Lorane, OR

Some salad materials picked from Rich and Denise’s garden (+ balsamic)

Nancy with her two pet donkeys

When we were with my sister in Yellowstone, she told us that if we ever passed through Southern Oregon, we should stop at Rich & Denise’s farm (called Hey! Bales).  Rich and Denise are Keenan’s (Cara’s boyfriend’s) aunt and uncle.  They live on a farm in Lorane, OR, about 30-45 minutes West of Eugene, OR.  Keenan spent some Summers there, and Cara has stayed there a couple times as well.  She said “you just have to see how they live out there on the farm.”

Now, I’ve been interested in farming and farm life ever since I read ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ years ago.  That book made me think about where my food came from, industrial vs. small-scale organic agriculture, introduced me to the concept of vegetables as a meal, and eventually led to my signing up for a CSA (a weekly delivery of vegetables from a local organic farm).  So when we heard there might be an opportunity to spend a couple days on an organic farm, we had to go.

Only one issue – we had never met Rich and Denise before (Keenan’s dad Bill would also be in town), so we were counting on their extreme willingness to let total strangers stay with them.  Cara told us they’d be happy to have us by, but you never really know with this sort of situation.  As it turns out, Cara was right – they are fabulous hosts.  And apparently they are used to visitors coming around.  Within 5 minutes of our arrival, a neighbor wandered in and asked if she could bake some potatoes in Rich and Denise’s oven.  “Of course!” Rich replied.  “Just make sure to remember and come get them in an hour, because we’ll be out.”  The sense of community and trust in that area is staggering.

The first night, Rich and Denise took us to a dinner party at their friends Joey and Nancy’s farm.  Joey and Nancy don’t have many animals anymore (save for a couple donkeys they keep as pets), but have a great garden, and cook a fabulous dinner.  What a night – we got to hear all sorts of stories about rural life (which were especially animated when Joey, who grew up in the Bronx, did impressions of his New Yorker friends’ horrified reactions to his lifestyle in the middle of nowhere).

The next day, we went for a quick hike on the hilly farm property with Denise and her friend Stephanie (who dropped by unexpectedly), and then drove briefly into Eugene to try the famous Full City Coffee Roasters.  Denise and Rich were out when we returned, so Kristen and I cooked dinner with Bill (I embarrassingly ruined a piece of fish by trying to make a pan sauce out of beer instead of wine).  We talked late into the night with the whole family.

On our final morning, we were due to leave early for Sacramento (an 8-10 hour drive).  But Rich offered to take us mountain biking, so of course we couldn’t resist.  Beforehand, though, he wanted to tour us around the farm.  We helped harvest some lettuce.  It was a blast.

We were sad to leave.  What a lifestyle – living on a large piece of land in the mountains, eating delicious food that you grow yourself, living among a community of neighbors you trust.  It’s pretty idyllic.  We want to go back.

Portland

Kristen framed by the St John’s bridge in Cathedral Park

Randy standing on a sculpture at the Portland Water Pollution Control Lab

Our Voodoo Doughnuts haul – old fashioned glazed, Mexican hot chocolate, maple bacon, and Portland Cream

After the wedding in Seattle, we planned to begin heading South to Sacramento to take a break from traveling.  But on the way, we were excited to make a couple of stops.  The first was in Portland to visit Kristen’s cousin Randy, his girlfriend Jessica, and their two parrots, Soda Pop and Pickle.

We didn’t have too much planned for our time in Portland – we mostly wanted to hang out with Randy and Jessica, see a bit of Portland, and maybe go for a bike ride or two.  Luckily, we came at the right time – Randy is currently studying for his master’s at Portland State, and school was not yet in full swing for the semester, so we got to spend almost all our time with him.  He was a great host – Randy took us to see the PSU campus and showed us some of his work, toured us around the city, and took us to a few hidden gems (most notably Cathedral Park, which is a greenspace framed by the arch-shaped pylons of the St John’s bridge on the North side of town).  We also visited a few Portland landmarks: Powell’s books, Voodoo Doughnuts (the originator of the gourmet doughnut trend), a couple square blocks of food carts (home of the $5 delicious lunch), and the fabulous urban wilderness park (designed by Olmsted, but far more raw than Central or Prospect parks).

