The Redwoods

Crescent City.  Chinese Food?  Yes!  Quality? Terrible!

Right across the street from our hotel was the county fair.  I felt it imperative to take Onions for him to experience this slice of Americana.

We didn't go on any rides, nor eat funnel cake, but we did check out some music and.....

....checked out the prize winning animals.

This was the winning rabbit in the 6+ month to 2 years category.  It has little fat and good muscle tone due to only eating grain and no fruits or vegetables.  And it's going to be sold for edible consumption.

The highlight of this North Coast drive was the mighty coast Redwoods.

In front of the Trees of Mystery is Paul Bunyon and Babe the Blue Ox.  Everything is bigger up here.

Photos simply can't capture the grandeur and size of the trees.  350 feet tall!

It's really red wood.

In Eureka (Chinese noodles in the motel room), there was an advertisement for Women's Roller Derby. I couldn't convince Onions to join me.  It's kind of like football on skates....lots of blocking and defense.

South of Eureka is the famed Avenue of the Giants....this is what it's like to drive that stretch of highway.

And of course, we paid the $6 to drive our car through a tree.

Our last night of the trip was spent just north of the Napa Valley.  When driving we saw the smoke of the Clear Lake Fire block the white clouds.  Fascinating juxtaposition.

Our treat, was a mud bath in Calistoga.  Dinner was at a Chinese/Vietnamese/Sushi combo restaurant where the owner was so happy to speak Chinese with us. Quality, again, not so good.

San Francisco!!  This was supposed to be the picture with the Golden Gate Bridge from the Marin Headlands......but we got fog.  Oh, San Francisco, you don't disappoint.

Oregon Coast

After a night spent in Portland (Chinese food, yes), we headed to the Oregon Coast and joined it at Lincoln City.  The Central Coast is beautiful, but the drama comes later, down on the southern coast.

It's beautiful, but upon hours and hours of coastal driving, it becomes...meh.

A lighthouse just north of Florence where we stayed our first night on the Coast.  (Chinese food, kind of as we cooked Ramen in the room)

But then comes the Dunes.........

Standing on the beach when it's windy, you see and feel the streams of blown sand.

And they create the 45 mile long, and 2 mile wide Oregon Dunes.

For $15, we took an hour long buggy (the slow plodding one, not the fast one that goes up and down at highway speeds) all over the Dunes.

The flat parts is where lots of people race around with their ATVs and motorcycles.

South of Coos Bay is where Highway 101 turns inland and the read high cliffs begin.

The scenery gets grander....

....the beaches more secluded and isolated....

....and the rock crags get bigger!

Randle and Mt. St. Helens

All packed for the move from Seattle to San Francisco.

Since this is kind of our "honeymoon," we took five days to do the drive. On our way to Mt. St. Helens, we did a quick pit stop in Randle, where I worked in the summer of 1991 for the US Forest Service.

This is the Ranger Station out of which I was based.  It used to be called Randle, but since the Packwood station was closed an sold off, the two were merged and named Cowlitz Valley.

The TALL TIMBERS was a bar that we would hang out at....and it's still around, even remodeled and upgraded.

The bunks that Kristin, I and the other summer workers are still in use.

The forest road names are still the same.  The 23 and 25 roads!

The 25 road south out of Randle takes you to Windy Ridge from where you can take in the view of the crater of Mt. St. Helens.  Here we are on approach....

And here we are from Windy Ridge.  A small glacier is actually forming right near the bulge in the crater!

The plain that was directly in the blast zone.

Spirit Lake still has many of the dead logs floating on the surface.  Interestingly, the mudflows blocked the natural outlet of the lake into a fork of the Toutle River, so the Army Corps (or USFS) dug a tunnel that drains the lake.

Mt. Adams to the east.

The pattern of the trees blowndown....but also nature is doing its thing.  We stayed the night in Portland and on the Chinese food report front....yes, we ate Chinese food.

Marriage License Application and Certificate

We all know about the glamorous wedding ceremonies and receptions (those photos to come) but the mundane, behind-the-scenes task of getting married is the certificate.  Onions and I went to a small satellite office of King County in Bothell and first filled out the marriage license application.

No line, a couple forms and $64 later..........

...our certificate.  Total time: 15 minutes.  Here in Washington State, the form has "bride, groom or spouse."  No drama.

After the ceremony, Eleni, our officiant signed our certificate along with two witnesses.  We went back to the office and submitted the form and voila...married!

National Institute for Civil Discourse

Founded to promote dialogue and undo gridlock in Congress and State Legislatures, the National Institute for Civil Discourse was in Seattle this past weekend to train state legislatures and to give its award to two Washington State legislators.  Check out their link

So you're going, "why were Ernie and Onions there?"  Our friend Eleni C. (and her mother on the far left) is part of an organization that help write the program for civil discourse in the Washington State Legislature and so she invited us to the reception.

But the main draw was that Rep. Gabby Giffords, who was shot in the head by a gunman) was there to actually present the award.  That's her husband on the left.  Although the award was for civil discourse, the couple talked about discourse through the lens of gun control.

Awardee Rep. Hunt.

Awardee Rep. Zeiger.  The event was an interesting way (and certainly backdoor) introduction to the American political system for Onions.  He joked that in China, there IS NO political discourse (you figure out why!).  Secondly, the funny thing was that Onions' English name is the same as someone prominent in the field so each time he was introduced people were reverent to him.  Hahaha.

The Many Faces of Mt. Rainier

While driving down to pickup our first out-of-town wedding guest, Zhang Tong, we decided...."let's go to Mt. Rainier!"  The best plans are spontaneous and here we are taking in the view from Longmire.

From Paradise, we took a short hike up into the meadows....here's the view looking south.

The glaciers of Mt. Rainier from Paradise on the south side of the mountain.

From Box Canyon, a view from the southeast.

A view from the east, looking into the sun as it sets in the west

And from the north in Enumclaw!