Three Month Anniversary!

Ozette, Northern Washington Beachfront

It was either the migrating geese or the "eeek" of the osprey that woke me. We're the only ones at Fish Lake, Oregon this first morning of September, it's 38 degrees and there's no doubt that it's fall.

It's been three months that we've been 'on the road'. Early summer, the first month, we drove from Boston to Ashland, Oregon, exploring Michigan, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Idaho along the way. The second month we explored Southern Oregon and Northern California while trying to get ourselves in shape for the PCT, only in the end to decide that was no longer something for us. The third month we left Ashland, looped up through central Oregon, southern Washington, up to the Olympic Peninsula and the south along the coast and back. We're still trying to figure out to best live this life on the Kelly and Dave Trail (KDT) but we're having some great adventures. There have been some amazing places and hikes along the way, many of which I have written about, many more still to tell. But along with all those great places and we've also met some amazing people.

Klamath Falls, the first major town east of Ashland, may be most well known for it's giant inland lake and as a major stop for migrating birds on the western flyway, but it also has an excellent coffee shop. Gathering Grounds Cafe has great coffee, great atmosphere, an a great proprietor. Yesterday when we stopped by he had an awesome Nicaraguan roast, and we got to talking about the shop, Klamath Falls, John Day (an central Oregon town I'll write about later), road bicycling vs backroad bicycling (the shop is a major promoter of all things bicycling), Burning Man (the shop is on route from Portland and Seattle), and life on the road and trail.

Last week, while hiking out to Cape Lookout on the Oregon Coast we hiked with an Oregonian from the Astoria area. Like many Oregonians she loves her state, especially the coast, spends a great deal of time camping and hiking around, and happily shared lots of stories about the area and life as we hiked out to the point and back.

The previous week, we'd run into a Washington couple while hiking the beach at Ozette, part of the Olympic National Park. We were each hiking the loop in opposite directions but we met back up at the campsite later that night. They were retirees from Port Townsend who regularly drove out to Ozette to spend the night and hike. We spent a good two hours swapping hiking stories, getting further recommendations from them, and talking about the logistics of living on the road, something they were interested in trying.

The week before that we'd spent four wonderful days in Port Angeles, houseguests of a family friend. A former mounted policeman for the National Park Service, Jim had some great stories to tell about working in San Francisco and DC along with local dinning and hiking recommendations.

While at the Dalles campground just outside Rainier National Park, way back in the second week of

Trail to Cape Lookout, OR

August, we meet Niles. Niles and his wife Jacqueline had rented an RV and were traveling much the same route as us, but in the opposite direction. Unlike us their main goal was to locate various geocaches, and also unlike us they were German. It's always interesting to get the European perspective on the United States. Trump was just starting to make his 'interesting' comments and was still considered more of a fringe curiosity so we didn't have to talk about that, but guns, politics and the wonders of the natural country all made for very interesting conversation.

Pretty soon we'll be heading (migrating?) south through California, Nevada and Utah. The vague plan is to make a loop through those states returning to Ashland in December for Christmas. Along the way there'll be more logistics to figure out, great places to hike, and hopefully more great people to meet.

Do America

By day 6 of the Seattle/Oregon trip I had Mark Knoftler's “Do America” on continuous play. It seemed like we were going from place to place, hitting the high/tourist spots and with the newly invented BBB scale  I felt like I had a good feel for three new areas.

Ashland, Oregon is a full-on BBB triple threat!  With the Standing Stone and Caldera micro brew pubs less than three blocks from each other, the Bloomsbury independent bookstore and bikes, from sleek racing to around-town cruisers, almost as prevalent as pedestrians it's a beautiful thing. Added to all that is a great used book store, fantastic hiking, fruit -  luscious pears, plums, blackberries, etc, growing everywhere like weeds, and  friendly people,and its a town I could really spend some time in.