All in all, Portland was shockingly . . . normal.  Not at all like the caricature portrayed in Portlandia.  There were fewer and less aggressive fixed-gear bike messengers than in NYC, the food was eclectic and understated, and the hipsters we saw didn’t even look like homeless people (like they do in Seattle).  In retrospect I guess I’m not sure what I expected – people living in trees?  Hipsters occupying credit unions?  Guys with waxed mustaches riding their fixies around with free-range chicken coops strapped to the back?  Maybe I didn’t imagine it to that degree, but what we got was quite the opposite – Portland is really, really nice.

Seattle – Brian & Cathy’s Wedding

Our travels found us in Seattle, for the wedding of our friends Brian and Cathy.  Brian was Jeff’s roommate both in college and in New York.  The wedding was beautiful, the food was great, and above all, many of our friends were together in once place.  It’s easy to forget how much fun we have when we’re all together.

Olympic National Park

The Hoh Rainforest – where everything is covered in moss

First Beach at Sunset

We left Victoria early in the morning and took the ferry to Port Angeles, Washington, on the Northern end of the Olympic peninsula.  We stopped for a quick lunch and a coffee, and then headed West to Olympic National Park.

The West side of the park is pretty remote – there is barely a gas station to speak of, and it’s a good 4-5 hour drive from Seattle, making it inaccessible for a day trip.  There is one small town, though.  Forks, WA.  Which, we learned, is the setting for the Twilight series.  When we drove through, they had a big banner that read “Welcome to Stephanie Meyer Appreciation Day!”.  We didn’t see a parade or anything, though.

We made our way down to our planned oceanside campsite, but when we arrived, there were warnings posted about a black bear that had been coming into the campsite.  Nope, not for us.  So we instead drove North to the Hoh Rainforest park entrance, and up the 12 mile park road to the Hoh Campground.

Once we arrived, we realized we’d forgotten to get groceries.  All we really had left was soup and cheese quesadilla materials.  And we were probably an hour from the nearest store.  So we had cheese quesadillas for dinner, cheese quesadillas for breakfast, peanut butter and jelly quesadillas for lunch, and then we couldn’t take it anymore and drove to Forks to get some salad mix for dinner the next night.

We spent 2 nights in all at the Hoh Campground.  Our first day in the park, we did a nice 5 mile hike in the Hoh Rainforest.  The Hoh Rainforest is a pretty interesting place.  It’s one of the largest temperate rainforests on the continent, and EVERYTHING is covered in moss.  It hangs from the trees and lies on the ground, and pushes up near the banks of the Hoh River.  It’s very beautiful.  We also got extremely lucky with the weather – sunny skies and temperatures in the 70s.

After our hike in the woods, we decided we wanted to see a sunset on the coast.  A park ranger pointed us toward First Beach, which was about an hour drive and a 1 mile hike away.  It was totally worth it – the beach was fairly remote, framed by bluffs, with a natural arch and sea stacks all around.  We took our salad mix with us for a picnic dinner on the beach.

The next morning, we got up very early in order to do a big hike on the East side of the park, with views of the Puget Sound and the Cascade volcanoes.  We drove back the way we came – through Forks and Port Angeles.  Forks still had that “Stephanie Meyer Appreciation Day” banner up – apparently every day in Forks is Stephanie Meyer Appreciation Day.  Eventually we came to a series of winding, one lane dirt roads leading directly up the side of a mountain to the trailhead.

When we arrived at the trailhead, two things happened.  First, the air was so thick with smoke we could smell it.  Apparently there was a large forest fire on the Eastern side of the Cascades, and the smoke was being sucked into the Puget Sound area.  It killed any views we might get from the top, and we weren’t too keen on breathing lungfulls of smoke for 4 hours, either.

But none of that mattered, because of the second thing that happened.  The trail was closed due to ‘aggressive mountain goat activity’.  There were ranger postings from early June saying that the deep winter snowpack had reduced the local mountain goat habitat, and they had been hanging out on the trail.  They were apparently approaching hikers aggressively to defend their food supply.  But it had been a month and a half since the trail closure, and all the snow was gone!  Why was it still closed?  We got out of the car to read the full ranger report, wandered around the trailhead area, and discussed whether or not we should just go ahead and do the hike.  And then, all of the sudden, we heard hoofbeats scrambling up the mountainside.  Aggressive mountain goats!  We both sprinted for the car and immediately drove out of there.  Screw that hike.

