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We are in a cabin outside Gatlinburg, TN tonight, sharing the place with Donna’s oldest brother and his wife. We are here because we are visiting with some cousins of Donna & Jim from Canada who are in the area while on their vacation. Because we passed right by, at about the right time, we had to have lunch at our favorite place in Hendersonville, West First. They had the whole of downtown Hendersonville, NC blocked off for a classic car show, so we had to walk a little extra bit to get to the restaurant. But that was no real inconvenience because there was plenty of cool old automotive iron to see, but only one was pixel worthy, this spiritual successor to the Miata, a 1965 Lotus Elan.
The Sonata passed the six thousand mile mark somewhere between Gatlinburg and the White Oak Lodge & Resort
I know, I know, I should have used a tripod and I should not be zoomed to my widest angle lens setting, but at least I managed to get a series of photos, unlike my failed attempt at the swinging bridge later on on the trip…
Our rental car for the past nine days was a Chevy Cruze and it was a pleasant surprise. The seats were leather covered with built in heaters (nice in the cool northwest, but we only used them once to test them), were very comfortable and reasonably supportive. The steering was weighted nicely, plus the wheel was fat and also leather covered. Response was peppy enough and the automatic transmission was geared pretty well, seldom left hunting for just the right one. The trunk swallowed our large suitcase, two carry-ons and a laptop bag with plenty of room for any impulse souvenir purchases. I noticed only a couple of short comings, limited rear legroom with tall front seat occupants and the interior could be noisy at speed, but nothing more than expected at this size and price point.
In almost all two lane driving, with plenty of ups and downs, twisty road coast roads and slow small town driving the car returned a very nice 32.9 MPG. We drove 1624 miles and spent a total of $191, using 49.3 gallons of gas. The cheapest regular gas was $3.719 in Florence, OR and the most expensive was $4.049 in Smith River, CA. The average cost per gallon for the trip was $3.875.
We stopped at Cannon Beach and unlike our last visit, the weather was foggy and cold. Also unlike our last visit we were armed with a GPSr. We nabbed a couple geocaches for souvenirs this time.
Lewis and Clark were stuck here just on the Washington side of the Columbia River opposite Astoria in a howling winter storm with no food for almost a week, so they named it a dismal nitch. We called it a dismal nitch because we had to put our coats on to walk the 1/4 mile to a geocache. We obviously have a very different comfort level in 2011 than they did in 1805.
Here is a picture of one half of one of the last standing movable bridges in Washington State, the Raymond steel swing bridge, crossing the Willapa River. The other half (of the picture, not the bridge) was lost due to my unfamiliarity with the camera’s panorama function.
The view from our seats at Salty’s On Alki restaurant where we ate our last vacation style (read, expensive) meal before turning in the rental car and shuttling to the airport.
Today was a “rest day” as we stayed in the same hotel for a second night. We did a little exploring in the area. Tomorrow we have 250 miles to get to SeaTac to catch a plane home and about 13 hours to get there, so hopefully even with Labor Day traffic we’ll get there in time.
First stop was the famous Tillamook Cheese Factory. There is a self guided tour with history and such, plus an observation deck so you can watch cheese being packaged. There was also a line where you could taste the cheese for free, but it was too long, so rather than wait we bought a sample package for three bucks in the gift shop.
Just south of town was a small state park that showcased a 319′ waterfall. The trail was closed short of allowing you to get to the base of Munson Creek Falls, not because they didn’t want you there, but because many large trees have fallen blocking the way.
The one place we paid to get into today was the Tillamook Air Museum and it was well worth it. It is housed in the one remaining blimp hangers built here for coastal defense during World War Two. The air museum inside has many interesting aircraft and a ton of WWII memorabilia.
In the late afternoon we headed out to Cape Meares to get dinner at one of the small towns on the coast there and catch a sunset over the Pacific. We managed one of two. Dinner was at a small cafe in Oceanside, but the sunset was called on account of the fog rolling in. All that white space to the right of the 38′ tall Cape Meares Lighthouse would be the blue of the sky and water, but for the fog that blanketed the peninsula.
