another thing I’d not expected to see was how much St Helens has started growing again. I was talking with a couple of geologists (also motorcycle riders) there and both of them seemed to think another blast was imminent in the near future (near future in geological terms, I hope….)
After a morning spent at St Helens, I headed over to Mt Rainier where I was disappointed to find that all of the campsites in the park were booked an in use. A ranger suggested I pitch my tent in a meadow beside a local hotel and then check back tomorrow when she guaranteed me there’s be lots of camp sites available. That turned out to be great advice. I pitched my tent and parked the trailer then went for a ride through the park unloaded. Mt Rainier is stunning.

My rig and St. Helens at dusk

The other half of the map

more St. Helens info. I drove in on the road labled as NP 99

A bit of background on Mt. St. Helens

This valley in Gifford Pinchot was the most obviously glaciated valley that I've ever seen in person. Look how perfectly U-shaped it is.

G.P. is the national forest encompassing Mt. St. Helens

Mount Hood

Day 58, Friday, August 12

Today’s plan was to go get an oil change in Portland and then to head up to Mt. St. Helens. I’d planned what I though would be a nice route up the West side of the mountain and had planned to move on to Mt Rainier by this evening. WRONG. As I talked with one of the guys at Portland Motorcycle Company he said I’d planned the wrong route to the mountain and gave me a new route.
Before heading up to Mt. St. Helens, I decided I wanted to go see Mt Hood and a bit more of the Columbia River Gorge. Watching the wind surfers and kite boarders ripping out across the water was enough to get my blood boiling. I could easily see myself getting into that sport. Unfortunately it’s DEFINITELY a money sport. Maybe after I quit chasing this motorcycle dream and get a new job!
I made an effort to get as close to Mt. Hood as I could and took a scenic loop through the Hood River Valley and then headed up to Mt. St. Helens via the route the guy from Portland Motorcycle had suggested. What a great suggestion! The road was freshly paved and incredibly twisty. He’d told me I’d be dragging the pegs on my bike and he was absolutely right.
I got to Mt St Helens in the late afternoon, in time to see the mountain in full day light but also at such a time that the Western sun and the shadows to made it hard to photograph and also too early to wait to see the mountain at sunset. Instead, I resolved to find the closest campsite and head back over to the mountain in the morning.
Ironwood campground, it turns out was just a few miles away from the road leading into Mt. St. Helens. I pulled in, got assigned a campsite and headed over to set up camp in the dark. The family in the site next to mine was a huge group from one of the relatively local towns and when I went over to ask them if they’d figured out where the running water was in the campsite, they struck into the standard questions about my trip. Half an hour and a good deal of laughter later I finally left their campsite to get the water I’d initially set out in search of. I bet I hadn’t been back in my campsite, heating up a dinner of left over spaghetti and sauce, when they called over and told me to come join them around their campfire while I ate my dinner. Oh, and would I please help them finish off some home made peach cobbler! Can I just say again that I LOVE this trip I’m taking?!?!? I don’t think I left their camp site until nearly midnight. Another great day!

Back at camp an older Canadian couple pulled up in the Pontiac Aztec. One of the selling points of this vehicle is that it "converts into a camper" If you ask me, it's an ASS UGLY vehicle and the "camper" is equally as ASS UGLY, looking like you draped the backside oof the vehicle with a nasty, oversized garbage bag.

Can you imagine having to sit in a booth and count each fish that swimg by when the numbers are like these? And these aren't even peak rates!

Little kids and adults were both fascinated with the fish viewing

It's strange seeing wild fish swim by on the other side of a window when you're standing on carpet and leaning over a wooden window sill!

Don't know if these were sallmon or trout but they looked tasty to me!

Above the salmon stairs there are a system of Weirs which control the flow rate through the Salmon Sluice andd also provide a chance for people to view the fish swimming by.

Salmon stairs at the dam to allow salmon to migrate upstream past the dam for breeding.

