From Seattle to Yellowstone and points inbetween

[dangermouse]

It's been 2 years since our last big roadtrip so it was with some excitement that Mum and I headed toward Heathrow to catch the first of 2 flights that would carry us to Seattle.

For cost and availability reasons, we opted to fly BA to LAX then change to Alaskan Airlines to SEA, our upper deck seats on the BA 747 had been booked for months but when we got to the airport we discovered that we'd been moved to lower deck middle seats..... not the best start and very frustrating for Mum who had been looking forward to seeing LA from the air!

The Alaskan flight was uneventful, we had First Class seats, so were last on and first off the plane and having cleared immigration in LAX we made short work of heading to the car hire terminal to collect our steed.

I booked a Rav 4 (the cheapest 4wd) from Alamo using a discount code I found online that reduced the price for 16 days to $550.
As ever, nothing is simple and Alamo have recently changed the way they work so that all the cars are parked together and you simply help yourself to whichever car you fancy from the group you've rented.

So far so good but there was no Rav 4 and no labelling at all for the class that I'd booked (IFAR) After spending 20 minutes waiting around and chatting nicely to the girl on the exit gate, she authorised me to take a Nissan Murano for the same rental cost.
This is the same engine and gearbox as the 350z that I hired in LA a few years ago, so I'm really pleased to get it.... it should make the long road sections on this trip pass by with ease.



Installing the CB, we get on the road toward Everett, where I've booked a motel for the night.... it's 10pm when we check in so straight to bed we go.

[dangermouse]

Day 1

Thanks to the vagaries of jet lag, we’re both awake early this morning, our first stop of the day is the Boeing factory tour at 8.30am

Sadly Boing don’t allow cameras on the tour (in fact, they don’t allow anything, even cellphones must stay in the car) so there are no photos from the tour itself, but as we were leaving, we were lucky enough to see Ethiopian Airlines’ new freighter undergoing final testing prior to delivery the next day.



The tour here is pretty detailed and the size of the building is awe inspiring… until recently, the main hanger used to create its own weather system, it actually used to rain inside the building. (Boeing have now sorted this problem!)

The gallery of flight was closed for a special event (the delivery of the first Dreamliner to ANA) so we weren’t able to walk around it but it contains a potted history of Boeing.

In short, a good tour!

A short drive then brought us to Microsoft’s main West Coast HQ and university.
They have a small visitors centre here, but with the exception of an MS Surface to play with it really wasn’t worth the trip so we didn’t stay long.

Heading into downtown Seattle next, straight to the Space Needle for the trip to the top and some lunch.
The Needle was, of course, pretty busy, but the views from the outside observation deck make up for it.





The needle was built on very short notice and broke a number of records in its construction…. to date it remains the longest continual concrete pour at 467 trucks, 11 straight hours and 5850 tons of concrete.

The Space Needle also has a stop for the open top trolley tour of Seattle, so that was our next destination.
Today marks the start of the new NFL season and the Seahawks are playing the Raiders at home…. a huge number of the Raider Nation are in town and lubricating themselves at a Raider friendly bar…. they’re a friendly bunch though, and they give a big cheer when the tourguide shouts “Go Raiders” at them!


The Trolley Tour gives a good insight into Seattle, but our next stop aims to take us into the sewers of the belly of the city….. The famous Underground Tour has been running for decades and takes intrepid guests on a tour inside the old underbelly of the city whilst explaining how it came to be.

Briefly, following a large fire the City fathers of Seattle decided that their city needed proper sanitation et al, which meant raising the street level to accommodate the pipework, Seattle being built almost at sea level.
They didn’t have the money to do this immediately after the fire and the city traders weren’t prepared to wait (no new buildings means no new revenue) so a deal was struck whereby businesses could rebuild, but they had to be prepared for the street level to rise and their ground floor to be underground.

This duly happened, and the original ground level of the rebuilt buildings remains submerged beneath the city streets.



This tour involves a little walking and a lot of fairly enclosed spaces so is not for the claustrophobic… it is well worth doing though. We enjoyed it a great deal.

Time to leave Seattle now and head out on the road to Snoqualmie where we check into a motel for the night and grab some dinner.

[dangermouse]

Day 2

Sunday dawns bright and clear, albeit a little colder than I’ve become used to over the last few years!
A short trip up the road lies Snoqualmie Falls.

These falls are part of Puget Sound Energy’s hydroelectric power generation system in the Northwest and they are slightly subdued this morning due mainly to the dry weather this region’s been having lately.



