Welcome to the 9th edition of From The Vault! For this edition I’ll walk you through the long awaited follow up to my East East Coast blog. The most western point in the lower 48 states (not including Hawaii / Alaska) is in Washington State. I had been thinking this trip over for ages and suddenly a great opportunity to go arose. I got to meet one of my penpals in person for the first time ever too. It was such a well planned out trip and I had a great time.
For this post I’ll be using my Official Plan, Google Timeline, photos, and memories. Unfortunately I didn’t take many pictures because I was focused more on enjoying things through my own eyes rather than a screen. Anyways, I think this will be an epic blog nonetheless!
Day 1: Thursday
On Thursday, Paul and I drove to the airport at 5:15am to catch my 6:25am flight to Seattle. Security was a piece of cake, which was a relief since I had BB8 with me in my carry on. I had a quick 2 hour layover in Oakland, CA before making it to Seattle.
I got to Oakland at 8:30am ish and had about a 3 hour layover, so I went to go locate some food. I soon found out that everywhere was serving breakfast so I ended up getting Subway. I figured I had to eat something since I most likely wouldn’t have anything later as I didn’t include lunch in the plan.
Once I got to Seattle I quickly got my rental car with Hertz Gold (you just walk out to your car and leave). The first stop of the day was the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience in China Town. It didn’t take too long to get there and when I did I discovered parking was IMPOSSIBLE. There was mostly metered street parking, but also these mini lots ranging from $25 – $50 a day (8am – 11:59pm). Eventually I decided on one of the $50 lots and off I went.
It didn’t take too long to get to the museum as I had passed it close to 3 times while attempting to secure a parallel parking spot. The front is pretty hard to miss with the giant sign. This museum showcases art from the Asian American community / Pacific Island region. There was a wing about Jackie Chan, Wing Luke, and a few other notable names. Wing Luke was the first Asian American elected to public office in the Pacific Northwest.
The museum is kind of half history / half art gallery so there was plenty of cool sculptures and paintings to see. I spent about two hours looking around this place and reading many plaques. I also got a National Park stamp for my passport!
The Klondike Gold Rush NHP was up next. I decided to leave my car parked where it was and walk to the visitors center since I thought it would be next to impossible to find parking anywhere else. The walk was not far and so about 10 minutes later I arrived right before a large school group got there. The park is all about the gold rush in Washington / Alaska / Canada. The actual monument was a few hundred miles north in Alaska so I stuck to wandering the museum. I had about an hour here according to the plan, but since I just had to see the museum and a brief film I was ahead of schedule.
I made it back to the car and drove a few minutes across town to the Pikes Place Market. It is supposed to be a ‘must see’ of Seattle and my penpal recommended it. The problem was that with the confusing layout of one way streets and lots of touristy traffic it seemed to be next to impossible to find a parking spot. Getting frustrated I moved on to the next location.
The Seattle Space Needle is so iconic that I would be surprised if you haven’t heard of it. To get to the viewing platform I needed to reserve a time slot. Mine was from 6pm – 6:15pm. Since I was still a bit ahead of schedule I decided to go to a local pizza place for a quick dinner. Zeeks Pizza was awesome! It was fairly quiet inside and that was ok with me. A nice change from the hectic Pikes Place Market.
After some pizza I parked my car in what I thought was a safe part of town and proceeded to walk up just about the largest hill in the city. My legs were burning at the top as I got my first views of the Space Needle. It looked A LOT smaller in size when viewing it in person. Nearly every picture online makes it seems like it is a massive skyscraper that dwarfs the surrounding buildings. Despite that, I headed inside of the monument.
The ground floor is where you show your tickets, get in line, and go up the elevator. There is also a huge gift store that spans the entire first floor circle. The gift store even had a replica Space Needle built out of legos! The elevator to the top went pretty quick and soon I was outside with many other people trying to get the perfect picture.
