Thursday 13 October 2011

central coast

Now we are back on the Coast. Back at sea level, high summer - and the living is easy. Except getting down to the coast itself, we hit a traffic jam and get stuck for over an hour. The cause? Wait for it - a farm selling pumpkins (still a month to Hallowe'en, guys!)
We are travelling down the Coastal Highway, stopping off first just south at Carmel. A well heeled, lovely little town - famously Clint Eastwood was once the Mayor. Well, it made our day anyway. We drove along the 17-mile drive that leads to Mendocino. 20 years ago this seemed a lonely and magnificent bit of coast, and still is spectacular, but houses and golf courses are encroaching at an alarming rate.

to the city of zion

We leave early - frost on the car roof but still feeling comfortable in the still, sunny, extenuated air - because today we are driving down through Idaho and Utah to Salt Lake City. Another 300 miles ahead of us, and again we are going through many different landscapes - semi-arid mostly, like those classic western movies, with scrub oaks along the rivers and dusty ground hugging plants. Occasional valleys of farmland, with elaborate irrigation systems, great scaffolds that rotate infinitesimally to water circles of alfalfa so big they can be seen from space.
We are approaching Mormon country. You can tell it's their town - very green, estates of modern, tidy, big houses grouped around the whited sepulchre of a temple.
Then a glimpse of the Great Salt Lake and we are in the City itself. It stands up proud against the Wabash Range towering to the east. At sunset the clouds whip up into a biblical scene that would have got Turner in a tizz.
If the USA were designed by Disney, it would all be like this. Rows and rows of very prosperous houses, perfectly maintained and landscaped. Driving around town, it's clear that something is going on. The conference centre is holding a convention for the Latter Day Saints. It seems like all those young men who go out to evangelise have returned to Mormon ground zero for the day. Hundreds and hundreds of them, all in business suits, white shirts and ties (Tierack must do well here. - Ian) and with tidy short hair and polished suits, on this warm Saturday afternoon, are wandering about, laughing, chatting, debating - begging for tickets to the event. It is surreal, when compared to any other slacker, slobbily dressed western town - taken over by Stepford missionaries for the night, all robotically identical.
Interestingly, only about 60% of Utah is signed up to LDS nowadays- and only half of the members are active. But on this day, they dominate the city visually as they no doubt do politically.

Saturday 8 October 2011

The death of Yellowstone?

The Rockies are dying. We saw whole hillsides of grey dead, lodgepole and ponderosa pines, victims of a fatal combination of global warming, poor management and a sudden aggressive change in the behaviour of the tiny mountain pine beetle, which bores into the trees and rapidly kills them if their numbers are great enough. Previously they only killed mature trees at low altitude. The warmer weather has allowed them to greatly expand the territory and the amount of time each year they can operate – and to reduce their life cycle from two to one year. Coupled with an under funded park service, the result is devastating. A whole forest of dead trees will inevitably lead to huge forest fires in years to come.
We may well have unwittingly come to Yellowstone in the last year when it looked so stunning. The creeping grey plague is spreading even in the high altitudes here, and there is no stopping it. Though immature trees are pushing up between the dead hulks, they are extremely slow growing and it may take at least a couple of generations to restore the forests of this region, even if they can develop resistant strains and see off other effects of global warming. Meanwhile the stress on the rest of the ecosystem will be enormous. More at:

