Crossing the Border

July 01, 2023

On the Cleveland Dam in West Vancouver, B.C.

We are sleeping in a house for the first time since May. We have reached our ultimate destination: my cousin’s house in West Vancouver, British Columbia, in Canada. We’ve celebrated by playing guitars together, hiking in the beautiful rainforest trails around her house, and talking, talking, talking.

It will come as no surprise to some of you that I was an only child. My cousin Melissa, who is eight years younger, was an only child too, and we bonded during summers spent at our grandmother’s house in Iowa. She is the closest thing to a sister I had growing up, and despite living at extreme opposite ends of the continent, we have remained close over the years. When my mom died, she was the one who jumped on a plane and was at our house within a day, and helped us with all the logistics and planning that happen after a death. This summer, all three of her college-age kids have moved back in with her and her husband, Andy, and it’s great to see them all.

Darwin is happily getting to know his dog and cat cousin and has sniffed every blade of grass in their Canadian yard. I’m so glad we were able to come all this way. In a couple days, we’ll set off to explore Canada and slowly wend our way back home.

[More pictures below]

During the last week we explored Oregon (Pendleton and environs) and Washington (Mount Ranier and the Olympic Peninsula, especially the Hoh Rainforest), and visited a friend from Charlottesville in Port Angeles, in the far northwest. We kept to our back roads and byways approach and avoided Portland and Seattle altogether.

Washington state is a study in contrasts. In the east, it looks a lot like Idaho – dry, rolling hills dotted with potato and corn fields. We followed the course of the Snake River until it spilled into the Columbia.

The snow-capped Cascade Mountains rise up suddenly about two thirds of the way across the state, dominated by the volcanic Mount Ranier. We spent a couple days in the National Park there, enjoying amazing views and wildlife.

The western third of the state orients to the Pacific Ocean and the rainforests and mountains of the Olympic Peninsula. After traveling through arid hills and desert for weeks, the humidity was a welcome relief. The trees in the Hoh Rainforest are old growth and astonishingly tall. Covered in mosses on their lower branches, they climb toward the sun and create constant humid shade for birds and other wildlife below. The streams will become salmon spawning grounds in a month or so, and the bears are already feeding on plentiful berries as they wait for the salmon feast to come. Two mother elk and their calves came into our campground and slowly munched on foliage and grasses while we watched, transfixed.

And now we are with family in Canada, preparing for the second half of the journey. There's no telling what adventures it will bring.

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A couple near Pomeroy, WA, let me take pictures of their beautiful mules and shire draft horses. They told us they run a business taking visitors by horseback into the wilderness. The mules carry the tents and food, and the man cooks camp meals on the trail. Sounds tempting, but we satisfied ourselves with photographs, which we shared with them.

Curious pack mules

Can we be friends?

Sturdy Shire draft horses

The dry eastern Washington terrain where they travel

With Woody Guthrie singing “Roll On Columbia, Roll On” through the van speakers, we saw some of the 281 hydropower dams that turn the Columbia’s power to electricity, as well as one remaining stretch of “virgin” river at the McNary Wildlife Refuge.

A yellow-headed blackbird in the McNary Refuge

The Columbia runs through dry country,
bringing needed water for agriculture and electricity.

One remaining un-dammed section of river at Hanford Reach

It was still early spring on the slopes of Mount Ranier. We hiked through snow, dipped our toes in icy streams, and enjoyed the wildflowers taking advantage of warmer weather to blossom everywhere.