You see, the very top is the observation deck which is open to the sky and has some great views of the city. However, it is tough to get a picture without any window glare because of how slanted the windows are. I managed to get a decent shot anyways. I’d say that the Sears Tower in Chicago still has the best viewing platform followed by NYC EDGE followed by the Space Needle.
After taking the stairs down a level I treated myself to the rotating glass floor. It is really cool to stand on and provides a nice 500ft drop to the ground. Without much else to do I headed back to the gift shop to pick up something for the souvenir drawer and then walked back down the big hill to the car.
It was another hour and a half to my hotel in Chehalis. I believed this was the best base of operations for the trip after a few hours of extensive research. You see, Seattle itself was wicked expensive hotel-wise and I’d have to deal with rush hour traffic every day. Olympia was also a contender, but the Hilton’s there didn’t have great reviews (I look at average reviews…not highest to lowest) and they were also super expensive. ($300 a night for a 3 star???)
So in the end I chose the Best Western in Chehalis! It was great! I got the last few nights to get my Best Western Diamond Select membership, plus no traffic in the mornings, it was next to the highway, no bedbugs, and I was super close to Mt. Rainier. That’s my review of the hotel.
Day 2: Friday
When I visit someone during the week I often have the day to myself because the other person is busy working. That is what happened on this Friday. The plan was to drive out to eastern Washington to the last segment of the Manhattan Project National Historic Park. I left the hotel at 4:15am and drove about 4 nonstop hours through the forest to the Hanford Nuclear Reactor building.
I drove right past Rainier and St. Helens but it was so dark I couldn’t see them! I had the road almost all to myself, which was great. This was another reason why I picked Chehalis as a hotel city. It was right next to the google short cut! (The other way was all the way around the mountains through Seattle and all the traffic there.)
Anyways, eventually I reached the ‘boring’ part of Washington. Unfortunately for me there was roadwork on the highway. In this instance there was a pilot car leading a long long line of cars on the one lane that was open. It took forever and I was a bit worried that I’d be late for my timed tour. The good news was I didn’t have to wait 30 minutes for the pilot car since it was my turn to go when I arrived at the road work!
Once at the visitors center I waited for the rest of the tour group by walking around the museum. Hanford was the last stamp I needed for the Manhattan Project pie in the National Park Passport. Eventually everyone showed up and we watched a short film before we all boarded the buss to the site. The bus went back through the roadwork and turned onto what seemed like a deserted ranch road earlier. That was the road to the reactor.
This place is supposedly the most remote national park site, but I would argue that something like Agate Fossil Beds or Dinosaur National Monument are more isolated. (I haven’t actually been to dinosaur yet.)
It was going to be a hot day out (102F in fact) so it was nice to be in the air conditioned interior of the reactor building. This is where they invented the Plutonium that was used in the 2nd atom bomb in WW2. If you don’t already know, nowadays the Hanford site is heavily contaminated (but they are working on cleaning it up).
The National Park Service has done a great job at cleaning up the building to the point where the actual reactor core room looks very clean. Each one of the pipes you can see took water straight from the Columbia River to the reactor to help cool it. If you zoom in you can see all the valves and pipes. There were a crazy amount! I’ve been to the MIT reactor in Boston, but this one was waaay larger.
There were a series of lectures about how the reactor worked. I sat through the first one in the main room, which turned out to be quite good and super informative. After the first talk we had a bit of free time to self tour the facility. I checked out the pump house first, which is where all the river water was pumped into the building.
Basically as long as you stayed on the designated path you weren’t at risk of lead, asbestos, or radiation poisoning. There were still several contaminated spots marked with flags that were either out of the way and not really a risk for tourists or just plain impossible to get to. The spots were marked with flags and spray paint.
The Control Room was were they ran the reactor from. It had a ton of painstaking wiring all over the walls inside. It was neat to see it up close. We also got a lecture in here about everything to do with this part of the building. Also very nice.
