Monday 22 September 2008

Back
So here we are again, back in the bottom left-hand corner of the country, adjusting to a landscape of thisand thisafter a few weeks of thisand this!Well, I'm being overly dramatic, but you know what I mean!
It's such an enormous country, and so very beautiful everywhere you go, especially from central California up into the Pacific North-West, which is where we went.
We stayed at a couple of places on the way up the coast to Portland. We spent a few days with Lily in Olympia, then with her and Nick on one of the San Juan islands between the US and Canada, before a few wonderful days with family in Canada itself.

We drove about 3500 miles (over 5500 km). Driving time is great time for conversation, good music, appreciating the luxury of cruise control, and taking in the view as the landscape changes. Oh, and lots and lots of daggy photographs of trucks. I love 'em!My Dave looked after me so well. Every day's drive was planned, every night's bed was booked, and every morning, when I got in the car, he had a freshly chilled bottle of Perrier waiting for me. He took me to some wonderful places — Mendocino, of course ... hushed groves of giant redwood ... an inn at the mouth of the Klamath River, in northern California, where from our bedroom window we watched Indian fishermen and sea lions competing for salmon as night fell ... deserted, rocky beaches ... and the world's biggest bookstore — you have to see it to believe it.
We've seen pine-covered islands ...
and totem poles ...And there were snow-topped volcanoes in all directions. Lucky, huh?

5 comments:

Natalie, the Chickenblogger said...

Lucky indeed! It all sounds wonderful, though I know it wasn't without difficulties. I hope Lily is mending well.
Isn't it a shock and disappointment as you drive south and the industrial-concrete-powerline forests loom and close in? It's such a contrast. Thank goodness for beautiful memories and photographs.

Jennifer said...

Beautiful stuff; I'm delighted to live vicariously through your travels and love to hear you describe your adventures particularly given that you have an entirely fresh perspective having not grown up here.... I'm amazed you went that far by car; Ken hates to go anywhere by car more than a few hours away.

How's Lily? Don't think it's too much to talk about doctors (argh!) and what she and you have been going through -- we really do want to know....

Fairlie - www.feetonforeignlands.com said...

Wow. Lucky? Yes. And what a contrast in your first few photos. The world truly is an amazing place.

Lesley Turner said...

reading 1 of your comments on another's blog - you don't like your name! Do you know who made it popular? I am a Lesley Anne & I like being associated with an infatuation.
I have the cutest neice namd Lily. Hope yours is doing well.

M said...

The pacific northwest is definitely a place I'd like to visit.
Have you read "The 100 Mile Diet" yet? Actually I think it has been released in the US as "Plenty".

(About the Vancouver couple living off whatever the PNW can provide.)

Certainly a land of plenty.