Everything I Learned on the Washington Road Trip

Editor’s Note: This was mostly written back in August 2021, and I just didn’t publish it then. My bad. I filled in two lines, and now it’s done, and I’m gonna pretend it was done a year ago. So there.

This is not actually everything. And some of these things I already knew.

Ben and I spent nine days together in May driving up to Washington and doing stuff. Then he flew home, and I eventually drove back.</logistics> We stopped a few places along the way, had some laughs, made lifelong friends with hobos, etc. I dunno. Do I really want to write this as a “lessons I learned?” blog post? Sure. Sure I do.

Corgi + Road Trip = Fur Everywhere

I knew this one beforehand, but I’d never had a car with a black interior before this, and I’d never had a boyfriend wearing a black shirt sitting in the passenger seat while holding the corgi for several hours at a go before this. Anyway:

Took some time to get the dog hair thatch out of the floor mats once I got home. Haven’t seen Ben wear this shirt since the trip, so I’m assuming the worst.

May Is Still Too Early for Mountain Hikes

Planning out the route, I thought it’d be fun to cap off the first day of travel (from Ogden to Pendleton) by hitting a quick day-hike in the Blue Mountains. I identified the Hoffer Lakes Trail as one that people seemed to like and that was dog-friendly. Got off the freeway in North Powder, then started heading toward the hills. About halfway up the mountain, we were still climbing hard, and it became increasingly clear that, uh, there was still way too much snow for us to conduct any actual hike.

Oh well. We ended up just parking at the ski resort (honestly, they had enough snow, they coulda still been open if they’d wanted to be), getting out of the car, looking at snow, giving Aela an opportunity to conduct some business, and yeah. May is too early to try to hike to Hoffer Lakes.

When the Bartender Says She Doesn’t Know How to Make Mixed Drinks, Believe Her

She might have even qualified it as “fancy mixed drinks”, but still. Ben and I met up with our buddy Kevin in Pendleton, Ore., who took us to his usual watering hole. When the bartender/server came to get our drink order, Kevin ordered something on rocks I think, Ben went for an imperial stout (probably — I don’t actually remember), and then I ordered an old fashioned, at which point she informed me that she would make it if I insisted, but that she (and their bar in general) don’t really know how to do (fancy?) mixed drinks.

I tended bar as a 100%-sober BYU student. Most of what I made was, I’m sure, awful, in part due to Utah liquor laws and in part due to me being a bartender who had never drank alcohol in his life. That said, I never once got negative feedback about an old fashioned I’d made. It is the simplest mixed drink you can make that isn’t just x on the rocks.

• Two squirts of simple syrup.
• Four dashes of bitters.
• Jigger (2 oz.) of bourbon.

And you’re mostly just tasting the bourbon anyway. It’d be easier to mess up a Jack and Coke. I don’t know. It’s the simplest mixed drink on earth, but, well: she was right, that bar does not know how to make mixed drinks. It tasted like saccharined water and had a similar potency.

Anyway. Other drinking-related lesson: aside from the one place in Pendleton, mixed drinks outside of Utah are often much stronger than mixed drinks inside Utah. I had a huckleberry mule in Oregon that just about blinded me.

The Columbia River Gorge Is Pretty Nice

And May is a perfectly valid time to be hiking there. We ended up on a pretty, shady, crowded (it was a Sunday) day hike just on the Washington side of the river that took us up to Falls Creek Falls. Aela was stuck on the leash, there were lots of other dogs also stuck on leashes, it was a worthy hike to a waterfall, and no one got hurt.

Norwegians Don’t Hug

Overheard at an art gallery in Poulsbo.

Gallery Employee 1: My son married a Swedish girl, and now my grandkids come to visit and they want to hug me.

Gallery Employee 2: <grimaces>

Other lesson from Poulsbo: a lot of the galleries are just closed on Mondays. And: if you’re going to go to a restaurant based solely on the fact that it serves lutefisk, you need to order the lutefisk, otherwise you’re better off just going somewhere else. And also: I don’t think there are any good restaurants in Poulsbo? Prove me wrong, I guess, but I’m sure I’ve never been to one. Food there is always only ever just okay.