http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2252

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/garden/02tree.html

Yellowstone

Despite its green (for now – see next) appearance, this region is the product of a terrible cataclysm. 650,000 years ago a huge pool of magma just below the surface broke through and split the crust in a circle of eruptions. The centre collapsed forming a caldera 50 miles wide. Eruptions continued until very recently, pushing great lava flows out across the floor of the crater, which are still very much in evidence. The magma is again building up underneath and pockets of heat produce geothermal vents all over the area. The last eruption was one of a series at this hotspot that have been recently, and perhaps worryingly, at roughly 600,000 year intervals.
There are more geysers, hot springs and thermal vents in Yellowstone than the rest of the world put together. The flora and fauna provide a calming patina that does not entirely disguise the raw energy ready to burst out from beneath. There are many areas where you can see the steam rising almost from horizon to horizon. There are deep clear, extraordinarily blue pools of boiling water, steaming away; and of course the geysers are spectacular. We visited Old Faithful, the most famous, though not as regular as it used to be. However, when we got there, a rumour went round that it would blow at 1.30, and sure enough it did. Steam emerged, then a few spurts of scalding water, then sudden;ly a huge plume 15 or 20m high for a few seconds, gradually subsiding to just steam again. However, the razzmatazz in this area we found less attractive than some of the other less visited thermal sites.
Add to all the volcanic stuff the action of glaciers and fast moving rivers, which have rapidly cut deep, narrow gorges into the whole area, and you can imagine what a fascinating area this is to visit.
Finally, the endless treescapes and glimpses of wildlife add yet another level of interest. We saw many buffalo, deer and elk, and very fleetingly, a cayote and even, yes, a black bear, that ran across the road two cars ahead of us.
We were lucky to go in autumn when visitor numbers are much lower, but we had perfect weather. Bright sunshine all the time, temperatures dipping at night but perfect for walking around in the day. We have been over a mile above sea level (or more – over 3000m on some passes) and you can really feel the shortage of oxygen, that makes you at times catch your breath.

Grand Teton

Grand Teton
Hitting Jackson after two days, we were at the gateway to the twin national parks of Grand Teton and Yellowstone. Our strategy was to book nights at different entry points and so travel through the parks during the day on different routes. This worked very well. Other nights we stopped in Gardiner to the north and West Yellowstone.
Jackson is the most well heeled: shops with Swarovski and alligator handbags will give you an idea.
They all have a slightly Disneyfied self conscious wild west feel to them. Sarah told us to look out for the shoot out that occurs every Saturday at the Cowboy Saloon, but we gave it a miss...
It is very hard to write about this area without just spouting a load of travelogue superlatives. It really is as good as we hoped and in many ways better.
The Grand Teton range runs north of Jackson, presenting its jagged profile to the wide glacial valley, filled with meadows. This is a wonderful Alpine scene, with lots of black cattle, as well as deer and elk. The early morning views across the little lakes at the foot of the range are particularly good.

Travelling the Rockies

I’ve always wanted to visit Yellowstone but thought I never would, as it’s well off the beaten track. But this time we were determined! Even Amtrak only took us to within 600 miles of the parks, but here was a chance to see more of the Rockies and other areas on the way. We took a car at Denver and drove in a sweeping arc, up to Yellowstone, then back to Salt Lake City, taking in four states and covering 1400 miles. You can fly into airports nearer to the parks (expensively), but I am glad we had the time to do it this way because of the variety of scenery on the way.
Colorado is one half mountains and one half planes, with Denver at the divide. We chose the mountain route, up and up through pleasant wooded countryside around Idaho Springs, an old gold rush town, then to the foot of the Rocky Mountain National Park, through increasingly sparsely populated areas set between mountain ranges. Time after time we would cross a pass to find another huge vista stretching ahead, beneath an even huger cloudscape. Now I understand the phrase the big country. We crossed the route of the Oregon Trail (about which I am reading a book) and you can only admire the spirit of the people that made this journey in a few ox carts across this desolate landscape. Desolation has its own beauty and we loved all of it.