The early morning sunlight shining through the mist does provide some great photo opportunities though



On the road to Ginko Petrified Forest State Park we start to encounter some of the scenery that we’ve been looking forward to for months



The park itself is an interesting little place, all kinds of petrified wood has been discovered here and following a tour of the visitors centre and a chat with the ranger there we head for a walk along a short interpretive trail to take a look at some of the wood in-situ.
All the wood is safely encased in metal which makes photography a little difficult, but the petroglyphs are easy to shoot and stunning in their detail.



On our way to our next stop at Grand Coulee Dam, in a small town somewhere, we come upon a charity garage sale next to a lake, it’s a beautiful afternoon so we stop and take a walk around and buy a few bits… the ladies manning the stall are a little surprised to be serving British tourists but it’s a nice way to spend 30 minutes.

Grand Coulee Dam is a masterpiece of civil engineering, constructed in the late 1920’s the Dam is massive and has been extended a couple of times to enable it to provide a large percentage of the power that the North West requires…. it’s an on-demand power station meaning that it’s only brought online when power is needed.
The tour here is interesting and detailed from an engineering perspective, revealing that the Dam is so large that the Hoover Dam in its entirety could fit inside just the spillway here with some 50ft to spare each side… impressive!

From Coulee it’s a hop skip and jump to downtown Spokane where the Labor Day weekend celebrations are in full swing, with a live music event and party taking place in the park in the centre of downtown….. this means that a couple of the things we wanted to do here are closed, but we take a walk along the riverside and admire the permanent sculpture exhibits displayed here.
Again the weather is perfect and the town of Spokane has made a positive impression on both of us.

Our stop for the night is Sandpoint ID and arriving into town we happen across a place called the Meandering Moose Motel…. the name alone is enough for Mum and it becomes our home for the evening. It’s basic and was probably last refurbished in the 70s but it’s clean and comfortable.

[dangermouse]

Day 3

The day dawns clear and sunny (again!) and as we both wake early we decide to get an early start, stopping at starbucks for the ubiquitous cuppa we’re soon on the way through ID

Following a number of tips we’ve eschewed the Interstate for this morning and are following the Pend Oreille scenic highway, the ID200…. this road more than lives up to its billing, every corner reveals another vista worthy of a photograph and we stop many times to fill the memory cards!



Part way down the road the ID200 becomes the MT200 and we enter our third state in as many days…. Montana is probably the main reason for us making this trip, both of us have wanted to visit here for many years and we have a number of preconceptions of how we expect MT to look….. so it’s with enthusiasm and hope that we stop and make a record of our arrival



We don’t have to wait long for a glimpse of the beauty to follow..







A ways down the road we start to see signs saying that the next town has a diversion in place due to an event going on. we decide to go see what’s happening.
It turns out to be a political rally for the upcoming elections and it seems the whole town has turned out, either to watch or lend support using whatever vehicles they have to hand!



One of the main reasons that Mum wanted to visit MT is to see a genuine ghost town, so we head to Garnet. This turns out to be a slightly touristy ghost town, the parks service opting for a policy of “controlled decay” meaning that the buildings are maintained as they were found a few decades ago….. it’s possible to enter all the buildings and walk around and there are rangers on hand as well as a small gift shop, it’s good, but not quite what we wanted.






The road leaving here is fun though, about 15 miles of gravel with twists, turns and drops it has Mum a little nervous and the sat-nav going mad telling us to “rejoin nearest road” but we make it out alive!!
The final stop of the day is Old Montana Prison in Deer Lodge.
This is a fantastic look at both the history of the prison buildings themselves and of convict life through the last 150 years or so, it’s a self-guided tour and takes 90 minutes or so, if the walls could talk the stories they would tell……



Probably the most disturbing location is “The Hole” the concept made famous by The Shawshank Redemption…. a 6 x 6 concrete cell in the basement of the prison, it was in use until the end of the 60s and prisoners spent up to 10 days here alone, being fed only bread and water… the human suffering contained within is something that neither of us wish to dwell on but serves to underline how lucky we are to have the freedom to travel that we take for granted.

We decide to stay in Deer Lodge for the night as there’s a National Park property here that we’d like to visit. We find a motel on the outskirts of town and head for dinner to a place that feels and looks like eating in a church hall… the food’s good though!

[dangermouse]

Day 4

The Grant Khors Ranch is a National Park Service owned property that is run as part educational, part working facility…. we’re there just after opening time and the Rangers are only too happy to talk us through the location and help us with the self guided tour of the buildings contained within.

The ranch has an interesting back story too complicated to go into here, but its ownership can be traced back 150 years or so and just about all the ranching records over those years have been retained, this has enabled the Park Service to recreate the farm house and some of the buildings as they would have been in the 1850s and Rangers provide an insight into the first settlers in the area and how they moved their animals and people around.



