The Great American Road Trip - Fourteenth Stop, Tacoma, Washington
We took the coast road northwards towards Astoria, which was pretty, of course. It was also bumpy, which made the rig bouncy as a bucking bronco. Who needs the rodeo? We’ve got the road-eo.
We stopped in Cannon Beach for lunch. The place was swarming with people and dogs and kids. It’s a very pretty town, but how come American beach towns all look the same? The beaches are unique, and Cannon Beach certainly is, with its haystacks rocks and fascinating tidal pools. We were here over Easter years ago, after a visit to my in-laws. My Beloved and The Boy when he was Lil Boy had been out there a while, and I flew out to join them so we could drive back, but first, we went to the beach. Lil Boy was about four, I think, and we spent hours watching anemones and hermit crabs. We reminisced about that, but we didn’t have time to go hermit-crab hunting again.
One unique thing was fields of foxglove as we continued north.
We crossed the Astoria bridge, which stretches across the mouth of the Columbia between Oregon and Washington. This is a very long bridge. It’s really long. The north end of it is not built very far above the water, but the southern end makes a great leap, high in the air, to allow the large ships to pass under. I got to the middle of the high part and found that looking down was pretty gulp-inducing. Driving down the far side actually made my ears pop. And then we still weren’t halfway across the river. Did I mention that this is a long bridge? Fog was moving in from the ocean so that a couple freighters seemed to materialize out of nowhere on their way towards the bridge.
They say that the north side of the Columbia river is a scenic drive, and it is. All along the river bank, though, there were rows and rows of broken-off pier pilings, skeletons of old marinas. They were heavily mossed over and some had plants and even trees growing on their tops. I have no way of telling how long they’ve been there, but we wondered what had happened that led to all these marinas being closed.
We reached the KOA campground in Tacoma just after dark. That place is a rabbit warren, with many many rows of sites, but they had a nice pool that was still open, so The Boy got to swim. But I think I’m developing a superstition about going into large camps late. Something always happens. It was a little tight getting into our site, but men from neighboring sites were happy to hop up and help. You may say that there is a generous spirit of helpfulness between campers, and I often think that there is. You may say that people hop up to help others work their way into a tight spot out of a sense of self-preservation, to keep the newcomer from running into someone’s awning, and I suspect that is true as well. But I think the primary thing is that guys get a big kick out of this, waving their arms and hollering “Whoa!” and shaking hands after a job well done. What do I know?
It was after we got all balanced and hooked up that My Beloved realized that the electrical box we were plugged into was heating up something fierce and melting our plug as well as its insulation. And it smelled rather scary. And now the office was closed. Yay.
Remember how I was saying that it’s been chilly for weeks? It isn’t anymore. It was a night for air conditioning, and all at once we had none. The rig has a battery, but that doesn’t support the AC (or the microwave). Beloved figured out a way to jury-rig us power with our neighbor, but by that time, none of us felt up to cooking. We had pie and ice cream and went to bed. This morning the official electrician came and announced that he was going to have to close down power to the whole row. Boy, were we glad to leave, trying to look like we weren’t the people whose site was the source of the trouble.
This morning we got up and drove north of Seattle (traffic jam on I5 through downtown, just for fun) to meet the Lady of the Masque, and internet friend of mine whom I’ve known for several years and never met in person. She’s just as terrific in person as she is on line, and we had a terrific time! She writes wonderful novels, and if you want to know which, ask me off line and I’ll tell you what ones and where to get them and how to advance order the next one that’s coming out!!!
Now we’re driving across Washington, watching the landscape change from lush and green to dryer sage-brush filled high desert. Lots of farmland under irrigation, and fields of wind mills. At the moment, we’ve stopped at a rest area next to I90 entitled “Winchester Wasteway Rest Area”. Wasteway? Not really sure how I feel about that.
Mr. Ambition wants to make it across the border into Idaho today. We’ll see how we do…