Ring of Fire

Daily Mileage=239; Trip Total=5429

Today we left Portland but not before visiting its Test Rose Garden. It is a part of huge city park (slightly away from the downtown area) that contains the Zoo, the Japanese Garden, the Children's Museum and even tennis courts. It's a very nice area that encompasses many activities.

The test garden is extraordinary. It has over 600 varieties of roses. Commercial nurseries "test" roses in this garden for general development and distribution. There are also award winning roses from the turn of the century that are represented in the garden. Portland is known as the rose city and when you walk through it you can't help but be amazed. June is apparently "Rose" month and we saw many beautiful plants blooming today. Over the next few weeks it will even be better. There is a Shakespeare garden which is popular for weddings and even an amphitheatre that over looks the city skyline. One interesting feature was that the stage "curtains" were huge bushes on either side. Very natural and practical. On a clear day you can even see Mt. Hood in the background (we could see it but it blended into the clouds on our pictures.) The oldest rose planted in the garden is from 1932, a British Duchess planted it and it's still there. The whole experience was just lovely.

Then we stopped at St. Helen's Volcano Park. This mountain along with Hood, Rainer and several others are part of the Cascade Range. They are called "the ring of fire" because they are all volcanoes that still have fire brewing way down under them and even if dormant probably won't be forever. Hence the title of today's blog. We were about 30 miles from the mountain (that erupted in 1980) and was quite impressed by the story and the view. It is big, not as big as it was since 1300 feet blew off in about a 10 minutes. As Rich says, "I don't want to be around when it blows again!" It still has tiny eruptions that are building a "dome" of ash in the center which may reconstruct the peak (or not). You can really spend a lot of time there driving around and seeing the destruction that was caused (over 27 years ago). One lake was filled in by debris flows and another was formed. Miles of forest, trails and homes were wiped out, ( 56 people actually died when the main eruption occurred). Animals and plant life are coming back and they have finally opened the park for visitors. You can hike pretty close (onto the mountain) but do you really want to????

We then took off to the Olympic peninsula in Washington state. It's west of Seattle and the Olympic National Park encompasses most of the peninsula. As you drive up along the eastern side, the water (Dabob Bay and Puget Sound) are on your right and the Olympic Mountains are on your left. It reminded us a lot of the coast of Maine. It's very green with 150'+ Douglas Fir pine trees growing next to rocky coasts and beaches. There are small coves and quaint or honky-tonk towns along the way. We are staying in Port Angeles which is a little bigger and the port for the ferry to and from Victoria Canada. Again, the views are spectacular.

We'll be here for the Memorial Day Weekend and it should be a wonderful time.

We finished another audio book, High Tide in Tuscan by Barbara Kingsolver. It was a short one in which the author writes a number of short essays on her life and general observations. We enjoyed it but it was more along the thinking that we have (more "green", liberal and had a spiritual connection). Good for a quick read but with lasting thoughts.

I'll end with my "I Believe" experience for today. We stopped at Dairy Queen (DQ) to get some ice cream. We ordered Sundaes and then went through the "extra charge" list for whipped cream, nuts and cherries. So here's my question, why are all the basic ingredients of a sundae "extras?" Here we were at a US ice cream legend and we have to ask for all the things that should just be there!! What's that all about. Sundaes are supposed to have all those items, they're not extras! Oh well, the only thing worse is that now you drive up and get your ice cream instead of getting out of the car, coming in, placing your order and eating the dish of ice cream with nothing on it sundae!

Good night, love & joy, Mare&Rich