Bonneville hydro electric dam on the Columbia River

Day 57, Thursday, August 11

After a lazy morning of doing laundry and packing a lunch, I headed down river to the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River. I wanted to see the dam but was surprised and pleased to see that there was a fish hatchery at the same location. I, of course, went to the fish hatchery first because I, well, because, um, … Heck because fish hatcheries are cool. Fish hatcheries to me bring back childhood memories of summers spent in the mountains of Western North Carolina. We used to go to the trout fish hatcheries on the Davidson River to gawk at the massive size of the Rainbow and Brook Trout breed stock. Even when you’re not fishing it still makes your blood boil to see a 25 lb trout splashing at the surface for feed pellets thrown in the water. There was actually a story, the validity of which I can’t verify, of one old guy who used to take advantage of the fish hatchery. He’d rigged up a special fishing line through his pants and would go stand by the side of some of the outdoor tank, drop his line down beside his boot, hoist a trout up into his pantleg and walk off with dinner. Like I said, I don’t know if it’s true but it makes a good story to tell a child!
Back to the Columbia River, and the Bonneville Dam… The Bonneville Dam fish hatchery hatches not only trout, but also salmon and sturgeon. It was the latter that I really wanted to see. I’ve seen trout and salmon before but the chance to see breed stock sturgeon fascinated me. The hatchery didn’t disappoint! They had a pond of gigundous (yes, that’s a valid word, in this case) sturgeon. Their biggest fish was a 65 year old named Herman which was over 10 feet long and more than 450 pounds! Seeing that fish through the viewing window set at water level, it was difficult to even imagine that those fish can actually attain sizes of over 20 feet and significantly over 1000 pounds! Apparently young sturgeon are actually incredible game fish when caught on a rod and reel and are known for their aerobatics like Tarpon in Florida. Very, Very cool!
After I’d gotten my fill of the hatchery, I headed over to the hydroelectric dam. Several years ago, a good family friend in North Carolina, Mr. Oliver, gave me a personalized, behind the scenes tour (the engineer version, not the tourist version) of the Bad Creek hydroelectric dam near Lake Toxaway. That tour was amazing but this time I only planned to see the exterior of the dam. That was interesting, but what I’d not counted on was getting to see the salmon steps. I realize the salmon stairs are sort of an afterthought behind generating electricity, but still they’re really cool. The steps aren’t as simple as they seem. In fact there are several stages of the stairs. They go from gates with holes in them to true stairs to a funnel where the fish are counted (more on that in a minute) to a series of s-shaped flumes. I didn’t see any salmon going over the stairs, but the dam actually has several windows looking into the side of the s-shaped flumes where visitors get to watch the salmon and other fish swimming by. Some how, it’s seriously fascinating watching as wild salmon and trout, some of them HUGE, swim by. In the same general area as the public viewing stages is the official fish counter. I realize this is an environmentally important job but my GOD it would be boring.. The person just sits there and pushed a button on a keyboard that looks for the world like an old fashioned cash register, with one button for each species of fish. What an amazingly tedious job. It could convert an avid fisherman into a fish hater!

Day 56 Wednesday, August 10

Today I’d intended to head half way to the Columbia River, with the target of staying some where in the middle of Oregon. But then I got to the middle of Oregon and realized I was just about the only thing there. Nothing but grass and grains. Sooooo I drove the rest of the way to the Columbia River. MUCH better option. I stayed at a KOA at Cascade Locks OR. I passed Mt Shasta on the way which was interesting, but in general the day was entirely uninteresting.

flowers on the East Rim. The fields were absolutely covered with these.

Looks like a piece of licorice!

I'd love an explanation on why so many of the trees in the West grow in a twisted manner. You see it everwhere, even where the trees are sheltered from the wind

Hard to tell whether you're looking at the sky or a reflection of the sky.

View of the lake from the East rim

Reflections from the lake in the late afternoon

I thought the multiple colors of ash exposed by the gorge made the pinnacles even more stunning. Sort of reminded me of the stratification I'd seen in the Badlands

The pinnacles in the South West area of the park. These were fumeroles which were exposed to erosion. I've got an explanation of this in my journal.

Another view of the Ghost Ship

This rock formation is known as the Ghost Ship

The lake is intensely blue.