Wednesday 28 September 2011

link to photos


you can see some photos of the trip here
http://tinyurl.com/4ybcojx

Tuesday 27 September 2011

california zephyr


It may not be your idea of a room with a view, but how about a train? Catch Amtrak’s California Zephyr from San Francisco to Denver and it takes you up and over two mountain ranges, through deserts, forests and canyons. All visible from your seat – and it takes your bed with you! Reclining seats in coach are amazingly cheap at $63, and spacious compared with flying; and you can get up and walk around – drop by the restaurant, snack bar or the observation car, with comfortable seating and panoramic views as the scenery rolls on by sedately at about 50mph.
The crew are jovial, and determined to make this enjoyable. Many have been with the service for many years, and are very happy to tell you about the history. (Our car attendant, D, got stuck in traffic and missed the start – he told the cab driver to keep on going and eventually caught up with us at Sacramento, having to fork out $213. There’s dedication!)
More comfortable than coach are the ‘roomettes’ – two facing reclining seats that convert into bunk beds at night.
The journey and your stay start with a check-in at San Francisco’s Ferry Building, where a bus takes you across the Bay Bridge to pick up the train (bags can be checked through to your destination). The train starts off beside the Bay, then striking to Sacramento. Soon it starts to climb - two feet for every hundred travelled – through dense pinewoods and resorts. There is a delightful original station building at Colefax, one of several en route. The trees become sparser and we are out onto the plateau of the Sierra Nevada. Scrub yields to sage brush, then bare sand as the sun falls stark behind distant ranges.
Dinner time, and they sit you together – ‘sociable-like’ – so you get to meet your fellow travellers in a way you never would in a plane and car. Where else would you meet a trustafarian who after four month road-trip is on her way back ‘the slow way’ to Manhattan because she misses her parents’ scolding; a retired guy who has traveled this route 11 times in 5 years; a respectable (jacket for dinner) couple going to visit their children; a geologist going gold prespecting?
Later, in the observation car, the trustafarian breaks out her harmonica and channels the hobos who once rode the box cars along here. We are developing a little community in this strange linear village on wheels. There are also long stops at lost-looking desert halts, where you get a chance to meet fellow smokers and leg stretchers. The cries of ‘All ‘board!’ bring us all dashing back.
Time to scramble into bed. Personally, I loved the swaying of the train at night, with the mournful hoot of the locomotive and the falling clangs of the road crossing bells rushing by, deep in the night – almost a a part of folk memory.
The sandstone bluffs of Utah, purple shadowed in the early morning, accompany breakfast, but the best is saved for last as we rise up again into the Rockies, following the Colorado and its smaller and smaller white-water tributaries, through deeply incised canyons. When we travelled in late September, the palette was simple but gorgeous – the yellowest autumnal aspens and bleached grasses against deepest green pines and the bluest skies – ever changing, never tiring. Then the streams are suddenly flowing not west, but east to the endless plains, and the train flows on too, to Denver, where we got down, then on to Chicago. To our fellow villagers we gave our hope-to-see-you-agains – knowing we never will. The train moves ever on, building its next transient communities.

living the dream


Crescent City and Fort Bragg are rather sad, sprawling towns, that are suffering a creeping post industrial death. This coast alternates the old working towns, once dedicated to logging and mining, and the little places that have long been resorts – like Yachats and Mendocino, still doing rather well for themselves. The industrial towns are trying to reinvent themselves – tidying up their ‘historic’ centres and improving access to the coast – but they suffer many vacant lots, boarded up shops, and fenced off stockyards. Those businesses surviving are mostly budget outlets and tired strip malls strung out along the main highway.
Crescent City has something going for it despite this, though. There is a drive out to Point St George, where you can see way out to sea, the coast’s best lightouse; the huge sandy sweep of the bay that gives the city its name, and the even bigger sweep of the Coast Ranges north and south of there. Best of all, in our quirky view, though, is the Curly Redwood Lodge. This motel was built from a single redwood tree in 1952, every bit of the structure and much of the décor. It is a stylish design from the golden years of American motel culture. The owners have obviously taken pride in maintaining this – they have subtly maintained and where necessary replaced ‘in the manner of’ – so it feels like you are walking straight into the world of Mad Men. This is a place to re-live the Dream. So next time you’re in the area: guys, slick back the hair and slip on the drainpipes; girls, grab yourself a beehive ‘do and petticoats; beg borrow or steal a Cadillac El Dorado coupe, and get on down there!