After breakfast we headed a couple miles south (backwards) to poke around one of the dune parks. From the parking areas it is about 50 foot climb up to the top of the dune and then 50 feet down done to the beach. For a sense of scale, that spot about halfway down from the top at about the left 1/3 of the photo is a person climbing up the dune.
There are sections of the park set aside just for off-roading. These purpose built quads sit at the top of the dune watching several others do the hill climb thing.
The Heceta Head Lighthouse is normally open for tours, but is being restored,so we had to settle for a photograph of it from an overlook on the other side of the bay.
This photo was from a stone shelter built in the ‘30s at the end of the the St. Perpetua Trail. The trail is 1.3 miles long one way and climbs 830′ from the Visitor’s Center to the shelter on the tallest place on the Oregon coast.
We started the day amongst the coastal northern California’s tall trees…
Which quickly turned into southern Oregon’s rocky coast…
And ended up at central Oregon’s sand dune filled coast.
We we got up this morning there was frost on the car which was not unexpected at 6000’and 35°. On the drive up we passed several spots that still had snow on the ground left over from the park’s 44 foot annual accumulation.
While walking around the Mazama Village where we were staying there were numerous tall sticks lining the roadway. These are there so the snow plows know where to clear. At the top (where the red dot is) is a bit of reflective tape to help the drivers pick them out.
 This our home for tonight, Casa Rubio. It is right on the beach. What made it even better was there as a restaurant about a 100 yards away that we could walk to and the food was fantstic. We were so close to the Oregon/California border, about 800 feet, if Oregon where to invade California this would be the first line of defense.
We stopped along the road in northern Oregon at a spot that promised to identify the mountains in the distance, but they were barely noticeable behind the haze of smoke. You can see that one side of the road has burned in the recent wildfires that have plagued the region and the other has not.
This is the Cooked River Railroad Bridge south of Madras. There were four geocaches in this little park that included three crossings of the 300 foot deep gorge, the RR, the current 5 lane highway and the old two lane one. The smoke has cleared at this point and you can see several mountains in the background.
A view of Wizard Island in the middle of Crater Lake from the North Junction overlook. Traveler’s Tip: Drive the loop in a clockwise direction because that puts the mountainside on your right. Traveling the opposite direction frequently puts nothing but a huge drop with no guardrail on that side of the car.
A 300 mile day in the car as we went up and over Stevens Pass and down the eastern side of the Cascades to the Columbia River. The west side of the pass was green and lush pine forest while the east side was all dry and scrub bushes. We stopped for a leg stretch and a geocache in the faux Bavarian town of Leavenworth. And we ended the day at the Big Horse Brew Pub where for Donna’s birthday I got a new Brew Pub hoodie and a beer.
We bought some stamps here at the Skykomish Post Office (98288.)
Some of the giant one legged alien life forms that live in the Kittitas Valley.
Scott & Beth have access to a large patch of blackberries and we spent as long as the attention span of a 4 year old could stand. Which means we barely covered the bottom of a bucket. Of course quite a few never even made it to the bucket.
I got grief for posting nothing but James pictures yesterday, so today we have a few of his younger sister Madelyn.
Niece Maddie is a bit camera shy, so snagging a photo is hard work.
Plus, she doesn’t stay in one place for too long.
Lake Stevens is hidden behind the fog on our early morning walk. I wonder where the person is who belongs to those abandoned flip-flops?
Nephew James gets some help as he practices for the roping contest.
These Alaskan Pigs really fly while racing around the track on the grounds of the Evergreen State Fair.
Nephew James is too young to show an actual cow at the 4H show, so he and a lot of future farmers show cardboard ones.
Don’t pack your Benefiber in your carry-on luggage. It makes the TSA nervous, causing them to hand search your bag, then sprinkle out some on a piece of paper and watch what color it turns. I guess blue means OK.
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