happy birthday abe lincoln

Pictures here.

There are twenty-eight breweries within the city of Portland making it the microbrewery capital of the United States. There is also an array of bookstores, one of which we visited during an evening in the city.

Powell's is the bookstore's bookstore. A 77,000-square foot monstrosity that spans an entire city block with nine color-coded rooms and four floors, it also houses approximately four million new and used books. One could easily spend days lost among the endless bookshelves, unfortunately we only had a couple of hours. However, I did walk away with a couple of new books to add to the exponentially growing unread collection.

Afterwards we wandered downtown Portland searching for some grub and stumbled upon the Lotus Bar & Cardroom. A prohibition-era speakeasy, the Lotus has a terrifically interesting history that dates back to 1902 and includes alcohol, prostitution and gambling in smoky back rooms of the bar. The actual bar--where you set drinks--was built in the 19th century by a English company and was discovered and shipped to Portland before the Panama Canal was built (A rather long voyage). Today it's a tad less exciting and illicit, but the food was good and the beer was even better. On to Washington!

The next morning we drove to Mount Rainier National Park and prayed the Vibe would make it up the snow covered mountain roads. Just a few days before all roads through the park, and even to some of the small towns outside the park, were closed due to record levels of snowfall. Fortunately, the Park Service does a superb job of plowing and the road to Paradise, and the visitor center, was mostly clear. The visitor center and lodge were closed, but the sky was blue and the massive volcano loomed in front of us, hibernating underneath an equally enormous amount of snow. In an instant I was reminded of memories from my ascent and summit of Mt. Rainier in 2005: slogging over seemingly endless glaciers, hopping over bottomless crevasses, the woman who went blind from altitude sickness, and leaning against the side of the mountain, exhausted and convinced I couldn't climb the final hundred feet to the summit. I desperately wanted to pack the gear in my car, say adios to my friend, and attempt a winter summit.


Instead we left and had lunch at the restaurant that was my reason for coming to the park: The Copper Creek Inn. My father and I ate at the inn, probably a hundred times, when we climbed Mt. Rainier in 2005. Our fixation revolved equal parts around the fantastic food and the phenomenally attractive waitress who served us. The inn is known for its blackberry-based products. Blackberry butter, blackberry vinaigrette, blackberry syrup and blackberry pie to name a few.

This time around we had a full three course meal, including pie for dessert, and I can say without reservation that the Copper Creek Inn is the best restaurant I have ever dined at. Alas, the waitress was not there.

With our stomachs full and eternally grateful, we headed to Seattle where my friend and I parted ways and I rode to the top of the Seattle Space Needle. The view was incredible and Mt. Rainier could be seen in the distance. However, I soon realized it was almost four and that rush hour would begin any second. I promptly left only to sit in an interstate parking lot fifteen minutes later.


One of my college friends lives and works in Olympia, the state capital, and my plan was to spend the night with him. He lives with his twin brother and the only significant difference between the two is that one is the faster runner and the other is the faster drinker. While his brother was out running, my friend and I went to a local bar where they served beer by the quart--Awesome!

And if you were not aware, I misplaced my glasses at the hostel in Charleston over two weeks ago. After days of phone tag, I finally got the manager to ship the glass here to Olympia. Since they did not arrive yesterday, I am spending the day here hoping the glasses show up this afternoon. Either tonight or tomorrow I will be heading to Idaho and then to Utah for a week's worth of camping before a ski trip in Park City. I'm not to optimistic about computer access over the next week and it will be a miracle if I post anything.

only vehicles with chains may continue

That was a warning displayed with increasing frequency as the Vibe climbed into the higher reaches of the Cascades. I have neither chains nor four wheel drive, but aside from a few fish tails and miles of white-knuckle driving, I made it through the first inclement weather of the trip without any hiccups.

Crater Lake is a caldera lake that has the distinction of being the deepest lake in the United States and the ninth deepest lake in the world (1,949 feet). Situated in the Oregon Cascades at about 6,100 feet, the lake formed after centuries of snow melt filled a massive caldera left by the collapse of the volcano Mount Mazama about 7,700 years ago. The lake's most distinctive feature, Wizard Island, is one of many volcanic cinder cones within the lake and the only one to have risen above the water's surface.

When we arrived at the parking lot near the south rim of the caldera, a thick layer of clouds sat over the lake making it impossible to see a thing. The snow banks were over ten feet high and I was forced to strap on snow shoes in order to approach the rim for a magnificent view of nothing but a gray featureless abyss. For a brief moment, the clouds over the lake cleared, the sun bored a small hole in the foreboding storm clouds overhead and the entire lake was visible. The scene was painted in shades of gray, but even the doleful artist, whose perspective created this picture, managed to capture the beauty that was mostly hidden on this dreary day.


