The Alaska Marine Highway - a close call with catastrophe.

The MV Columbia

I am back-tracking a little with this post. I last wrote about our introduction to travelling on the Alaska Marine Highway. Click here to read about it. Today I want to tell you about the near catastrophe we had at the start of the voyage.

We left Seattle about midday for the hour and a half's drive to the ferry terminal at Bellingham. Twenty minutes later we passed a sign flashing news of an accident ahead on the freeway. The traffic slowed, crawled, inched forward once or twice, then stopped. After 15 minutes of no movement at all David eased across to the right hand exit lane and we abandoned the freeway.

The end of The Oregon Trail

From 1830 to 1869, when the first transcontinental railway was completed, 400,000 early settlers made their way to the West coast of the US along the Oregon Trail. The trail ran from Independence, Missouri to Oregon City. For the most part they walked beside their oxen-drawn covered wagons, day after day, for six months. They braved raging rivers, mountains, heat, rain, snowstorms, accidents, dwindling supplies, typhoid, cholera and exhaustion. Many didn't make it. Some turned back; one in ten died. By the end of the Oregon Trail years there was a grave for every 80 yards (metres) of the 2,000 mile (3,200 km) trail.

The Great Pyramid, The Grand Canyon, Iguazu Falls and now ...... Sandy River Airport.

David doesn't watch much television. He has never heard of most of the Hollywood household names you and I know as mega-stars. The kids joke that he lives 'under a rock'.  He is however an avid fan of  'Gold Rush'.

Gold Rush is one of the highest rating shows on the Discovery Channel. I don't know how many Australians have heard of it but David must be it's biggest down-under fan. It is a reality TV show following the exploits of a group of guys from small town America who, with no experience whatsoever, decide to become gold miners. They start out in Alaska and when that doesn't work out they move on to the Klondike in Canada.

Cycling in Portland.

If anyone is wondering whether we still have our bikes with us. Yes, we do.  We have a bike carrier which straps onto the boot of our rental car.  With the addition of an octopus strap to secure them a bit more firmly, it works brilliantly.  Even at freeway speeds of up to 75 mph (120 kph) the bikes are rock solid. We bought the carrier in Sydney, but surprisingly, in the land of the 4WD and oversized sports utility vehicle strap-on bike carriers are very common in the US. I can hardly recall ever seeing one in Australia but we see them everywhere here. Just don't hire a car with a rear spoiler. We had to reject the first rental car. It was never going to work.

Cycling in Seattle

We came to Seattle to do a tour of the Boeing Aircraft factory. We don't usually do tours.

Being herded around like kindergarten children is not our idea of fun. Many years ago we got trapped inside Mont Saint Michel for an hour and half when we foolishly joined a French speaking tour. We don't speak French. Once the tour started we couldn't leave and we had no idea when the ordeal would end. Each new room took us down an ever increasing spiral of desperation. We have had a serious allergy to tours ever since.

Lewis and Clark

In 1804 Captain Meriwether Lewis and 2nd Lieutenant William Clark led an expedition to map and explore the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase and to establish a route across the North American Continent to the Pacific Ocean. The expedition was known as the Corps of Discovery.  The Corps left St. Louis in May 1804 and returned in September 1806. All but one of the 40 men returned alive.

Mt St. Helens and Crater Lake.

Mt St. Helens

On Sunday 18 May 1980, Mt St Helens, a long-quiet volcano 154 km south of Seattle, came catastrophically to life.  Fifty-seven people were killed in the eruption and 250 houses destroyed.  

The mountain had given signs of the impending disaster in the months beforehand but no-one expected the magnitude of the devastation which occurred. Almost everyone who was killed was outside the evacuation zone.  Rather than exploding upwards, the eruption blew out the whole north face of the volcano triggering a massive molten avalanche of mud, ice, snow and debris. 

The Avenue of the Giants

I have a confession to make.  Today we drove through a tree - twice. Not into a tree, but actually through a passageway carved into the base of a tree - two different trees in fact.  One might have been an aberration of character, but two is simply unforgivable.