We drove to Tacoma and did a mountain bike ride in a local park instead.

Victoria

The “Sunken Garden” at Butchart Gardens

Kristen in the “Italian Garden” at Butchart Gardens

Us at East Sooke Regional Park, looking across the strait of Juan de Fuca at the Olympics

After leaving Whistler, we drove through Vancouver and took the ferry to Victoria.  Victoria is situated on a large island (Vancouver Island) off the coast of British Columbia, just a few miles from Washington State (across the Strait of Juan de Fuca).  In fact, you can usually see Washington’s Olympic Peninsula from many parts of Victoria.

We came to Victoria for the gardens – Butchart Gardens.  The gardens tend to be the first thing people ask you about if you mention you’ve been to Victoria.  “Oh, did you go to the gardens?”

So we went the first afternoon.  The day was pretty cloudy and chilly, so the grounds were empty – we more or less had the whole place to ourselves.  And it was beautiful!  The grounds are broken into several areas, each with its own theme – the Sunken Garden (set in an old limestone quarry), the Rose Garden (with what had to be hundreds of rose varieties), the Japanese Garden, the Italian Garden, the Mediterranean Garden, and plenty of other smaller areas in between.  They had flowers, trees, and plants we’d never seen before, all arranged beautifully.

We visited in the late afternoon – Kristen’s mom and grandmother had advised we should budget 2-3 hours to walk the entire thing – and then I took Kristen on a date to the restaurant on the garden grounds.  We ate dinner as the sun was setting, and the food turned out to be fantastic (flowers in the butter!).  After dinner we re-visited our favorite parts of the garden, all of which had been lit up in a nighttime display.

The next day, we drove into downtown Victoria to take a look around (we were staying at a campsite in a provincial park about 30 minutes away).  After a few hours of walking around, we had seen most of the major attractions of the city – seaplanes landing in the small bay near downtown, the BC capital building, the Empress Hotel, a walk around the bay, and a nice coffee shop near the water.  By that point, we were starting to get a little antsy for the great outdoors.

So we picked up a free map of the area and looked for a local park near the shore.  As it turned out, the East Sooke Regional Park was about 45 minutes West, and looked like it would offer great views of the Olympic Peninsula.  It did.  We drove around the edge of the park, and then did a quick 2 mile hike down to the bluffs on the shore.  The views were incredible.  Our outdoor senses satisfied, we grabbed a pizza and headed back to our campsite.

Whistler

Vegetables!  Prepared in an actual kitchen!

Kristen looking out over Green Lake on the Rainbow-Sproatt Flank Trail

After 3 or so solid weeks living in a tent in the wilderness, we decided to rent a condo for 5 days in Whistler, BC.

The drive from Jasper was gorgeous (there did not seem to be any sort of large valley between the Rockies and the coast ranges like there is further south).

When we arrived, the place felt impossibly luxurious.  Our own bathroom!  That we can use at any time of night without having to go outside!  A real kitchen!  Heat and AC!  A real bed!  I think we both felt almost a little ashamed to have so much convenient stuff all to ourselves.

We went a little nuts on the food.  I should preface this by saying that at the start of the trip, we had fantastical ideas of what we would be able to cook at our campsites (we even brought a couple cookbooks).  By August, they turned out to be just that – fantasy.  Simmering a pot of wild rice for an hour over a finicky propane stove is a huge bummer when it’s 40 degrees outside and the wind is blowing.  Our campsite meals had degraded to the old standbys – a can of Amy’s Organic soup and some quesadillas.

So when we got to Whistler, we cooked every meal, and pounded the vegetables.  We had salads, roasted root vegetables, wild rice pilaf, hearty grain bread dipped in olive oil and vinegar, pancakes for breakfast, and sometimes a nice piece of meat to share each night.  And, since storage wasn’t an issue, we also got to try a few different bottles of wine while we were staying there!

