8 itchy feet

Turning Ten in Tahoe

Published on October 20, 2016October 20, 2016 by 8itchyfeet4 Comments

It’s hard to think just how it may have happened, but the end of our year away seems now to be looming large. We’re into the last quarter, almost the final stretch. With around 12 weeks to go, I feel like those days where a return to life at home was unimaginable are starting to be numbered.

In fact, thoughts of home seem to find their way into conversations increasingly often as we motor along in our motorhome. Amy and Oliver discuss what they would like to do to their rooms with relish and ponder what extra-curricula activities they would like to pursue. Oliver asked the other day if I thought there was anywhere in America that would be likely to sell a plastic cricket bat?

Talk of home however is a little too pre-emptive still. A more immediate question was what are we going to do after we drop off the motorhome in three weeks’ time? Where to next? Our trip beyond the USA was always so far off it had been dismissed with a simple ‘then we’ll go south to central or south America until time and money and run out…’ Time it seems is running out, fortunately in equal measure with money.

These thoughts occupied our mind as we made our way up and up and up into the Sierra Nevada mountains towards Lake Tahoe. We were off to visit our friends Ryan and Kami, who we met way back in Vietnam, on Halong Bay. We really like Ryan and Kami. A bit like Andrea and Peter from Canada and Britt and Morten from Denmark we found their company thoroughly enjoyable from the moment we met. We hope they feel the same and we jumped at the invitation to stop by.

Lake Tahoe is a huge lake of gorgeously clear water. It was formed many moons ago when a volcano formed a natural depression which ponded the waters of the Truckee River. Coming from the West, it is approached via the Donner Pass which overlooks Donner Lake. Donner Lake was the sight of a rather gruesome tale back in 1846.

At the time, various family groups were trying to cross the Sierra Nevada into California. One fateful trip saw a whole bunch of them caught short here at Donner Lake by a vicious early winter storm. Most starved to death. A few ate a few of the others, or so the written records would suggest (no archaeological evidence has been found to confirm) in order to survive and overall only a few women and children made it out alive. The real saga was much more drawn out and detailed than that, but you get the gist. I bet they wish they had an V10 powered RV and a highway to drive on.

Ryan and Kami’s place was at Truckee, just a few miles from Tahoe. It is a lovely mountain town, made all the lovelier by the colours of the aspen trees in fall, I mean autumn. Ryan and Kami cooked us dinner (including chocolate fondue for dessert), took us for walks high in the mountains and skimmed rocks with us on the shores of Lake Tahoe.

If you walk up high enough you find snow… fight!

dsc05281-1 — Some of the view at Ellis Peak

Truckee is a really pretty mountain town like the other villages and ski resorts which call Lake Tahoe home. They have charm and character and ooze well-to-do. Ryan and his son Sage played spot the Bentley or Lamborghini as they drove Oliver and I around. It is, altogether a world apart from many other towns and small cities we have driven through which seem to forsake charm and character in favour of carpark acreage and store footprint size.

On the third day of our visit it was Oliver’s birthday. A special outing was organised down to nearby Reno to ‘Fly High’, a trampoline park. Kami brought Sage and Indy, their kids along, to help Oliver celebrate. Oliver says it was, ‘a whole lot of bouncy fun’. Which it was. Emma and I bounced too, and swung off the high trapeze to fall onto the mats below, and played dodge ball and through ourselves up the American Ninja Warrior style warped walls and climbed all over the monkey bars and roman ring courses. I felt like a ten-year-old again.

Staying in a house for a few days meant access to a television which allowed me to turn on and watch Donald Trump debate Hilary Clinton one evening. It was fascinating stuff. No one we have met in America is happy with the choice of candidates they are being asked to choose between although the choice still seems obvious to me. Amy and Oliver joined me in watching the debate of their own volition and actually stayed tuned for pretty much the full hour and a half.

It stimulated a fair bit of discussion afterwards, though we all agreed it was probably best to keep our opinion on American politics to ourselves. We seem to have travelled through predominantly Republican territory since leaving Seattle. ‘Trump. Pence’ banners have been a common sight whereas I don’t recall seeing a Clinton sign anywhere. In one town Trump banners were accompanied by enthused individuals who waved their views vigorously at the passing traffic. Others signs included in the mix read, ‘Free people have guns. Slaves don’t’.

This sort of thing makes you feel like you really are in the USA. It is a fascinating place. Everything is big. The landscape, the mountains, the cars, the motorhomes, the shops, I mean stores. A big car in Australia would be a Landcruiser, a Hilux or other similar beastie. Parked next to the average American ‘pick-up truck’ these cars just don’t look big at all. It’s like seeing a 747 parked beside an A380. Most pick-ups can tow something like twelve tons and it seems like they comprise every second vehicle on the road.

