Portland, Oregon and a home coming for Norman!

 

 

 

Leaving Mt Saint Helens we headed for Portland Oregon and back to civilization.  Portland is also a stones throw away from Norman's birthplace.  This gave Karen a chance to meet up with Carol , Normans breeder, and have a little family reunion.  Karen and kaylee got an opportunity to take Norman herding with Carol and her dogs, Tessa and Demi. Bryson and I took advantage of this down time with some "male bonding" time, also know as lounging around the house!When the girls got home it was easy to see they had a great time and Norman was a filthy mess and ready for some much needed rest.  That evening we met Carol for dinner at a local brewery which had outstanding food, especially the dessert!   The next day we met up for a play date with the kids and an old childhood friend of Karen's, named Keri, at a local indoor coffee playhouse.  The kids played for hours and Karen and Kerry reminisced about old times. I on the other hand took advantage of some free WIFI with good signal strength! The following few days were spent in and around the Portland area checking out some of the local seafood restaurants on the coast. We took Norman out to see the sights and as usual he get swarmed with people asking about him.  This time we were prepared with business cards Karen had printed up!  We went through about 30 cards in an hour!  We even ate a place called Slappy's.  This is a do it yourself pancake house where they bring you the batter and the kids can cook their own pancakes on a griddle in the middle of your table.  The kids thought this was the greatest but I on the other hand know how much money is in pancake batter and paying $8.00 for a small ketchup squirter sized bottle was a little much.  Oh well the kids had fun with it!  Besides the high priced pancake batter I also got to encounter some of the free spirited northwestern style, that I call "crunchy".  Our waitress, who was very polite and prompt, obviously felt that arm pit hair and zero deodorant was her way of living free spirited. I on the other hand didn't see it that way.  I felt like "I'm paying $8.00 a bottle for pancake batter and my waitress needs a shave and a bath!  Now I know what my Dad means by "Different strokes for different folks"!  Oh well, south to Florence for our next spot on the beach and another show for Karen and Norman!

Mount Saint Helens



The clouds were moving in on us when we got to the top of the mountain



One of our stops to listen to the "Silence" on a forest service road.





I love the wooden floors in the grocery store!





Take a look at the thousands of trees blown into the lake!





You gotta love the timer function of the camera! Just press the button and run back to the family!



We never made it to this mountain called Mt Adams!

Leaving Seattle, we headed 100 miles south to Mount Saint Helens!  We found a great little park called Harmony Lakeside which was a bargain at $31 a night with full hookups, cable TV and WIFI!  It becomes a real challenge keeping up with this blog because we have 3 other people who need the Internet connections and sometimes the connections are not available until everyone has gone to bed!  Once we setup near Saint Helens we went into town to get some groceries.  This has become one of my favorite things to do because you get to see and speak with all the locals from each town.  I have learned if your polite and ask for good restaurants or places to see the locals will always steer you into the right direction. The grocery store was really neat with old fashioned wood floors and even a basement!  The next morning we woke up and headed to see the mountain.  2-1/2 hours and several stops later we made it to a great over look called Windy Ridge.  This ridge is directly across from Saint Helens and gives you a birds eye view of the Crater once you hike about 400 stairs to the top of an adjacent hill.  From the top of this hill you can see Spirit Lake.  Spirit Lake was directly in from of the landslide/blast zone and we were told the ash and mud slid into this lake raising its level 200 feet and waves in the lake reached 800 feet up the hillside from the force of the blast!  Although the drive was a long one, we had a good time once we reached the national park that Mount Saint Helens is in.  We traveled down a few of the forest service roads and found some amazing trees and and the silence of this place was amazing.  At one point in our journey we stopped the truck and got out and were very quiet and just listened to the silence!  I know it sounds crazy but until you have been far enough off the beaten path to experience it its hard to imagine how quiet it can get.  Unfortunately the roads do not loop around the mountain so we had to back track 2-1/2 hours to get back home.  The next day we went the opposite direction around the mountain and stopped at the visitors center and saw several movies about the mountain and the eruption!  On the way home we asked a local where to get a bite to eat and as usuall they came through with a little place called Patty's Place.  It was someone home converted into a restaurant right on the river.  We had home cooked hamburgers and chicken fingers!  The next day we were burnt out of driving so it was a day of rest and relaxation!  I watched football on T.V. and Karen and the kids played video games and just hang out.  I also took some time to make some pulled pork on my little barbeque grill which I have been craving since we left the south!

  



Millions of trees were snapped off by the eruption and its hard to believe 30 years later its all still very visible!



Back in the USA!



A little baseball with the kids!



A science project on the kitchen counter!



 

We did a lot of fishing but not much "catching"

 



Fall is is coming!





We are riding the bus!





Yes, that is a lot of gum on the wall behind the kids!