Backpacking Is Way More Fun Not-Solo

This whole trip was way more fun not-solo.

I detailed the backpacking trip on an earlier post (Hiking in the Rainforest While Complaining About the Weather). But also, this was legitimately the first time I remember going on a backpacking trip, where at no time did I think why am I doing this to myself? It was cold, it was damp, the trail was uphill sometimes, and carrying a backpack is inherently less comfortable than not carrying a backpack. Further, and crucially from the note-to-self perspective, the non-Mountain House freeze-dried meals are just too big for one person. But, yeah, being out there with Ben, there was no moment when I was unhappy to be backpacking.

Washingtonians Like to Express Disdain with Yard Signs

“I Stand with Sheriff Brown” and “Stop the Wild Olympics Land Grab” in particular. Not pictured. I guess the nice thing about yard signs is that tourists get a feel for where the local angst is. It also gives one the opportunity to Google up and learn about Sheriff Brown (I’m probably okay with Sheriff Brown — it’s hard to imagine that Skamania County really needs the same laws and restrictions as Seattle and Tacoma) and Wild Olympics (which seemed like a reasonable approach to maintaining a status quo rather than a sort of job-killing land-grab). Anyway: now I know.

I Guess There Are No Cops in Washington Now?

I don’t have a photo for this — I was driving. Well, except for that part where Ben was driving, but still.

Man, there are some insane drivers in Washington nowadays though. I remember that place seeming like it used to drive in slow-motion, like the “speed limit” was the point at which their cars would spontaneously combust into a shower of sheet metal, rivets, and sparks. Yeah, it’s not like that any more. Impressively, the carpool lane is now used as the fast fast lane. I dunno, man. If this is the alternative, I think that place is better off with the 24/7 traffic jams.

Downtown Seattle Is Really Nice During Pandemics When No One’s There

Well, aside from being unable to get into the aquarium, I guess. And, not that it was empty empty, just that nothing was crowded, didn’t need reservations to get into any restaurant, sidewalks weren’t over-full… I dunno. This seemed like an ideal version of Seattle. Heck, even the hotel was reasonably affordable (if you ignore the $33/night for the dog plus the $30/night for parking, which I suppose I shouldn’t do).

But also: Washington really didn’t seem to want to let go of pandemic panic-mode. It was May and even the smaller places we visited (e.g., Port Angeles) were looking like the outdoor scenes of a post-apocalyptic video game. Oregon had already adopted the “you can go mask-free if you’re vaccinated” policy, so it was a shock to get into Washington and have the world look more locked-down than anywhere in Utah ever was.

But, hey, it was nice getting selfies of the Pike Place Market sign without having to jockey for space.

Engineers Enjoy Engineer Things

It was pretty fun seeing Ben get excited about, for instance, hydroelectric turbines at Snoqualmie Falls and insist that, of all the museums in the area, the Air and Space Museum was the one he was absolutely obliged to visit. I used to see stuff like a giant, rusted cog-looking thing on display in a park with a big plaque explaining the technical specs of the cog and wonder who on earth would ever care enough about cogs to actually read all these technical specs and think they’d come away with a worthwhile experience. Well — now I know. So hooray for turbines!, and here’s a photo from the flight museum I guess:

Anyway. That’s probably enough lessons.

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Hiking in the Rainforest While Complaining About the Weather

I feel like I nailed the headline*, but this first sentence? Hard pass.

Was trying to figure out where in the world it made sense to go backpacking in May, and came across reports of an enchanted valley in Olympic National Park called Enchanted Valley. Pitched it to Ben, was in agreement, and eventually it became May and we went.

There was a road-trip in here also, but we’ll pretend for now that that wasn’t the case.