Day 55, Tuesday, August 9

Day spent in Crater Lake. Met Karen Torgussen. My plan today was to ride around the lake some more, take some pictures and maybe take a hike. Implicit in those plans was the overwhelming hope that today’s mix of people would be better than yesterday’s. Thankfully my hopes were fulfilled. The first thing I did today was to head to the South East side off the lake to see a rock formation called the Ghost Ship. While I was sitting there in the parking lot a gal rolled up on her bicycle and I of course started up a conversation about why I’d seen so incredibly many bicyclists around the lake. (Anything for a conversation, right?) Turns out that she, Karen Torgerson from San Diego, is yet another person doing a similar trip to mine. Karen was a software engineer and decided that she’d had enough of that. So she volunteered with this group called Cycle America. www.cycleamerica.com to see the states from a bicycle. Karen is one of these rare people who claims to be GUNG HO about just any outdoor sport and BACKS IT UP! She’s an avid mountain biker, has run marathons, and has even done the ironman. Statistics say something like one percent of the population has done a marathon and then only one percent of them has done a triathlon. After talking with Karen for probably half an hour we headed our separate ways but she invited me to join her and the cycleamerica group for dinner. Seeing as I was planning on doing a gourmet dinner of Top Ramen noodles (I was about out of groceries) ANYTHING was going to be better than what I had planned.
One of the things I found most interesting about Crater Lake was the forms called the Pinnacles. When gasses emerge from a volcanic steam vent, the formation is called a fumerole. As the gasses pass through the ground, the super heated chemicals in the gasses serve to cement and weld the granules of the surrounding rock together. These bonded rock structures are generally conical in shape with the narrow end towards the top. When the ground surrounding a fumerole gets eroded away (in this case by a creek) the fumerole is left intact since it is so much harder and durable than the surrounding rock. The Pinnacles is an area which had many fumeroles which were eroded by a river. The effect is stunning.
After riding around (and going to get some gas and groceries) I headed over to meet Karen at the CycleAmerica campground, but first went by my campsite to dump my groceries. THANKFULLY I found that I had new neighbors and went over to introduce myself. Par for the course they were really interested about my trip, but their ears really perked up when I mentioned that Jeanette and I had spent a weekend in California wine country. When I told them Jeanette and I had gone by Berringer Estates, the Husband got really interested and asked how our experience was there. I of course told him all about how negatively impressed we’d been by how we were treated and especially in comparison to how we were treated like royalty at Korbel and how Jeanette and I had both concurred that neither of us would ever to go Berringer again. His reaction? Classic! Turns out he’d worked pretty high in the marketing department at Korbel for 8 years and that he was now quite high up in the marketing department for Berringer. In his words “People are going to hear about this…” How incredibly ironic! Then again, on this trip, I’m finding that NOTHING is too far fetched to believe!
After talking to my new neighbors for a while, I headed over to the CampAmerica sight where I was expecting typical camp food when I showed up. You know…Baked beans, wieners, etc. Boy was I wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. When I got there, they had a TWO plates laid out for me…baked salmon, shrimp jambalaya, couscous, mixed greens salad with vinaigrette dressing, cole slaw, guacamole, bagel chips, and lemonade. All in HEAPING helpings! I was in heaven. After dinner Karen and I headed for a late night motorcycle ride around the lake. All in all a fantastic day!

My first view of Wizzard Island in Crater Lake

Mt Shasta

Had to stop and get a picture of this.

Day 54, Monday, August 8

Left Mt. Lassen today headed for Crated Lake. I passed Mt Shasta along the way and had to grab a picture. I got to the camp ground quite early today (before noon) set up camp, and then went for a ride around the lake. When I was at Lake Tahoe, I learned that Tahoe is the second deepest lake in the United States at 1645 feet deep. What I didn’t learn is that Crater lake *is* the deepest in the US at 1950 feet deep. That depth is incredibly hard to conceptualize. Just for grins, I looked up “world’s deepest lake” on the internet. Turns out Lake Baikal in Siberia is over a mile deep at 5371 feet in depth! A MILE! It also contains one fifth of all of the worlds fresh surface water. Statistics like that are awesome!
Back to Crater Lake… Just like Lake Tahoe, Crater Lake is intensely blue, but unlike Tahoe, Crater Lake has absolutely no creeks or streams feeding it. It’s 100% full of melt water from snow melted over millions of years. Until the early 1900’s the lake was completely barren of fish life. It was simply too deep, cold, and isolated, and relatively too young, for fish life to evolve. Tourists, however, decided that every beautiful lake needs to have fish in it to increase the value as a tourist attraction. So fish were introduced in the lake between 1888 and 1941 to satisfy the hunger. Apparently Rainbow trout and also a species of salmon have taken hold in the lake but neither of these grows to any particularly notable size due to lake’s purity.After spending the day today observing other tourists at Crater Lake, my reactions are decidedly unfavorable. In general the crowd at Yellowstone was there to partake in the beauty and wildlife of the park. At Yosemite people were there to challenge themselves physically while being stunned by the beauty of the park. At Crater Lake, it seems everyone is there to eat cheese puffs, to bitch and whine about being away from their televisions, and to occasionally look over the ledge at “that lake down there”. Over and over again today I found myself wanting to flee from this place to escape the incredibly aggravating crowds around the lake. Tops on my list of people I’d like to throttle is the family at the tent site next to mine. The family is a guy and girl about my age with their probably 2 ½ year old son. From the time I got back to camp all the way until well past midnight they argued and cussed at each other and hurled f-bombs at their son! If I had any phone service in the park I would have been incredibly tempted to call child services. At one point just before dinner, they guy started yelling and cussing at the little child, then grabbed him by the back of his neck, dragged him over to the edge of the campsite, shoved his face in a tree, and said “Don’t you take your fu*king face out of that damned tree until you’re god damned willing to eat your fu*king dinner.” Those two jerks yelled and cussed at each other until nearly 1:00 in the morning. I don’t care how misbehaved a child is, there is ABSOLUTELY no excuse for treating him or her like that. Too bad proper parenting isn’t a class that people have to pass before they’re allowed to breed.

Notice Mt. Shasta off in the distance. It's almost 80 milles away. Yep, it was an exceptionally clear day!