We left Ryan and Kami’s after three very enjoyable days, headed for highway 395 which runs up and down the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountains. We were headed for Yosemite National Park and hoping to come at it from the east across the 9945 feet (3031 metres) Tioga Pass. It was a Tuesday and there was a storm forecast for Thursday which threatened to close the pass for the season.

Highway 395 is a very pretty drive, especially in the fall. Stops to take photos were numerous. I have totally given in to my urge to take photos lately. Scenery here in the US is a large part of the reason for my capitulation. The world continues to astound me and the taking of nice photos is little more than an expression of the powerful hold it has on me and the desire to take a little bit home.

It doesn’t help that Mum has become something of an amateur photographer or that Amy is showing strong signs of being photo obsessed as well. The three of us love little more than sharing our favourite photos from the day before over a coffee each morning – no coffee for Amy though.

In amongst all this, plans for our final 12 weeks have emerged. After we return the motorhome in Las Vegas on 1 November we propose to continue our US adventure for another week, trading the motorhome for something faster and nimbler in order to streak east across the desert in search of Canyonlands and Arches National Parks and perhaps a detour via Monument Valley.

After that we’ll hop a flight to LA for a few days at Disney… a payoff for our children who have so patiently, for the most part, accompanied Emma and I as we have sought to walk every path and trail we can find. Disney is to be followed by surfing lessons at Sayulita in Mexico and a couple of week’s snorkelling the coral reefs in Belize before we head north for Christmas with the Canadian relatives and spend our last week in Ottawa with the Douglas-Grants. We will fly home on 5 January, landing in Sydney on 7 January – exactly 365 days after we left.

Ambassadors from another time

Published on October 13, 2016 by 8itchyfeet2 Comments

‘The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It’s not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time’.

John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America.

I wrote three drafts to try and describe our time and experience visiting the redwood forests of northern California. All were a terrible disappointment to me. Then I started looking up what other people have said and found everything I wished to convey had already been said. Above and below you will find quotes that sum up what I felt.

We started our redwood journey in the north at the Jedediah State Park. We camped beneath these massive trees in a campground with roads scarcely wide enough to manoeuvre our oversize vehicle. We also wandered along the banks of the Smith River, the last remaining undammed river in California.

On our second day we headed south along the Newton Drury Scenic Drive to Elk Prairie. We walked the Trillenium Falls walk and the Prairie Creek Trail. Amy and Oliver loved the ‘Ed-Venture Quests’ provided by the Parks Service and the cloth badges they received from undertaking them successfully. Emma also went to great lengths to entertain them in the forest leaving mum and I in peace to soak up our surrounds. Amy also took a 20 metre rope on our walks. A rope than only made it three quarters of the way around the base of the larger trees we came across.

Entertaining Amy on the Trillium Falls walk

On day three in the redwoods we drove the Avenue of the Giants, a little old road that parallels highway 101 and is infinitely more beautiful and wondrous. We left the redwoods heading for Lake Tahoe and leaving me contemplating whether this may be my favourite place in the world.

“The redwood is the glory of the Coast Range. It extends along the western slope, in a nearly continuous belt about ten miles wide, from beyond the Oregon boundary to the south of Santa Cruz, a distance of nearly four hundred miles, and in massive, sustained grandeur and closeness of growth surpasses all the other timber woods of the world.”

John Muir

“It is difficult to imagine the size of a sierra redwood. You often hear stories like the fact that a sierra redwood may contain enough wood to build 40 five room homes; a tree may weigh 4,000 tonnes; they are as tall as the Statue of Liberty. However, these stories do little to convey the actual size of these trees.
Many sierra redwoods are between 250 and 300 feet tall, the tallest being about 325 feet high. While their height is impressive, the real wonder of a sierra redwood lies in its bulk. Many of these giants have diameters in excess of 30 feet near the ground, with a corresponding circumference of over 94 feet!”

California Department of Parks and Recreation (parks.ca.gov)

“But more impressive than the facts and figures as to height, width, age etc., are the entrancing beauty and tranquillity that pervade the forest, the feelings of peace, awe and reverence that it inspires.”

George McDonald, Dollarwise Guide to California and Las Vegas

“We seek their companionship with quiet satisfaction, for in striking contrast with the heavy shade and gloomy depths of our great pine forests, the shadows in the densest growth of redwoods are made soft and semi-luminous by rays of sunlight piercing the feathery foliage, glistening through the pillared glades, illuminating the warm brown and somber gray trunks of these grand trees and ‘awakening to more vivid tints of green the swaying branches sweeping the clear blue sky’. And this comingling of light and shade gives to daylight in the redwoods a peculiar softness in keeping with the stillness of the scene.”