The clouds returned to fill the caldera and I decided to keep on the snow shoes and trek to Discovery Point. During the summer, Discovery Point is a drive-up vista that marks where the first European saw the lake. In the winter it is a 1.3 mile one-way hike through what had now become a white-out. As I trudged through the blistering winds and stinging snow, my friend stayed in the cafe, which, considering my current situation, can only be described as toasty warm.

I reached Discovery Point in thirty minutes and it was a ghostly scene. I had been hiking over mountains of snow and suddenly part of the road was uncovered and a plaque commemorating the site lay half buried in snow. To my right was the gray abyss that hid the lake and a dense forest was to my left. I glanced behind to see my lone set of snow shoe tracks trail off into the storm and for a moment I thought I was the last person on Earth wandering through a nuclear winter.


I was also standing near the spot where, a few days earlier, two guys from the air force base in Klamath Falls had been hiking. Somehow managing to make the hike without snow shoes, their luck ran out when one of the guys, in an attempt to find a dropped camera, slipped and fell a hundred feet down the side of caldera. He stopped a mere ten feet from the edge of a 500-foot drop into the lake and it took rescuers four hours to bring him up to safety and treat him for mild hypothermia. Winter hiking isn't for the faint of heart.

After a hot lunch in the cafe, the Vibe and I fought through the driving snow until reaching 3,000 feet where the snow promptly began rain, the roads cleared and it was smooth sailing, relatively speaking, to Portland.

Updated pictures here.

very superstitious, writing's on the wall

If you are a superstitious person, the past day would have sent you running for cover. After two straight days of rain--in California of all places--there was a light drizzle when we left Berkley this morning.

I try to avoid using CDs or MP3 players during road trips so that I can listen to local radio stations. A great testament to the power of the Internet and domestic globalization, nearly every radio station is identical to the next from Britney Spears' latest single to the same low-budget commercials advertising Joe's Shop for Whatever. And when I'm tired of hearing about when Katy Perry kissed a girl and liked it, or when the bloviating Rush Limbaugh denounces President Obama as the Antichrist, I switch to NPR for a solid dose of pinko communist propaganda.

This morning NPR had a segment on tonight's full moon that included some obscure trivia on how the Earth is, at any one moment, half covered in light and half covered in shadow. I'm glad the producers at NPR dispatched brilliant scientific minds to uncover this mystery of the stars. What they failed to mention, however, was that a full moon is known to induce strange behavior in both humans and nature.

We drove up the north coast of California to Redwood National Park and the rain subsided. The redwood groves that stretch from San Francisco to the Oregon border are the only old-growth forests left in the United States and the last remaining redwoods in the world. Further, these forests contain plant species that have outlasted the dinosaurs. Wandering among the 300-foot redwoods and pushing aside the descendants of pre-historic ferns is the closest one can get to experiencing what life was like while dinosaurs still roamed the Earth. I half expected to see a Tyrannosaurus Rex come crashing through the undergrowth.


As we fast-fowarded to the present and began to weave through the Cascade Mountains towards Oregon, the rain returned and quickly became snow. From that point on, the weather seemed to change by the mile. The snow gave way to rain until blue skies parted the clouds for a instant before disappearing behind clouds and more rain. Fifty miles outside of Klamath Falls, the highway climbed up into the Cascades, the temperature dropped fifteen degrees and a drizzle became a blizzard. The road was quickly vanishing beneath the snow, but there were barely visible tracks and what appeared to be salt and sand preventing slippery conditions. Twenty miles later we caught up with the salt truck that had been providing the Vibe with so much traction. We followed the truck for another ten miles until the snow suddenly subsided and the roads cleared and were even dry. It was as if we had walked through a door separating a storm system and clear skies.


The sky was eerily beautiful and the brilliance of the full moon illuminated the landscape in a fluorescent light. Occasionally thin clouds would dissipate some of the light, but when the moon emerged the snow on the hillsides would light up like a white T-shirt underneath a black light. And if the day hadn't been strange enough, we pulled into Klamath Falls around eight and decided to eat at a BBQ joint that received rave reviews from the locals. While I was a little hesitant to accept BBQ in the Pacific Northwest, the food was great, better than most BBQ places in DC.

Now I'm pondering a jump in the heated pool here at the hotel. Tomorrow morning we are heading up to Crater Lake.

I only took a couple of pictures today and will update on Wednesday.