redwoods


Nature at its most noble: the redwood groves are the cathedrals of the natural world. In deep shade we move amongst these giants, the sunlight occasionally slanting down to the soft carpet of needles and cones. Even with other people around, there is a sense of calm – karma if that’s your thing – a hush. People speak in quiet tones; but mostly they listen to the minimal soundscape: a zephyr’s breath of wind, an ethereal bird hoot, a tiny buzz of insect wings.
Now we are in northern California. For several hundred miles you pass through what remains of the coastal redwoods. The old growth trees are huge – up to 100m tall, 5m in diameter, 2000 years old. The native American nations knew and respected them; but within a couple of generations the white settlers had destroyed 96% of the forests. Still these remnants give us a good feeling for what those primeval groves must have been like. Close together, some fallen or burnt in ancient forest fires, a jumble of underbrush and decaying trunks – but mostly they rise straight and true, up to the canopy to catch the bright Californian sun, way out of sight above us.
This is something everyone should experience once in their lives. These giants only exist here in the coastal mists of northern California. A closely related species, the sequoia, are only found on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada, further south, in Yosemite and nearby.
There are many opportunities on our way south. Just outside Crescent City there is the remarkable Howland Hill Road, a dirt track just about big enough for cars that winds between the giant trunks, and takes you to the Stout Grove, where one of the oldest and biggest trees stands. The Jedediah Smith State Park is also accessible from Crescent City. It is basically a campground but you can take a very pleasant walk from here, across the river and up to Stout Grove. Travelling south, there are many stands of redwoods, and diversions off the main road to see them, in the Redwood National park itself and beyond – in particular, the 30-mile Avenue of the Giants, at Humboldt State Park,
We continued along Route 101, taking in the trees and many good sea views too, until it starts to peel away from the coast. So we turned back to the coast, picking up the start of the legendary California Route 1 – the Coastal Highway that runs from here all the way through San Francisco and beyond Los Angeles.

Tuesday 20 September 2011

oregon coast and beyond


So on to the next phase of our trip: all the way down the coast of Washington, Oregon and California to San Francisco. After a couple of hours on a wet and busy freeway, we hit Route 101, and the sort of quiet, forest route we are looking forward to. Some highlights as we go:
• Seaside. Our first experience of the foggy Oregon coast. After a drizzly trip down, the rain stopped as we arrived, but the fog rolled in, giving a patina of mystery to this little resort. It’s a pleasant enough place, with a deep sandy beach, lined with grey shingle cottages. Americans do seaside very well, with tasteful buildings, artfully arranged ‘natural’ gardens – and of course they have the advantage of the wonderful geography. Seaside, as its name suggests, provides a weekend retreat for Portland, and has some remnants of a deco past.
• Yachats. Another 200 miles and we are well into Oregon. Yachats is a little village between a wide, misty ocean beach and Cape Perpetua, where the mountains come down to the sea, a sheer drop of almost 800 feet. We walked for hours both days we were here on the almost deserted foreshore – first grey and misty and atmospheric, later sunny and warm. Ian had booked a motel right on the beach – simple but comfortable – and we also found a nice little Italian restaurant, run by Heidi and Bill like it was their own front room: it was clear that they cared about food. Most places here are safe and predictable, without any passion.
• Crescent City. Not the most interesting of places to stay but it has a cute lighthouse on a little island; and if you go out to the headland beyond the town, there is a great view of the whole sweep of the coast – perhaps 20 or 30 miles in each direction, with a wall of mountains behind. However, what made this stop special was the motel where we stayed – more later.
All in all a very varied drive, always interesting, and a generally quiet road featuring spectacular engineering, winding up vertiginous capes and with elegant early 20th century bridges spanning the estuaries, striking out through dunes and marshes and lagoons; and linking the few well spaced towns, some poor and neglected, in post industrial decline, others smart and well scrubbed. The road winds back and forth to the coast, but easy on the eye all the way.
Other interesting places we saw included:
• Astoria: On the Washington/Oregon border, the town is dominated by an enormous bridge spanning the river.
• Bandon: another great beach with many stacks and small offshore islands – the town also looks quite upmarket but we didn’t stay.
• Port Orford: which has a great elevated ‘drive-in-view’ of the coast further south.