Parks service originally told me I had to pick up the permit from the Port Angeles ranger station, but then, two days before leaving Utah, I got an email saying I had to print out the permit at home. I mean, it worked out, but in the meantime I’d booked a hotel in Port Angeles, and… something.

Below is the Graves Creek trailhead where we started. It’s not very close to Port Angeles, even though we started the day in Port Angeles.

Not so much pictured: the drizzle. There were a few people in the parking lot just finishing their hikes. They had the sorts of thousand-yard stares one rarely sees outside of wartime. I mean, the whole hike is in a rain forest, etc.

That last photo is this hike in a nutshell: a lot of green, overgrown log bridges with railing on only one side, drizzle that occasionally morphs into real rain. Not east-coast real rain, just the west coast kind. We did this hike over three calendar days and two calendar nights. About 48 hours from put-in to take-out. The first major check-point on this hike (which doesn’t involve a lot of check points) is the Pony Bridge. It’s a pretty good descent to get there (which, on day three, becomes the most irritating of ascents). But, here’s Ben enjoying wetness from the Pony Bridge:

Pretty good gorge going through there that I didn’t take photos of for some reason on the way out. On the way in, though — very gorge, such photos, etc.

And then, there are just a lot of trees with moss growing on them. And occasional cascading creeks. That kind of thing.

That second photo pretty well describes our relationship. I kid (probably?). What does that photo actually convey? The relationship is great. Ben and I are low-key fantastic.

We ended the day at O’Neill Creek Campground, about seven-ish (6.7?) miles from the trailhead. O’Neill provides a couple big advantages: (1) it’s not far enough in that you need to lug around bear canisters to camp there and (2) it’s close enough to Enchanted Valley that you can make it from O’Neill as a day-hike. So, that was cool.

OTOH, the wood there was way too wet:

One forgets that being damp and not moving around can be kind of miserable. The air temperature was technically in the 50s most of the day, but it was cold at camp. Due to the damp. Both nights. I dunno. Backpacking in the rainforest while complaining about the weather, etc., but it was pretty easy to talk ourselves into going to bed before sun-down just to get out of the damp air and stay warm. While hiking, though, those mid-50s temps were swell.

The next day, we took off for Enchanted Valley on a day-hike (we stayed at O’Neill both nights). The hike consisted primarily of rain forest.

I’m writing this like I’m somehow jaded with and unimpressed by rain forests. The amount of green, though — it’s pretty awesome. I swear the air there is better than any other I’ve ever breathed. And so many shades of green. Photos don’t do the green effect justice — you need a couple days or so of relentless immersion.

During the hike, we heard a lot of grunting elk, but never actually saw them. We did manage to see this guy (gal?):

Weirdly, the bear seemed a lot closer in real life than in the photos. Probably 200 yards away? I dunno. Maybe 300. We also tried a photo version that also included Ben and me as sort of a bear, bear, demi-bear situation, but it didn’t work out. The one bear just turns into a black speck.

OTOH, river and forest! And semi-distant peaks.

The last thing you do before entering the enchanted part of the Enchanted Valley, just after answering the troll’s questions, is cross this bridge. Which is way too high, way too narrow, way too wet, and doesn’t have nearly enough railings.

I don’t like heights.

The actual Enchanted Valley involves much sorcery and photographs can’t convey how awesome it is. There were waterfalls everywhere we looked, plus the sheer rock walls of the mountain, the river, the closed-down back-country ranger station, and, and, and everything. I dunno. Here were some attempts.

So yeah. We had lunch there on the porch of the ol’ ranger cabin. While there, it started raining again — hadn’t rained all day to that point — and it then kept raining for the next 18 hours. There was a lot of rain as I recall. The valley is gorgeous, and, again, the photos can’t do it justice. Or maybe they just don’t want to. Hard to say.

Here’s one more photo from the valley. It’s an out house with waterfalls.

