Magnus goes (with luck) to Oregon, Day 18

Thursday, September 17

Notes at the time:

The trees are very tall here and the birds all seem to be in the very tops of the trees. Including the Pacific Wren which Merlin IDed but I never saw.

Our campsite at Seaquest

All kind of strange and unusual bird sounds including the squirrel that chirps like a bird.

I need to go ahead and add Stellers Jay to my life list. I've heard several and seen a couple. But I wish I could see one clearly.

 

 

 

At Mount St. Helens, before leaving park 

Ed's excessive output has turned to diarrhea so he's taking Pepto-bismal. No cramps, thank goodness.

Today we're going to do.something annoying that we never do. On account of Oregon State Parks 4pm check-in time--stupid!--we are going to delay leaving here until 1pm and then dawdle on the way. If it looks like we will arrive excessively early, we will stop at Walmart for resupply.

Later. We didn't make 1:00 departure but we did manage 12:30.

Good-bye, Seaquest!

Hard drive. Only 1:45 in the plan but it morphed to 2:15 after road construction and traffic and a slight detour to Walmart. The stop added a Iot of time and we didn't arrive at Nehalem Bay State Park until almost 5. A tree branch obstructed our slide-out so much that we had to reposition the RV twice. Finally done.

 Ocean views on the drive were gorgeous. There was fog in places, very dense--and then gone!

I’ll describe the campground more in the next post. But our initial reaction was that it was way too crowded and close, plus everyone, everyone! Had a dog. Walking Molly was going to be challenging. I later discovered that leashes were not required on the beach, so a few people were really careless about leashes in the campground, too. Our immediate neighbors seemed to be nice, but their dogs—like Molly—were a little “reactive” to strange dogs. The next two days are going to be interesting. 

Molly and finally got a walk so we went down near the beach. The sky was clear in the hills to the east. Mostly clear overhead. Foggy on the ocean but a brilliant slice of sparkling sunlight in the west. Awsomeish. 

Magnus goes (with luck) to Oregon, Day 17

 Wednesday, September 16

After three days of bleah, we are finally going to see the sun again. 

Ed had a major mess last night. Luckily not in bed. He even had to take a shower.

So after more than a day of constant output followed by the blowout last night, his abdomen became soft again--no longer bloated up like a beach ball.

We went to see the mountain. In the clear sunshine. Gorgeous! After three days of waiting it was like a miracle! The rain goddess subsided and the sun god smiled.

We didn't have to leave the RV park until 12 so that gave us an easy two hours to see Mount Rainier. Finally!

Out of the mountains and headed west on 12. Which was a long, narrow, but mostly straight road. I suspected were going though a big valley between mountain ranges. We passed a lot of Christmas tree farms in the foothills.

 

Seaquest State Park was lovely. (Don’t know why it’s called that—nowhere near the ocean.) We were in the small area of FHU sites. They were a little too close together for my taste, but everything else was nice--long, pull-thru sites, asphalt driveways and parking surface. Picnic tables. The campground firrepits were closed and taped up on account of the burn ban but a couple of people were flouting the reatriction with their portable fire pits.

 Mount Saint Helens

Magnificent big trees. Lots of short trails around the campgrounds. We took Molly on the half mile walk out the park and through a tunnel under the street to the Mt St Helens visitor center. We had to take turns going inside, on account of Molly. They had really nice exhibits and an okay short film. And best of all, you could see the mountain clearly in the distance, just to the east of the visitor center!

 There were a couple of bats at dusk.

Magnus goes (with luck) to Oregon, Day 16

Tuesday, September 15

Notes at the time:

Damn. Turned off my alarm and slept until 7 20. It had rained a bit in the night but wasn't raining when we walked. Ed is outputting a lot. Good. Time to stop laxative? 

It was still too misty for any chance of mountain views so I took Molly jogging. We did about 50 minutes on various roads. To the park entrance and back was one mile but I forgot my pass so we couldn't go in. Instead I went on side roads looking for Nisqually Park which ended up being a subdivision of houses.

Nothing else happened all day long. Played on computer; walked dog; watched DVD. We will call it a rest day.  Which we needed. But we’d rather have been driving around looking at a mountain.

Magnus goes (with luck) to Oregon, Day 15

Monday, September 14

The rain stopped before bedtime on the night before, and after a night of hearing water endlessly drip, drip, dripping off the trees, I awoke to a somewhat dry morning. I wore my puffer jacket instead of my rain jacket for Molly's morning walk.

It was supposed to get up to 60 and be partly cloudy for the day, but I doubt if it ever got over 45. While we were driving back from Mount Rainier that's what it was.

We never saw much sun and even less mountain. High clouds, low clouds and fog obscured everything in the sky. There may have been a mountain out there, but we never saw it.

But a few really nice waterfalls and a lot of gorgeous rugged scenery kept us happy.

Trees were beginning to turn. Yum.

There should have been a mountain reflected in this picture? Maybe. 

 The crowds were wild--and it was the off season! I can't imagine what it would be like in July. Warmer, at least. However, as usual the people concentrated in a few key places, like the visitor center and one of the viewpoints. Lots of the lesser places were relatively empty and after Paradise the road cleared out a lot.

We will try again tomorrow

Back at the campground,