Sunday 18 September 2011

that'll be seattle

Grey, grey Seattle – grey weather and a grey town. There’s something a little disappointing about Seattle. Somehow it turns its back on Puget Sound, cut off by a major freeway, and with the awful Route 5 also bisecting it a few blocks east. Once you’ve seen the Space Needle and the Skytrain, wonderful 60s ideas of the future, and the Pike Street Market, there’s not much else for the tourist (unless you want to visit the original Starbuck’s – many Chinese tourists do!) Everyone says Seattle people have a great lifestyle and I’m sure it’s true; it just doesn’t translate into the physical environment. The centre seems dowdy and grey, with many vacant lots and few new buildings. Maybe we we didn't give it a fair chance.
We travelled over from Victoria on the Clipper, a fast hydrofoil that gets you right to the centre of town and well worth doing. Then next day we picked up a car and drove up to the Boeing plant, twenty miles north.
I went there ten years ago at Yasser’s prompting, not expecting to be impressed – but I was. This time we both thought was just as good, and as a bonus we saw the very first production Dreamliner just rolled out of the factory, with the next batch in construction. It’s an elegant plane which could become as iconic as the 747. The tour guides are some of the best in the business, signing off with the line, ‘Next time you book with your travel agent, be sure to say: ‘If it’s not Boeing, I’m not going!’”

Space Needle, survivor of a 60s World Fair - still elegant on a grey day
Pike Street Market, still feels real, and a progenitor of the farmer's market movement


Wednesday 14 September 2011

Jet lag!


Sailing the sound - on the ferry from Vancouver to Vancouver Island

Usually, going east is no problem. But west is more difficult. You end up having a 32-hour day, for a start, and your body clock is telling you it’s time for bed sometime around dinner time. We have been waking up before dawn (rare experience for both of us!) although day by day this has improved. On the first morning it was 4am, and by Tuesday it’s progressed to around 7am. Well, at least we’ve been getting breakfast before the hordes descend, and we were knocking on the gates of Butchart Gardens when it opened.

Victoria: Bournemouth goes west



We set off early on the Saturday morning, bright clear and hot again, for Victoria, the capital of British Columbia and the main town of Vancouver Island. Unfortunately, half of Vancouver has decided to do the same thing. We catch the skyline train to a remote bus terminal and just manage to squeeze on the bus (Canadians are very good at queuing I’m glad to say) and then to the ferry that crosses the Gulf to the Island. This is well worth doing as the ferry weaves through the many islands of the Gulf before arriving at the terminal at Swartz Bay. Then we have another very crowded bus journey don to Victoria.
This is a very pleasant little city, with a huddle of civic buildings and hotels around a small harbour. There is something rather sedate and ‘Bournemouth’ about it all, with municipal flower displays, clipped lawns, tasteful lighting and many late Victorian buildings from the city’s boom period. The mild climate seems to attract people who are retiring and there are many new condo blocks and long term rentals. The provincial parliament building lights up at night like Brighton Pier, and is fronted by a statue of Queen Victoria. She gets everywhere! I saw her last in Sydney, Australia.
On the first night, the centre is rather overwhelmed by cruise boat tourists. There are three docked at the same time, and buses constantly running between the centre and the piers, with even the local school bus being pressed into service. Mostly they hang around the harbour, getting in the way, watching the jugglers and bad mime artists that miraculously appear wherever these boats drop anchor.
The other nights were much quieter and more in the rhythm of this laid back place, where the talk of ‘Island time’ – roughly the equivalent of mañana.
Weather continues perfect and for the first two nights here we could sit outside well into the night until late.
We took a car the day after we arrived and drove up the coast. Once out of the peripheral sprawl of Victoria, the road rapidly narrows, winding through pine forests, mile after mile with hardly a house or even a passing car. Deep, rocky gorges are spanned by rickety single lane bridges, and the trees tower up on each side, with glimpses of a dark impassable forest floor beyond. Port Renfrew is the end of the road, although long distance walking trails can be followed from here on for many days trekking. A short (2.7km) trail for the less ambitious is well laid out and took us to Botany Bay and Botanical Beach. Botany Bay in particular, is beautiful, like a Japanese print, with twisted, bonsai-like pines clinging to the rocks, shaped by the wild winter winds; and huge piles of storm-driven driftwood. On the final day, we toured the peninsula, visiting the incredible (to look at – and the entry price!) Butchart Gardens.
We only managed to explore a small corner of the Island, and it would repay a longer visit.