We then headed back to our campsite at O’Neill Creek. No more (non-homo sapien) bears. Grunting elk. A lot of trees, ferns, moss, river, creeks, etc. The usual. Was raining when we got back to camp. Was raining when we ate dinner at 4PM. Was raining when we went to bed at 7:30. It rained.

And then, the next morning, we headed on out. It was still green, but weirdly sunny.

And, on the way back, I managed to take a couple photos at the Pony Bridge and its gorge. Which was cool.

I guess. I dunno. Was it cool? I love the color of the river there. And in other photos. It is my spirit-color. I mean:

Like that.

Also, fwiw and if you’re thinking about doing this trip, despite the fact that the trail “follows the river the whole way”, there’s a lot of up and down. It’s not trailhead at 9,000′ Wind Rivers-level up-and-down insanity or anything, but it’s not quite the marshmallowy walk in the woods that you might expect from the fact that it follows the river the whole way.

That’s probably good enough, right?

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* I’ll eventually change the title to “Heart of Dampness: Hiking the Quinault River Trail to Enchanted Valley”. It’ll be better for SEO, plus who doesn’t love a Joseph Conrad reference? Probably everybody. I do like how the current title sounds like a Modest Mouse song/album title.

Bend > Tacoma > Red Lodge > Cache Valley > Blog Post

These blog posts are pretty perfunctory. Go somewhere, post about it a year later because you feel like you have to. One day I’ll look back at all these posts and understand how I never had the time to become an astronaut.

On the last full day I was in Bend, Aela and I hiked to the Blue Pool, which isn’t all that close to Bend and was swarming with people. This is the best photo I took.

This was (is) apparently the McKenzie River, but it is not the actual Blue Pool itself. The actual pool has a bunch of people standing around it and is a little deeper. Imagine!

Anyway, then we took off. On our way out of Bend, we stopped at Smith Rock State Park, which would be a great place to visit if you were in to rock climbing, which I am not.

Sun’s out, tongue’s out. Amiright?? Mostly she was just happy to not be in the car. I got the one dog in the universe who doesn’t like riding in cars. Although, TBF, it might just be that she doesn’t like riding in cars for so long.

On the way to Tacoma, we stopped by some other place around Mt. Hood that was stuffed full of people.

We then stayed in an oddly expensive hotel in Gresham near a wireless pastry place.

And then here’s how my dog behaves in hotel rooms:

Ever vigilant.

Anyway, then headed up to NE Tacoma where the dog could interact with some of her cousins.

Then from Tacoma, I was kind of interested in looking at an investment property in Red Lodge, Mont., because I like Red Lodge, Mont. On the way we stopped in, I think, Kellogg, Idaho? I dunno. It was a very cheap motel and there were a lot of bikers.

Just outside of town we went on some hike that celebrated the rescuing of a bunch of firefighters that got caught up on the mountain during the fire of 1923, when a guy found a mining tunnel as a way to get his group of people underneath the fire.

Interesting story. Not a lot to photograph though. This might’ve been the mine entrance:

And then we got to Red Lodge and I found a real estate agent that showed me a bunch of just really badly designed townhouses. There was one with reasonably nice finishes, but insanely badly placed windows (like the bottoms were all five feet off the ground). Plus the kitchen was upstairs for no good reason.

We traveled on the way back via the Beartooth Highway, which is one of the better highways in the world (from a scenery perspective at least).

Somewhere along that highway, we got out and walked down a ravine toward a river.

Or maybe it was a lake. I dunno. There was a creek involved. At one point the dog had to swim six feet to get to me, which was the first time she’d ever swam. So, you know.

And then, because Google Maps is stupid and because I’m stupid for believing Google maps, we passed through Yellowstone on the way home because that was “faster”.

Holy crap, people, just use the turn-outs.

And when we got home, it turned out that the UPS guy had finished hanging the drywall in the kitchen.