Probably the most contaminated part of the building was the fuel rod pools. This was were the spent fuel was stored while it cooled. Under the wood there are little swimming pools with water that the fuel would sit in. It was so contaminated that we weren’t allowed to look past the window. I was a bit bummed to not see any glowing from the room.
The tour lasted about two hours and at the end of it we all piled back into the bus and headed back to the visitors center to our cars. I was interested in getting a patch for the souvenir drawer, but the National Park stuff was sold out of a thrift store in a nearby shop off site. So that’s where I went next.
The owner was really nice and he explained how basically his life work was in this store. There were thousands of books, lots of comic book stuff, Star Trek, Star Wars, and He Man stuff…among many other things. I got my patch and then drove south.
Next up was the Hanford Reach National Monument. (Technically the same as the reactor, but not really.) You might think of this as a wildlife refuge and while they didn’t have a NPS passport stamp, they had their own stamp and so I added it to my book. After getting the stamp and some post cards I left. (I didn’t take a picture of this place)
The last stop of the day was the Whitman Mission NHS near Walla Walla. Basically the story goes that this guy from Missouri was like “I really want to convert a bunch of people in Washington State to Christianity” so one day he packed up his family, his bible, some missionaries, and all their belongings and traveled by horse and buggy to WA. Kind of an insane trip length without a car, but they somehow made it.
Once there they attempted to convert local Native American tribes to Christianity. Things didn’t go as planned when a measles outbreak happened and so tensions got really high. Eventually the Native Americans had enough of the Whitmans and decided to raid their mission.
The actual park is quite nice. I walked to the top of the hill that overlooked the mission grounds, but was chased away by a wasp before I could get a good BB8 picture. This was a place that would’ve been difficult to go to on another trip so I added it to this one because it was more convenient.
Getting back to the hotel was not fun. It was about 270 miles back through the same forest as before except this time I had company that consisted of annoying tourists. Have you ever been behind a line of say… 5 or more cars on a one lane road? It was like this, but I had over 100 miles until my next turn and the passing lane was really short every time.
I can’t pass 5 cars at once in 100ft. It sucked because every so often the lead car would slow down to literally 15 mph for no reason. This was all in the middle of the forest before I got to the Rainier part of the highway where there was nothing to see but trees. (Once you get to Rainier you suddenly have magnificent views of the mountain.) Grrrrrr my patience was tested for about 50 miles before I decided to do a rather daring maneuver to get around everyone. Unlike the nice drivers of Kansas or New Mexico the tourists of Washington won’t let you back in line once you pull out to go around. That’s why I had to do all 5 at once. 😐
Once I was in the lead it was a breeze to get to the hotel. Although it should be mentioned that if you are unlucky enough to hit Rainier at rush hour (when the tourists leave) you could be stuck in a slow 12+ car line on a one way road where if you pull out no one will let you merge back in. This was one of the few days across all of my trips that I got back to the hotel before 10pm!
Day 3: Saturday
Saturday was the first time I’d ever meet my penpal Barb in person! We decided to meet at the World’s Largest Egg. It is located in a very small town that is known for an egg factory.
There were a lot of trains going through this part of WA so of course I got stopped by a train crossing, which made me late.
There wasn’t a lot to see besides the egg so after a somewhat brief introduction we hopped back into our cars and went on our way. The next stop was Mt. St. Helens. It is famous for being a volcano that once had a devastating eruption.
It was only about a 45 minute drive to the Forest Learning Center. This is the visitors center about half way up the mountain. It was really foggy so that made picture taking a bit difficult. After getting the stamp and walking around for a few minutes we proceeded up to the top.
The visitors center at the top is called the Johnson Ridge Observatory and it is huge. We watched a quick film about the eruption. St. Helens presentation had a curtain that lifted up after the show ended and the view from my seat would’ve been spectacular if we had a clear view. The seats were comfy though!
