DHC Hope: Travelling America

Barbara and I had a wonderful five and a half week holiday in North America. Here are a few highlights and photographs. We arrived May 18 in Vancouver, staying with our friends Brian and Bonnie.

We enjoyed walking in their local area of Richmond, travelling by public transport (train ferry and bus) to Grouse Mountain, a ski field on the north shore, sampling coffees and food, attending their church, visiting Bonnie’s research workplace, ICORD and more.

Brian, Barbara and Bonnie with Leon, her service dog at Minoru Park

Barbara testing a wheel chair at ICORD, under Bonnie's supervision

Tuesday we caught a bus to Seattle, picked up our Hertz hire car and began our two plus weeks of meandering to San Francisco. In Seattle (only founded in 1853) we stayed in a restored log cabin at Lake Haller in the northern suburbs, visited Boeing production facility, Tillicum Indian Village , Underground City Tour, and Smith Tower (1914 at 30 floors was fourth tallest building in world after three New York buildings).

Friday morning, May 25 we left Seattle and drove around the Olympic Peninsula, visiting Olympic National Park from the north to see Hurricane Ridge and from the west to see forest areas and Ruby Beach – fabulous place. We also stood on continental USA most north-westerly point, Cape Flattery (excluding Alaska).

On the Oregon Coast, we spent two nights in Webb’s Scenic Surf Motel (right on the beach, reasonable price, place to stay) at Cannon Beach walking three miles down the beach where we met a young Swedish American man who had begun walking the coastal trail in Alaska in February, visited art and craft shops, salivated over the seafood and had the world’s best coffee at the Sleepy Monk Café, established in 1989.

At the Sleepy Monk Café I was offered a wet, dry or traditional cappuccino. I enquired what this meant. Wet – means extra milk, dry – means extra froth and traditional is normal portions of coffee, milk and froth. I asked for dry!

In Portland we spent a night and day with Drew, Barbara’s nephew who spent a year and a half in Australia a few years back, mostly staying with us. He drove us east along the Columbia River where we walked the Eagle Creek trail, saw Multnomah Falls and other falls, the original Route 30 highway built during the WWI and the Rose Gardens.

We stayed in a number of interesting motels, among the most interesting being The Woodsman Country Lodge in Crescent on Route 97 where we stayed on our way to Crater Lake. They are real bullets in the toilet seat!

Crater Lake is truly one of the World’s special places. I am so glad we saw it. When we arrived it was raining and cloudy. Like, in 1978, when we visited the Grand Canyon in cloud, God rolled back the clouds and we saw the very blue lake and its magnificence. This photo shows Wizard Island.

Then we entered Northern California, home of the Redwoods and Sequoia trees – truly majestic, these trees appear to stretch to heaven. We adored the time we spent amongst them in a number of places – driving through and hiking some trails. We started in the Redwood National and State Parks. Further south we drove The Avenue of the Giants on which we saw the certified largest tree. I also achieved the aim of driving through the three drive-thru trees, one at each of Klamath, Myers Flat and Leggett.

Driving down through the redwood country we discovered an historic Victorian era town of Ferndale where we stayed at the beautiful Victorian Inn. It is an old bank and office building converted to a hotel. The owner and host greeted all the guests at breakfast and told us he had been to Sydney several years ago, with a strong memory of Hillsong Church at Baulkam Hills, which is Australia’s biggest church.

On our US west coast driving we visited a number of beautiful beaches of which McClures Beach in the Point Reyes National Seashore California was a standout. We were the only people there for the two hours we stayed. This area is an hour or two north of San Francisco.

In San Francisco we stayed in a two bedroom apartment on Van Ness Avenue and were joined by Jo Anne a friend from Barbara’s days in infants school in Fredonia. We walked a lot and drove some seeing the Cable Car Museum, the Farmers’ Market, Ghirardelli’s, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury and the Roman Catholic Cathedral Roman Catholic Cathedral a modern marvel of concrete construction. A highlight was English High Tea lunch at the Secret Garden Tea House on the south of Golden Gate Park. I have now had English High Tea in two US places, one in Canada, two in Australia, two in Malaysia and one in Zimbabwe but none in England!

Monday June 11 we flew to Las Vegas for one of my ‘bucket list’ items: Cirque du Soleil Beatles Love. Words cannot describe this one and a half hour show – perfect, superb, wonderful, exhilarating, glorious, uplifting, magnificent – the list of superlatives goes on. The staging, performance, narrative, sound system, music and atmosphere were all perfect. I cannot show you any photos as none are allowed. The narrative started after WWII and moved through Liverpool to the 1960s love, drugs and revolution.

For the final part of our holiday on Tuesday June 12 we flew to Buffalo, NY and travelled to Fredonia, Barbara’s home town, for our time with the Lesch and wider family.