Anyway,

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Christmas in the Northwest

In, apparently, 1987 there was this song that came out that, apparently, I heard more than once. The song was called “Christmas in the Northwest”. It was, well, you can check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9Ze0FEuG4s. I was going to use the word cloying, but be your own judge. An upside of the song was the implication that somehow Christmas is superior when celebrated in the Pacific Northwest (or, as they call it in Canada, the Tropical Southwest). Also, any time I contemplate visiting my parents for the holidays, the song comes to mind. I usually go anyway.

I guess I felt like I needed to post highlights of the most recent northwestern Christmas(-time activities). Ergo, this.

The first day I went skiing at Crystal Mountain (12/24).

Panoramic view of my parents’ kitchen during the holidays (click through for the full panorama).

So there’s this guy up on the Seattle waterfront who, apparently, has been trapped in a glass cage. The tourists stare at him, but he pretends to not notice. He is trying to make the best of it by spending his time hand-carving totem poles. At which point, I mean, good for him, right?

The seagull means business.

My dad is a keeper of hummingbirds. This is one of the birds.

The other time I went skiing at Crystal (12/30).

Some observations:

1. If you ever go skiing on Christmas Eve, it might seem pretty crowded in the morning, but it turns out that everyone is gone by 1 PM. They even had decent snow there.
2. My mom and I spent a couple hours in Seattle, where we saw the totem pole, went to Ivars, priced out the ferris wheel ride, and then went to the Filson store near where the Kingdome used to be.
3. I have seen up to 20 hummingbirds at the feeders my parents have out on the deck. They go through a lot of sugar water.

Herewith recorded!

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What I Did on My Summer Vacation (Last Year): In Washington

Oregon gives way to Washington. BTW, this, all this last summer stuff, was part of a homelessness-inspired road trip I took in 2014. My house in Pittsburgh sold way faster than I meant for it to sell and — well anyway. Starting June 8th or something I was on the road. Went from Pittsburgh to Norman to look for a place to live, then drove up to Utah (by way of the Colorado posts I’ve posted) for my niece’s wedding, then down to San Diego. From SD, I had to fly back to Pgh to defend my thesis, then I flew back to San Diego and started driving north. Ergo: Eastern Sierras, State of Jefferson, then Oregon, then this post.

Also, driving from Bend up to Hood River is a really nice drive.

After crossing the Columbia on a bridge, I camped somewhere and then went to look at some cave where people in the nearby town used to visit to get ice. Because there’s year-round ice in this cave. It’s a real thing.

There were also some natural bridges around there, but they were odd and green and maybe not quite as dramatic as the ones in Utah. Here:

I mean, they were fine. Totally fine. That ice cave was super cold though.

The drive from Trout Lake, past Mt. Adams on the unpaved roads up to Packwood, was also super scenic and highly recommended (although it’s kind of a long stretch on a rough road).

Then a couple photos from when I was hanging out with my parents in Tacoma. I know, you’re only here for the text. Sorry.

Rail transport! And then it was time to go to JHole for the family reunion by way of the Beartooths.

Skiing Mt. Baker on New Year’s Day

This blog is apparently now mostly about chronicling my experiences of skiing badly in as many places as possible. OTOH, at least it has a theme.

I grew up in the Seattle area, but had never been to Mt. Baker before (for skiing). I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that what I saw yesterday was not Mt. Baker at the peak of its powers.

Paid: $56.10 for some reason.
Quality of Random Lift Strangers: 9/10
Weather: Partly sunny very early, then high overcast most of the rest of the day.
Would Return?: I mean, I wouldn’t go out of my way *not* to return.

I went to Baker because it was the only place within three(-ish) hours of my annual holiday headquarters in Tacoma that was “fully open”. Although I think that of all ski resorts in the world, Baker is probably among those for which you can least easily gauge its openness by open trail percentages. Plus there were a couple trails that, once you were there, weren’t actually open. Snow was firm, eventually softening up on the intermediate slopes (Chair 8), but never on the steeper pitches (1 and 6). Fortunately, there were a lot of soft-enough bumps on the intermediates on Chair 8; unfortunately, there were also a lot of neophytes trying to snow plow down them.