FH Clark, ‘Forestry; Redwoods Annual Report of the State Board of Horticulture of the State of California for 1891′.

“The size of the trees is, however, only the beginning of this magical place. The colours are rich and vibrant, with bark and moss of greens, reds and browns. The air is thick with moisture a hint of pine. It is fresh and clean and deep, heavily laden with oxygen from the surrounding trees. Creeks and running water play out in the background and the wind moves breezily through the canopy of trees way above. In the wet, mist swirls. In the sunlight individual beams of light can be seen piercing like fingers between the thick foliage and in the sun, shadow and light mix in equal measure.”

Me, from my first draft of this blog post

So even though it is impossible to capture in photos – I tried. With thanks to Granny for a few of these.

elk-prarie-in-redwood-state-forest — Elk Prairie

Oliver commented ‘we would have had to climb this on the West Coast Trail’

greg-and-em-on-avenue-of-giants — Hilarious!

One clipper, many planes and two RVs

Published on October 13, 2016 by 8itchyfeetLeave a comment

I hit Emma in the head with a saucepan last time we were in Seattle. It was 1997. We were cooking in the big communal kitchen of a central Seattle youth hostel. I filled up a pot of water before rotating more or less on the spot to put it on the stove. Emma had been hunting around for the lid just below and came up just as I turned and WAMMO! She clutched her head and water sloshed all over her to add insult to injury.

It wasn’t our finest moment and not the sort of thing you should do to your girlfriend of less than a year. It makes me laugh now though and it made Amy and Oliver laugh too as we walked more or less past the scene of the crime in search of a late lunch.

We had arrived in Seattle on the Clipper from Victoria shortly beforehand. Granny had joined us for the next five weeks and there were a few grandchildren who were very glad to see her. It was a glorious day, not too hot, not too cold and Seattle looked pretty as picture as we approached from across the Straits of Juan de Fuca. It was a Sunday afternoon and Seattle seemed sleepy. Until we got to the Pike Place Markets that is, which is clearly the place to hang out in Seattle on a sleepy Sunday afternoon.

We were starving and the markets were huge and bustling. There was plenty of food but most of it seemed to be raw fish or raw something until we stumbled across an establishment with ‘Bakery’ in its name. It didn’t look anything flash but they made sandwiches and if we didn’t eat soon someone was going to go looking for a saucepan with which to whack someone else in the head. So we plonked ourselves down and ordered.

Enormous gourmet sandwiches soon arrived served on toasted sourdough bread. It’s a shame you can’t share taste through words because I’d really like to share my sandwich with you. It was amazingly good and the staff were chatty and funny and the whole thing turned into a bit more than just lunch.

Three Girls Bakery – oldest shop in the markets

I told our waitress the sandwiches were so good we might stay for dinner. She said ‘we like you, but not that much’ so we ended up having Vietnamese take away on the floor of our Travelodge hotel room at the base of the Space Needle.

Lucky for those camping bowls we travel with

The Travelodge was just an overnight stop. The next morning, we departed the city centre for the non-descript southern outskirts. Here, behind a non-descript ‘gas’ station was Road Bear. We were all excited to pick up our Recreational Vehicle aka an RV (you gotta say it with a long rolling ‘rrrr’ and a slow drawn out ‘vvvv’).

‘What’s it got?’ I asked the man from Road Bear as he showed me where to check the oil and instructed me to do so every third stop at the gas station. ‘A V8?’.

‘No’, he replied. ‘It’s a V10’.

A V10! Sheesh. That’s going to chew some fuel.

It’s a 6.8 litre V10 to be precise. The vehicle specifications say it produces 305 horse power with 569 newton metres of engine torque. I don’t really know what that means, but it sounds big and grunty and powerful and thirsty. Which I suppose it needs to be. This is a 28 foot (8.53 metres for all the metric junkies out there) house on wheels weighing in at 6569 kilograms before you put us in it and with all the smooth styling and aerodynamic lines of a brick. Actually a brick may be better…

I climbed up into the driver’s seat while the others packed away our gear into cupboards. No packing up for us for five weeks! ‘Does the seat go any higher?’, I asked searching around for a lever. It didn’t. I could barely see over the steering wheel and that can’t be good when in charge of 7 tonnes of machine! A folded blanket gives me the extra two inches I need.

I pulled nervously out of the driveway, conscious of my 10.5-foot girth, and took the first corner a little too wide but soon started to get the hang of it. First stop, a Thrift store followed by Walmart. Where better to fit out a big RV than a ridiculously massive American superstore. It was a bit warm as we wended our way through the traffic. No worries, I thought. I’ll just pop on the AC. Hmmm it’s just blowing hot air. That’s not what we paid for.