After a decent time in the visitors center we walked up to the viewing platform for some BB8 pictures. A group of people noticed my somewhat strange hobby and inquired about it so if you are reading this post…hello!
At about noon Barb and I headed back down the mountain to continue our days. Barb had to go to a pet painting class so she and I split up. (The pet painting class was more of a paint a picture than paint your actual pet class. I was confused too.) While she went south, I headed northeast towards the Ohanapecosh Visitors center at Mt. Rainier National Park.
The plan was to go on a google short cut. It would save me about 100 miles of driving, but it was super risky. The only reason I got a big SUV rental car was for this remote logging road called “National Forest – 52 road” that links Mt. Helens to Rainier. It’s very off the grid and there would be a good chance of seeing Bigfoot, but sadly it was closed for logging. Darn!
After about a 2.5 hour drive I made it to the eastern visitors center. It is located in a big pine forest. It is mainly for camping and such, but I was interested in doing the back entrance drive. It has Mesa Verde cliff road views and would be really cool to drive. However, they were doing roadwork on a section of road that got hit in a rock fall the previous fall/winter so I hit some traffic on that section.
The views from the road were spectacular and I also got to see a McLaren, Ferrari, Tesla supercar, Lamborghini, and a Porsche drive by in a line on that cliff road. I was on my way to the Longmire Museum. Along the way I stopped by the Nisqually River to do a little adventuring. I wasn’t going to do the whole Wonderland Trail. Just enough to see the river.
The rocks were really fun to climb over. There were a fair amount of people who were looking from the side of the river, but not too many who tried to make their way across to the bridge. That’s where I was heading.
The bridge only had one railing and the water underneath seemed really powerful. It was a bit nerve-racking crossing the log that was the bridge, but I did it! After that I made my way to the Longmire Museum, got my stamp, souvenir, and went the 76 miles back to the hotel. It was getting late and I had a action packed day on Sunday.
I didn’t do as much exploring as I wanted to at Rainier and Helens, so you know what that means: I have to go back!
Day 4: Sunday
Sunday was the last big adventure day and there was a lot planned. The 3 biggest draws for this trip were: seeing Barb, Hanford, and the most western point in the lower 48 states. I’ve already been to the most central point and the most eastern point. It was really tricky to plan out the tide changes so Barb and I opted to instead see the most north western point…which I totally count.
Since I was farther away than Barb I left at an early time of 5:30am. It was a 3 hour drive up the coast to the Olympic National Park main visitors center in Port Angeles. The drive up was pleasant.
Once at the visitors center the park rangers told us that the road to the Hurricane Ridge road was closed because of aggressive goats. Luckily we had decided beforehand to skip through most of interior Olympic NP and instead focus more on seeing the coast.
We first went to the Salt Creek Recreation area about 16 miles away. It has a bunch of tide pools, which Barb was really really excited to show me. Since the tide was out we got to walk out pretty far on the tide pools. It was a bit sketchy if you wanted to go all the way out like Barb did because if the tides came back you would be stranded.
I loved looking across the ocean and seeing Canada in the distance! There were also many barnacles and seaweed to look at. The rocks were pretty slippery so I made sure I stepped carefully. There was also plenty of beach to see on our shore walk.
Next up was an old WW2 bunker that had been abandoned. Sadly it had been filled in so that meant we couldn’t walk through anything except the opening tunnel. Still really cool to peek through the doors at whatever mysteries were on the other side.
Next we decided to do a final walk on the bluffs. From the top you could see out along the coast. It was a great vantage point to spot wild orca whales although we saw none at Salt Creek.
There was also a rather large beach that you could swim at if you wanted to freeze your body at. The water would’ve been really cold I’d imagine even though it was August. Next up was Neah Bay about 1.5 hours farther along the coast.
We drove on a very twisty road that had sections that seemed like they would just slide right off the cliff. The road had big cracks like it was sheering in half every once and awhile. There were also plenty of potholes and hidden unplanned speed bumps. Very exciting road that kept me on my toes the entire 60 miles.