Jacksonville, 7 miles East of Ashland, looks good at first sight. Neat, tidy 19th century houses, large sidewalks, and a decent coffee shop. There are a number of bikes in town but you soon notice they are only riding through town. There's neither a bike shop, nor brew pub.  Out of 15 different shops, not a single bookstore, used or otherwise, and while the restaurants offer locally grown food, their selection of Oregon beers was limited. A very sad, missed opportunity for a town.

And then there is Seattle, a town once noted for its impressive coffee shop penetration, but now has even more sushi restaurants.  Tourist traffic has also increased in the last decade and the big independent bookstore recently moved from Pioneer Square, North and up to the Capital Hill district. It is a well-stocked, vibrant, if singular store.

Bikes, and bike lanes are everywhere in Seattle - as is a bike-friendly transit system. But somehow you get the sense that the idea is to get bikes in and out of, not around town. Seattle boasts a great outdoor recreation ethic, but all that recreation happens outside of Seattle. It's like a commuter city, a city where everyone lives and the commuting it to the mountains, rivers, and ocean around them.

And the beer? Hmmm. I really can't recall anything remarkable about the beer selection in the restaurants, and didn't see a brewery although google maps does show one, it too is in the Capital Hill district, not Seattle proper.

All in all, I guess I too view Seattle as a commuter town. A decent place to go to Do America and find other BBB towns like Ashland.

Biking, Bainbridge Island and Blackberries

After the second brilliant sunny day of this trip and the 8th consecutive sunny Seattle day, I'm beginning to suspect that all those continuous rain stories about the Pacific Northwest are told in order to keep Californians and Easterners away. Another thing that would be attractive, if you knew, and they've never mentioned, are the blackberries. You know those rather largish black berry bundles that grocery stores sell in tiny pints for $3.99? Those same berries, or rather, a more luscious, ripe, version of those berries grown EVERYWHERE in the Pacific Northwest.

I first noticed them, with the total disbelief of a blackberry deprived Northeasterners, as we were riding our bikes just outside of Bainbridge. We'd taken the 9:20 ferry, arrived just a little before 10:00, rented some horrendous rental bikes (I now get why some people don't like to ride bikes, I wouldn't either if this way my experience) and immediately pedalled out to circumnavigate the island. After grinding through 6 gears and 2 chain rings up a hill, we were speeding down when I noticed that all those bushes crowding the side of the road were overflowing with blackberries. I braked. SD swore, almost ran into me, and narrowly avoided another broken collarbone which may be the reason he was not as impressed as I was. There were blackberries everywhere.

At least they sure looked like blackberries, but what were blackberries doing on the side of the road? Unpicked by humans, untouched by birds, unnibbled by rodents? I glanced up the road to see if anyone was watching, any cars approaching. The coast was clear so I picked and ate one. At this point I was expecting that perhaps they just looked like blackberries but were infact some insidiously disguised poison fruit. But oooh, they tasted like black juicy sweetness itself. I picked another and handed it to SD, hoping it would justify his close encounter with 3 months of intense shoulder pain. I'm not sure it did, but he did smile. We ate some more, me still glancing furtively around wondering when some angry farmer would appear waving a shot gun, and then we rode off.

BLACKBERRIES!!!!

Up over the next hill there were more roadside berries, and up the next hill, and down the other. (In addition to berries there were an unexpected number of hills on this island!) Sometimes the bushes looked so ripe and full I tried, but just could not pedal by. SD was now riding a good 100 ft behind me so when I cried “Berry Break!” he would have enough braking distance. At one patch I was literally surrounded by blackberries, so many berries, so little hunger.

Talking about this later with Pacific Northwesterners, transplants, and other visitors, I learned this first encounter with blackberries was typical. That they are in fact so plentiful as to be considered an invasive weed. The bushes are everywhere, in highway medians, on the side of the LinkRail tracks, in vacant warehouse lots, in parks, everywhere.

Strangely enough, they still sell in Seattle grocery stores for $3.99 pint.