Aside from the food, Whistler was a blast.  We went for mountain bike rides every day, mostly on the local Frank Zappa trails near lost lake, with one long ride up the Rainbow-Sproatt Flank Trail.  It had been a month or two since we’d last ridden, so we were rusty.  But by the end of the trip, we were riding better than we ever had.  We also went for long walks through the village and surrounding areas each day.

After a few weeks in the wilderness, Whistler felt like paradise.  We didn’t want to leave.

Parks Canada – WTF, eh?

Canada appears to manage its national parks in an . . . odd . . . way.

We’ve been to a number of national parks in the US over the past couple of months, and we pretty much know what to expect at this point.  The US seems to treat its national parks as extremely sensitive land, with minor, controlled commercial development, a rustic, wilderness feel, with strict boundaries and rules, and plenty of rangers and park personnel around.  You know when you’ve entered park land because there are only a few roads in and out, all with manned booths.  There are generally few/no services around – it can be quite frustrating to stay in a national park for days on end because it’s hard to buy the things you need.  But for us, that all adds to the rustic feel of the parks – you are closer to nature, and closer to the past.

So imagine our surprise when we drove West from Calgary to Banff national park:

- A major expressway artery runs through the park (so major it’s called Highway 1).  You don’t know when you’ve entered the park (maybe there was a sign?).  There was a booth a number of miles in (apparently blocking part of the expressway?), but I’m not clear that you had to purchase a parks pass to drive the highway.

- An expressway in the middle of an area that is supposed to function as a diverse wildlife refuge?  Seriously?  No question they’re dividing animal populations and restricting habitat with that one.  They have installed some ‘wildlife overpasses’ to let animals cross over the highway, so I guess that’s a step in the right direction, but seems pretty optimistic as a fix.

- Why are there major towns in the middle of a national park?  The town of Banff is pretty chichi, with expensive shops and restaurants, a mall, and more ice cream shops per block than our previous high-water mark, Bar Harbor.  (Ice cream shops per block is our personal ‘index of touristiness’).  The parks in the US sometimes have small towns on their flanks, and you can occasionally get lucky and find a grocery store inside the park boundary.  Yet there are 3 ski areas in Banff national park!

- Lake Louise, which is a gorgeous, milky blue glacial lake about 45 minutes North of Banff, has a massive Four Seasons-like development at its base.  There was a guy playing the harp in the lobby.  Why is this in a national park, right at the border of a major natural wonder?  We thought national parks were supposed to be unspoiled and affordable to a nation’s populous.

- During our 2 weeks in 3 Canadian national parks, we did not see one person we could legitimately call a ranger.  Sometimes they had huts near trailheads where rangers were supposed to be, but nobody was ever in them.  This is grizzly bear country!  Who deals with the wildlife?  Who makes sure all these tourists don’t wreck the landscape?  Nobody we saw.

- In Jasper, we saw a number of people box in a bull elk to take pictures of it, until it got angry and started howling, scaring it into a road where traffic had luckily stopped.  In Glacier, two park rangers were on scene when we were viewing 2 grizzly bears playing in the water near the side of the road 300+ feet away or so, and told us to vacate the area when the bears got out of the water because they needed more space.

Apologies for the diatribe here.  We wondered these things in hushed tones while we were visiting the parks, unsure if we were being too critical.  But now, we feel somewhat vindicated in our assessment.  Kristen has been reading a book on grizzly attacks, which points out that the ridiculous nature of Banff’s extreme (for a national park) development, the expressway, and some poor wildlife management decisions, had historically created circumstances in which bears could become particularly dangerous in the area (it’s been better in recent years due to some drastic changes in practice).

Not that the US national park system doesn’t have any issues – but when you enter a park in the States, you at least know what it’s supposed to represent.  The national parks we visited in Canada felt like, well, everywhere else in Canada.

Jasper

Panoramic view from the top of Bald Hills, near Maligne Lake

Us at the top of Sulphur Peak, near Miette Hot Springs

Athabasca River with its characteristic serpentine twists near Mt. Kerkeslin

Jasper NP is like a smaller version of Banff.  The town itself is smaller, there are fewer things to do, and there are less people.  Even over Labor Day, when we were in town, the place wasn’t exactly packed.  And one other thing we noticed: it’s frigging freezing. No wonder – it’s at 53 degrees North latitude. But even so, nightly near-freezing temperatures in late August/early September? Good thing we got that zero-degree double-occupancy sleeping bag.