The farmhouse is set out to look as it would have looked 100 years or so ago, unfortunately it’s closed for the 2012 season to allow fire suppression to be installed, the outside illustrates just how grand the house was though… it contained the first plumbing, electricity, inside toilet facilities etc in the state. A home befitting the family of a man who at one time farmed well over a million acres of land.



Among the various ranger demonstrations are a real chuck wagon, this Ranger illustrates how the original cowboys drove cattle thousands of miles to market in the days before the railroads.
These chuck wagons carried provisions for three weeks and water for three days for the entire crew of men… pulled by 4 horses they could easily weigh more than 1000lbs

Time for another State Capitol now…. Helena’s isn’t the grandest we’ve been too and sadly the tours aren’t running today as it’s Labor Day Weekend, we can still do a self-guided tour though, so we have a look around and admire the fake marble inside and the cupola atop the building.





On our way out of town we swing by the Helena Cathedral, surprisingly given that it’s a Sunday the building is locked up tight so we walk around the perimeter, snap a few pics and then leave town.

We’re leaving Helena in a bit of a hurry as I’ve found another ghost town that seems more promising…. Comet, MT was abandoned a long time ago and lies, basically forgotten about…… or so I read.
When we found the town though, the truth may be a little different:



This is an amazing place, there’s no rangers, no preservation… just natural decay over time.
Many of the buildings are completely collapsed and only one is safe enough to venture upstairs in.







It’s an amazing place and apart from one family in a 4x4 heading up one of the trails we are completely uninterrupted for the 90 minutes we spend here.
It’s actually quite eerie, and so much better than the slightly sanitized town we visited previously. Well recommended.

[Southwest Dave]

Wow ! Enjoying your report and wonderful images, thanks for sharing. Good to see you here !

Looking forward to more !

Dave.

[Lifemagician]

Thanks for all this. Bringing back lots of memories. Loving it.

Lifey

[Mark Sedenquist]

Enjoying the photos and commentary too. I see you found a nice car to cruise in as well.

That wolf photo looks a lot like a coyote!

Mark

[dangermouse]

Interesting you should say that about the wolf / coyote Mark... I wasn't completely certain myself but there was another car stopped watching the animal and they said it was a wolf.... either way it was a rare treat!

[dangermouse]

Day 7

We’re up really really early this morning as I’m keen to join a Ranger lead tour around an area of the park called Geyser Hill that starts at 8.15 and we have an hour drive to get there.

We actually arrive early and are able to watch Old Faithful erupt before heading out on the tour.



Old Faithful has been erupting to an approximate schedule for the last hundred plus years and has been one of the biggest draws in the park for the majority of that time….. it’s an impressive sight to see and we’re lucky enough to see it twice as the tour ends just as another eruption happens.



Nipping back to the car to drop off my jacket I spy a Netherlands plated RV… a quick chat with the owner reveals that he shipped the truck to Baltimore 3 years ago and he and his wife have been driving around North America ever since...... I can see my retirement beckoning!!!

Next we head out for a walk around the porcelain basin area of geysers before driving to the trailhead for the upper and lower falls…. the trail here is 328 steps down into the canyon, bringing you alongside the mighty upper falls, called Uncle Tom’s trail it’s definitely not for those of a nervous disposition, the walkway seeming to hang on to the side of the cliff by nothing more than a few steel beams!



Having hiked back up the trail, we drive around the canyon to the top of the lower falls… there’s a trail here too, a mere 120 or so steps this time but we decide to give it a miss and take a drive around the park stopping at various pullouts to admire the views.



We don’t get too far though before we have to slow to match the pace of our unofficial convoy leader…. plodding down the center of the road without a care in the world, he’s a big fella and I give him a wide berth as I pass, stopping further up the road to take some photos.

Ever since we arrived at the park we’ve been hearing stories of the mamma bear and her cubs who have been seen often around the Dunraven Pass area, so we decide to head to our overnight stop outside the park by that route.
I’d just about given up hope when Mum yells out “bear”


She’d been scanning the side of the road for about 15 miles by this point and I have no idea how she spotted him, so camouflaged was he when we first came across him.

Patience paid off though, and a few minutes later he walked out of the trees and I was able to take a series of photos of an animal that I never expected to see in my lifetime…. truly a magical moment.

Onwards to our hotel cabin in Mammoth hot springs…. not one of my finest bookings this, there’s no bathrooms in the cabins, they share communal facilities…. a touch rough and ready for Mum but we make the best of it…. the beds are great at least!