Vancouver: just a perfect day







We timed this well. Vancouver is experiencing the best weather of their summer and in bright warm sunshine it’s all very pleasant. As a kick off point for this tour it couldn’t be better. We walk many miles over the two days we are here, all along the seafront from the newly restored Canada Place – where the famous sail roofs are, survivor of Vancouver’s Expo in the eighties – through to Stanley Park, where you can get a great view back to the centre. No wonder Hong Kongers have moved here in such numbers: the steady proloferation of residential tower blocks, the water, the mountains behind, a more prosperous, cleaner echo of their home. In the sparkling clear sunlight it is a very attractive sight. Cue Lou Reed and ‘Perfect Day’.
There is a new congress centre on the water front (also an echo of HK, though with a huge landscaped roof as big as a meadow) and the whole place looks well kept, prosperous and lush. The harbour is buzzing with sea planes and yachts and the boardwalks busy with joggers, tourists and locals meeting up at waterside bars and restaurants.
We find a very pleasant pub where the locally brewed Granville Island IPA goes down a treat as we rest our sore feet.
We are staying in the Davie Street area, ‘Vancouver’s West End’, or popular with ‘seniors and gays’ as one restaurant review we saw had it. Well, it’s a lively area at night, certainly, with many ethnic restaurants, some with long lines on the Friday night. We happen on a really good Indian restaurant – as good as any in the UK.
And so – early – to bed, leaving them all to it: the streets may be buzzing but all that walking and the jet lag mean that we feel more senior than gay…

Wednesday 7 September 2011

ian+keith go west - the route

ian and keith go west 2011

Finally, it's time for our American west coast trip.

It's been a long time for Ian, and a while for me. Ian and I went to the US west coast in 1990 for three weeks, starting in LA, and all the way up California's spectacular Route 1 to San Francisco, and beyond as far north as Redwood National Park: then a long swing inland through Yosemite, to the Grand Canyon and back via Palm Springs.


Then, exactly 10 years ago, I made another trip, four weeks this time, with Yasser, taking in many of those places again but also flying up to Seattle with side trips to Mount Ranier and Vancouver. This marked the end of an era for me, having finished a long spell with my old company prior to starting a new post.

Now I am retiring from that post and it's time for another west coast trip, with Ian again, this time for five weeks (see a pattern emerging?) and with an even more ambitious programme. A complete sweep of the west coast from Vancouver and Victoria,all the way down to San Diego, with a side trip to Yellowstone. It's a hell of a lot of driving - we reckon at least 3000 miles - but that's the way to see America's west. Let's see how it all goes.

After the miserable late summer in England, I can't wait!

Pictures from 1990:
left Ian at the Grand Canyon
right Keith on the road out of Yosemite