It is, however, spectacular.  The views are similar to Banff, with glaciated peaks and mountain lakes all around.  And the town itself is nice, with a good array of shops, bakeries, coffee houses, and restaurants.

Our time in the park was spent in a similar fashion to Banff, with as much hiking as possible:

Day 1: rainy and cold. We hung out at a local bakery/coffee shop in the morning, and then drove to check out some in-town sites – Patricia Lake, Pyramid Lake, Edith Lake, and Annette Lake. Each has a small network of walking paths near and around it, so we tried to find the gaps in the rain and do a bit of wandering.

Day 2: Maligne Lake area.  There was a bear advisory on the route we originally chose (Opal Hills), so we hiked up the other side of the meadow, to a ridge in the Bald Hills.  And boy are we glad we did!  Maligne Lake has completely different sights on either side of it – gorgeous glaciated peaks on one side, and far more eroded, smoother peaks on the other.  Our hike ended up taking us to the top of the eroded side, so we got spectacular views of the picturesque side across the valley.  The only issue was that we saw a large pile of fresh grizzly bear scat at the bottom of the trail, which made for a somewhat nerve-racking time until we reached the tree line.  After the hike, we drove over to an area known for mountain goats – the Kerkeslin Goat Lick.  We spotted a number of them, impossibly high on the mountainside, and then saw one close up wandering around near the road!

Day 3: Miette Hot Springs area.  This place has a pool that is fed by hot springs water and was thus jammed with people, so we avoided that part of the area.  Instead, we did a short but difficult hike up the Sulphur Skyline trail to Sulphur Peak, which offered great 360 degree panoramic views of the surrounding mountains.  We were feeling pretty good, so we hiked typically – we absolutely bombed up the mountain, passing many people along the way, and then came down slowly and carefully, being passed by multiple (often the same) people.  It’s sort of our thing at this point.

Wildlife

Two grizzlies playing in the water at Glacier NP

Cow moose eating gravel on the side of the road in Big Sky, MT

Bull elk walking along the road in Jasper

Mountain goat licking salt from rocks on the Icefield Parkway, near Jasper

A herd of bighorn sheep hanging out at Miette Hot Springs, near Jasper

I sure am glad we got a pair of binoculars for this trip.  The past few weeks have been like a safari.  Some of our best sightings have been wildlife on the sides of mountains, across valleys, or otherwise far away.  Unfortunately, our ‘equipment’ doesn’t really allow us to take pictures through our binoculars, so most of our wildlife photography happens when we’re lucky enough to be up close (often at the roadside).  So far we have seen:

Grazing animals

• Bison (herds)
• Elk (bull & cow)
• Moose (bull & cow)
• Bighorn sheep (herds)
• Mule deer (several)
• Pronghorn antelope (2)
• Mountain goat (5+)

Rodents

• Marmot (many)
• Pika (many)
• Chipmunks, squirrels, ground squirrels, Columbian ground squirrels (who even knows)

Birds

• Bald eagle (two)
• Osprey (several)
• California condor (several)

Animals that are scary

• Black bear (5+)
• Grizzly bear (2)
• Wolf (1)

Smaller versions of animals that are scary

• Coyote (1)
• Fox (1)

Animals we ate

• Pigs
• Cows
• Chicken (meat)
• Chicken (eggs)
• Deer

Icefields Parkway

Kristen at the Peyto Lake overlook

Typical view from the Icefields Parkway

Driving past the Athabasca Glacier, part of the Columbia Ice Field

The road between Banff and Jasper is the most beautiful road either of us has ever driven.  The drive should take about 4 hours if you don’t stop.  We stopped so much it took us at least 6.

It’s called the Icefields Parkway, and for good reason.  There are constant supplies of glaciers and gorgeous mountain lakes within view from the roadside.  We knew it was going to be pretty nice; we did not know it would be like THIS.  Our Canadian Rockies guidebook sort of underplayed how spectacular the drive would be, and Kristen said afterward she felt she was “underprepared” for the majesty of the place.