There is something about crossing back into the USA that just makes feel good!  It could be the $1.25 a gallon cheaper fuel prices or maybe its just that I feel like I'm home.  Pulling into Seattle we found a nice campground with some elbow room and a nice spot right on a small pond! We set up camp and hung around the campsite for the evening.  The weather has been holding out for us throughout this trip and Seattle was no exception.  I struck up a conversation with a local lady in the grocery store parking lot and she informed me that this was the best time to visit the Seattle area!  We had a rainy day here and there but it was a welcome sight considering we saw very little rain for the previous 5 months! We got an opportunity to be on a live news broadcast when Norman and Karen were doing a routine show.  When we arrived for the show I dropped Karen and Norm off at the front door as i have many times before and found a parking spot.  Karen came back out shortly after and let me know they wanted the whole family!  We all piled into the news studio and watched them do the news as we waited for our turn on stage!  Kaylee thought it was great and Bryson..... not so much!  I have to say how proud i am of Karen!  She is so at home in front of the camera and Norman also!  The next few days we spent traveling throughout the city seeing the sights!  We took the bus into the city one day which was nice because I didn't have to drive.  We had some great seafood at the local restaurants and saw some of the spots Seattle was famous for such as, the first Starbucks, Pikes Fish Market (Known for throwing the fish) and Gum Wall!  Outside the city Karen found a nice park for the kids to play in and even a neat place where the boats travel through the locks which also had a neat Salmon ladder called Ballard Locks! We spent a couple hours at the Locks watching the locals catching Salmon in their nets and watching the boats traverse the Locks! We even saw some Sea Lions stealing fish from the fisherman's nets!  We took a tour of Seattle's underground which was a very interesting history lesson of the beginning of the city. Karen set up a play date with several local Briard dog owners at a local dog park.  It was really neat to see 5 Norman like dogs in one area!  Needless to say we had a lot of stares and questions.  One of the owners invited us over for a home cooked meal which we really enjoyed! All in all Seattle was a nice city to see and a welcomed stop after our departure from Vancouver!  As with many other stops, it was time to push on to our next destination!

Vancouver!

 

 

 Vancouver was a pretty good drive from Banff, so we split it into 2 days.  The scenery from Banff to Vancouver is beautiful because you drive through the Canadian Rockies and there is very little in the way of traffic!  After a good 2 hours of driving, we came across the Northern Lights Wolf Center, which made my co-pilot very happy.  We followed the signs for about six miles up and down dirt roads with the trailer in tow!  After finding the place, we were rewarded with a nice learning experience about the wolves.  They even started howling while we were there! Upon leaving we now had the task of turning the 60 feet of truck and trailer around.  The people at the wolf place said you can turn around at the end of the road.  Well....... after a few crafty maneuvers and the trailer being almost jack knifed, we managed to get the camper turned around and headed in the right direction.  Karen would like to mention that I was highly irritated with the whole turning around of the camper! Back on the road again and a few more hours of driving we stopped in a little town called Revelstoke. There was a nice little mom and pop style campground with huge weeping willow trees and plenty of room for the kids to play.  We broke out a ball and played some volleyball and kickball while mom trained Norman.  We found a nice restaurant downtown called The Village Idiot and grabbed some really good pizza!  The next morning we got up and finished our journey to Vancouver.  We rolled into Vancouver around 4:00pm without a campground, so we scrambled to find a place.  We found a place close to Vancouver that sounded great so we settled in for the night to the tune of $72 a night!  For $72 a night we received our postage stamp sized "camp" site that I couldn't get into without someone directing me in!  Background noise was supplied by the freight train depot directly behind us unhooking and hooking up to cars all hours of the night and the highway that ran right past our campground. This place was a parking lot with bushes to separate sites!  I was really missing Banff or even our 1 night stay at Revelstoke. On a good note, we had a place to wash the truck which Bryson and I took advantage of! 

The next morning we went to a local park on the water to get some lunch and just get out of the truck. $60 dollars for 3 hamburgers and fries with drinks later we headed back to the truck wondering, how could we spend $60 on 3 burgers and fries?  Next stop Karen found a place called Granville Island.  We took a ferry over and waked through the markets.  The ferry cost $10 each way for us which I thought was pricey considering with a strong wind you could almost spit across the water!  It was fun though with Bryson and Kaylee chasing all the pigeons and looking in all the toy stores.  I on the other hand looked around and felt cramped and wonder how all these people enjoy living right on top of each other, not to mention the serious outflow of cash people must pay! 

Back to the RV for some down time and a good truck wash with the "B-man".  After a nights sleep full of trains, planes, and automobiles, we woke to the godforsaken alarm clock at 5:30am!  We headed into town again for Norman's show on "Breakfast TV."  The news crew was great! The reporter doing story really enjoyed Norman's scooter as you can see from the picture.  Karen and Norman did such a good job they asked us to say for the next show an hour later, which we happily agreed to do. After the second show we found a bagel joint and sat down for some breakfast.  Next stop on Norman's agenda was an interview with a local newspaper, so we headed that way for his photo shoot and interview.  After some waiting around we met up with the newspaper crew and they got the story of Norman and Karen with a few photos to boot. From there we headed into downtown historical Gastown.  We walked the streets and took in the sights.  We even found a old fashioned steam clock!  The clock sounds every quarter of an hour through a series of steam whistles at the top of the clock. After our walk through the city we headed for home and chilled out for the rest of the night.  The next morning, we packed it in and headed for Seattle!