I was also surprised by the boarders here — it reminded me of the 1990s, but not in a good way. Every off-load, I was having to take evasive action to avoid the snowboarder pile. In numerous places it seemed like a flash mob of boarders had decided to reenact The Day After the Battle of Gettysburg. I know this was during the kids’ winter vacations, but it was much worse than skiing on 12/28 at White Pass last year. Given that there were no lift lines and there were plenty of open parking spaces, the skiing felt oddly crowded.

That said, the views were great (see below) and, IMHO, the views alone make Baker worth visiting (one time anyway). The lifties were exemplary (except in getting people to clear away from the offload area). Despite the paucity of snow throughout the west, the hazards here were minimal and easily avoided. Weather and visibility were both very good. Lodge food was neither extraordinary nor expensive — a tradeoff I was more than happy with. Parking-to-lift was among the best ever (parked at White Salmon, second row, very easy access to the ticket booth and then C-7).

Had good on-lift conversations the few times chair sharing happened. It seems like I get my best perspectives on life, activity, and aging from 60+-year-old random lift strangers; good job, whatever your names are.

Some photos:

If I ever were to get into back-country skiing or had someone willing to show me the ropes at Baker, I’d probably need to go back. The out-of-bounds you can see from the chairs looks amazing. However, given the practicality of it being 3+ hours away and the occasional oddness of the on-piste offerings (I got the impression that the lift layout may have been designed by Pittsburgh-based city planners), with decent snow and weather conditions and given my skiing preferences it would be hard for me to justify Baker over the easier access to Crystal. For the “laid-back and local” feeling, I think I preferred White Pass’s relative politeness and self-awareness (perhaps Yakima County does a better job of controlling its youth than does Whatcom).

But, whatever, it was fun.

Crystal Mountain Resort (Report from Yesterday)

Headed up skiing to Crystal Mountain with my dad yesterday. I’m guessing I hadn’t been there since some time before 2000 (the year). Um.

Here are some facts so that I can list here in order to break up the photos:

• It was a beautiful, sunny day.
• Got up to maybe the mid-30’s, warm enough to soften the snow, cold enough that it never turned to slush.
• Even though it hasn’t snowed up there in a week or whatever.
• It was really clear, no clouds in any direction. You could see Adams, St. Helens, the Olympics, and even Rainier.

It feels like the top of the world up there. It’s also a little windy.

So then I spent most of the day skiing Green Valley. There weren’t crowds anywhere on the mountain, but there were especially no crowds in Green Valley. They have an express lift there now. I don’t know how long it’s been there. I could probably find out on the Internet.

Presumably the caution was due to the presence of snow, a slope, and good visibility.

• It’s sort of funny what constitutes an Intermediate run here vs. Pennsylvania. A lot of Crystal’s blues are steep enough to be double-black at Seven Springs (probably just black at Blue Knob).
• And I sort of forgot how steep Crystal was just in general. Eastern skiing has already Stockholm Syndromed me I guess.

There’s also a gondola there now. It starts at the bottom (by the ticket booths, kind of below the lodge) and ends essentially next to the old #2 (Rainier Express to those living in the now). Here are three photos that include the gondola:

I’ve always been fond of those photos that make the gondola look like it’s flying at 30,000 feet.

The view looking up Middle Ferks.

The gondola seems kind of under-utilized from a skiing perspective. It makes for a very long run, though, going top-to-bottom. Plus it costs an extra $8 on the lift ticket. I dunno. Neither Stowe nor Whiteface charged extra for their gondola. It doesn’t seem like the resorts’ cost-benefit analyses should actually be different.

• I remembered Crystal having a lot more signs telling you what run you were getting on. There aren’t very many of them, which is probably fine, just that there are a few places where a person might get himself in trouble through lack of knowledge.
• It was fun re-visiting sites of childhood trauma (top of 2, middle of Deerfly).
• The walk in from the parking lot is still punishing.
• Not to say that Crystal is some sort of great vlue or anything, but it’s kind of surprising that this place costs so much less than Stowe ($74 w/ gondola vs. $92).
• The pizza slice was pretty small for $4.50 and $6.50 for a cup of chili seemed exorbitant. The $3 fries were a relatively good value though.