I called Road Bear while the others shopped. Road Bear asked us to bring it back, which we did the next morning. We handed it over and waited and waited at the McDonalds next door until we were told it needed returning to Ford. We would have to take another bigger RV instead. Which we did and were finally on our way. Just a 24-hour delay.

First stop. Boeing. Yep. The first thing you should do after picking up an RV is go ogle at planes. Jill and Anthony suggested we visit the Boeing factory when we were back in Toronto, otherwise I’m not sure we would have even thought of it. The part of the factory you tour is a shed which covers an area of 40 hectares. 40 hectares!

Apparently you could put Disneyland inside and have 12 hectares left over, or so we were told. The doors to the shed, of which there are five or six (I’m not sure because you couldn’t actually see the other end of the building without taking a bus ride), are each the size of an American football field. It’s the largest building in the world by volume at 13,385,378 m3.

Inside the shed Boeing assembles 747s and their new 787 Dreamliner and probably a bunch of others as well. We just saw the 747’s and Dreamliner. They can roll them off the production line at a rate of one plane every 2.5 days, each with approximately 6 million individual parts!

You have to see this operation to believe it or to have any idea of what is involved. Boeing employs 160,000 people. I’m pretty sure that’s more than the Australian Public Service! Unfortunately, cameras are strictly forbidden, for fear of corporate espionage one supposes (this article has some photos). From the vantages points we were taken to we looked out over a building maybe 10 stories tall filled with layers of permanent looking scaffolding, cranes and offices, cafes restaurants and all manner of equipment.

Nestled amongst it all are planes in various stage of completeness from fuselage pieces at one end to complete 747s at the other and giant wings waiting to be attached in the middle. They don’t heat the building, even in winter. The output from the several million lights and body heat from the workforce apparently does the job just fine.

at-boeing — Inside the museum bit – photos allowed

Just outside the building, lined up like any other planes at any other airport are finished painted aircraft, decked out in the regalia of airlines around the world. Boeing doesn’t deliver. You have to come and pick up your own planes! So here they wait until the pilots arrive.

It’ll cost you $380 million for a new 747 and $230 to $280 million for a Dreamliner, depending upon which optional extras you choose – you know a DVD player or not – that sort of thing. You can’t get a Dreamliner until 2020 however, the back order is that long.

On the road again, we headed south and after what seemed like endless hours, the traffic and city chaos finally yielded to trees and views of the massive, snow-capped, volcanic Mount Rainier. We made a camp fire at Alder Lake with only one other camper, sat around eating s’mores and life was good.

Then it rained. Oh good I thought. We have a motorhome. We’ll be snug and warm and dry. I thought of all those nights we had spent in our wet little four-person tent looking enviously at warm, dry travellers in motorhomes. Imagine my annoyance then when our motorhome leaked! And not just a little leak. It streamed in like a waterfall, soaking our towels which was the only thing we had available to soak up the torrent.

I felt like whacking Road Bear with a saucepan, but instead I rang them to express my displeasure. They advised gaffa tape and plastic bag over the general area followed by a mere 400-mile diversion off our intended route to pick up a new one in San Francisco! I advised that wasn’t going to happen and they advised they would get back to me. They didn’t, and in the meantime we fixed the problem with a three-dollar tube of silicon.

Onwards we went, driving through the Oregon countryside which for quite some time left me with the impression that the entire state might well be a forestry operation. We crossed the Columbia River via a massive mechano bridge over a port with big ships being loaded with logs and stopped in at Haystack rocks on Cannon Beach on the West Coast where we ran and played on the wide sandy shore while a most magnificent sunset unfolded before us.

cannon-beach-pics — A Granny photo of photo taking

From there it was south all the way down highway 101. Magnificent coastal scenery was interspersed with towns, how shall I put it, lacking architectural grace.

Oregon coastal scenery when the sun came out

It was slow going with many, many photo stops

At the Jessie M Honeyman State Park we found massive sand dunes slowly moving across the tall conifer forest and lakes. We love sand dunes and though we had no sand boards we delighted ourselves simply by running down them leaping and hollering like we just didn’t care.

on-the-oregon-sand-dunes — A few hundred photos were taken

sand-dune-running-family — Granny took this one

It was a really pretty place to camp, nestled in amongst tall trees which silhouetted themselves against a starlit sky as our campfire eventually dimmed and died. Were it not for the lure of bigger and better things to come we would probably have stayed a little longer. As it was, the Redwoods of California were only a couple of hours drive down the road and they were one of the reasons we chose to go this way in the first place. The next morning, we were up and Redwood bound.

A good fire in Jessie M Honeyman State Park