This day was one of the few days that I wrote ‘lunch’ into the plan. I usually don’t have time for a real meal stop, but on this day I didn’t want to exhaust Barb with a truly insane plan. We ended up going to a place called Bigginz Burgers Seafood. It was a trailer in front of someone’s house that sold local fish and other treats such as homemade lemonade / milkshakes! I got a Halibut and chips I think. It was pretty good!
The last definite location for the day was Cape Flattery. This was the farthest northwest you could go without venturing to the lighthouse island nearby. To get to the official lookout point we took a short trail through the woods, which happened to feature a lot of one person only boardwalks! It was really cool to have a trail like that.
We also were graced with the presence of Orca’s!! Barb and I had been crossing our fingers all afternoon about whether or not we’d see any. Maybe they came out to see BB8?
Seeing the little islands nearby was also quite neat because this part of Washington is really the only place you can see them (I think you can also see them at Ruby Point in Olympic NP as well.)
Barb and I had decided to part ways after Cape Flattery because I wanted to drive back the long way and she wanted to go back the same way as before because it was much faster for her. I followed her to a turn off that took me south to the small towns of Sappho, Beaver, and Forks before I got to see the coast again. I drove about 220 miles through the southern part of Olympic NP. That meant I had done a full circuit of the park that day. Next time I will have to explore farther inland.
I got back to the hotel at the respectable time of 7:25pm. After that I decided NOT to write about this glorious day for some unknown reason and proceeded instead to play some games and relax. Overall it was a wonderful last day of adventuring with Barb and seeing the western part of WA.
Day 5: Monday
If a day is not explicitly planned out I have trouble figuring out what to do. That happened today. I chose to sleep in and do my Delta boarding pass checkin because I was afraid that if I went off adventuring I would lose cell service and not be able to. After checking in and preparing myself for the day I decided to visit Oregon instead of Rainier. ( I was debating Rainier vs Helens the night before). I really was not interested in the traffic at Mt. Rainier again so I decided on the Lewis and Clark NHP near Astoria, OR. It wasn’t too far away from my hotel and only took about 2 hours to drive to.
After arriving, I checked in using my National Park Annual Pass and proceeded to a short ranger talk near the fort. It was about how a raccoon tricked a bunch of krill into believing it was dead so they would all get out of the water and it could eat them. Haha, really interesting story!
This place was where Lewis and Clark (and their exploration/mapping group) spent the winter from 1805-1806. It would’ve been silly to try to cross the mountains in November!
After exploring the park for a bit I headed to the Fort Stevens State Park to see the way northwestern tip of Oregon. It is like a mini version of the one in Washington. The reason it’s mini is because it took much less time to get to and it was mostly just a long jetty with beaches (no cliffs).
I didn’t spend a long time here and after taking a few pictures I headed back to Astoria for dinner. I went to a bar called Merry Time Bar and Grill. It was a good choice I think. I couldn’t think of much else to do so I headed back to the hotel. I got back just before it got dark, which was good!
Day 6: Tuesday
This was the travel back to Boston day. I woke up at 6am and drove to the Hertz Rental Car facility at the Seattle airport to drop my car off at around 8am. My flight was at 12:45pm (ish) and that took me to Detroit where I walked about a mile to change planes. You can read a short snippet about it in my Airport Stats blog page. Then I took a short flight from Detroit to Boston.
The trip to Washington was SO MUCH FUN! I’m so happy I got the chance to go and see all that I got to see. Kind of bummed that I couldn’t kayak with orcas or see Bigfoot, but there will always be next time! Hope you enjoyed my 9th FTV post. See you next time!
Trip Stats:
- Estimated miles: 1,639mi
- Actual miles: 1,666mi (taken from google timeline)
- Orcas seen: 5
- Marmots seen: 0
- Bigfoot seen: No
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