That’s probably good enough.

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Skiing White Pass

Went to White Pass for the first time in my life on Thursday. Snow was PNW-great, visibility was interesting and variable, with a freezing fog making Couloir Basin kind of useless and about a 60-second sun break in the early afternoon. I didn’t take many photos, but among them were these…

• Mach V was probably my favorite run of the day.
• Locals were very nice, lifties were politely ambivalent.
• Arrived a little after 9 and the ticket line was a half-hour long.
• The day lodge at the base was way too small, but their chili was excellent.
• The best visibility was on the two middle lifts, which is probably not the optimal place for the best visibility.
• Fresh snow available on or near every run until some time in the afternoon.
• There are some HARDCORE 6-year-olds that ski this place. Absolutely fearless.
• Impressed by how many people apparently own cabins in Packwood.

Really enjoyable day, though. I was envious of the folks from Yakima for whom this is a convenient drive (I’m staying at my parents’ house in NE Tacoma, from where it took 2:40 to get there). Would like to get back some time when conditions were better on Couloir, which looked like it had a lot of potential.

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Snow on Snoqualmie and Mt. Rainier (and Mt. Adams I Guess)

One good thing about being a student is that you get a holiday break and you can take it for granted and no one’s gonna think you’re ungrateful. Except I was still working on my one paper, but whatever. By the time I turned the paper in, the weather was sunny, cold, and clear, so I took some pictures and stuff.

From Snoqualmie Pass (my dad and I went skiing there New Year’s Eve; I’d never been there before when the skies were clear AND the snow was decent):

My dad’s lift ticket cost $12. Mine was somewhat more than that.

Drove up to Mt. Rainier. The Guardians of the Nanny State wouldn’t let us past Longmire without chains in the Jeep (not on, just *in*), but the area from the Park Entrance to Longmire was pretty nice.

Then because it got mentioned in the title, here’s Mt. Adams (from Hwy 12):

I guess that’s it.

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A Big Day at the Naval Undersea Museum

Probably *every* day is a big day there though.

The Naval Undersea Museum is a museum located in Keyport, Wash., which is pretty close to the big ol’ Navy base in Bremerton as well as the unknown-sized Navy submarine base in Bangor. Even though the website says they’re closed every Tuesday during the winter months, it turns out they’re open the Tuesday between Christmas and New Year’s. Or at least they were in 2009. YMMV, but it seems improbable that anyone who reads this blog will ever test it out in future years to see if the policy was a one-off or, like, a real policy.

The periscope actually works! You can scan the entire parking lot from inside the building!

I didn't really get into BioShock. Maybe I'll like 2 better.

Imperial Japan's most effective naval weapon: the man-guided suicide torpedo.

Some bullet-pointed thoughts:

• I learned that I don’t know very much about torpedoes or mines.
• About half the museum is about torpedoes and mines.
• It seems like a rich field — but narrow.
• The museum is free.
• They have a submarine there, the Trieste II iirc, that dove to 22,000 feet — which isn’t a record. The record is 35,000 feet that was set using a similar submarine.
• But they don’t call it a “submarine”, they call it a “bathyscaphe”.
• For some reason the museum merely glosses over the involvement of US submarines in World War II, even though they’re already probably pretty under-heralded.

Interesting enough museum, worth the price of admission. Heck, it’s probably even worth the toll to get back over that stupid new bridge.

And in Bremerton, they had four reserve fleet aircraft carriers each at some stage in the dilapidation process. Hard to get a good photo, plus it’s cloudy all the time there, but anyway:

They're getting parted out.

Two of the four there were Ranger and Kitty Hawk. You could probably look up the names of the other two if you need to.

Endut.

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