Making a sunshine circuit of Cape Disappointment

We arrived at the old schoolhouse around dusk. This would be our last evening in Washington.

Our base was almost a gateway to an area called Cape Disappointment. It turns out that an English fur trader John Meares had named it when he was looking for a route past the Columbia's river bar. The name stuck, and later an American Captain Robert Gray found the adjoining river passage and named it Columbia, after his ship. The Lewis and Clark expedition to map the western part of the the United States also visited the promontory as part of their concluding stages.

It's an area known for shipwrecks and has two lighthouses, the second built because not all ships could see the first.


We had lucky sunny weather for this area, which has over 100 days of fog per year. Even in the time we were there, we could see the speed with which the weather could turn about, from misty fog, to bright sunshine.

For us, a journey through this state park was a delightful start to the day, before we crossed the river into Oregon.

drifting south

When they said, "Check out the driftwood," I had in my mind some twigs and maybe a few branches along the shoreline.

This is the Pacific though, and it does things on a grand scale. I'm not sure whether I'd class this driftwood as "Trees" or maybe as "Small Forest".

There's certainly a lot of it, cast through the waves on a grand scale.

We are still heading south and stopped at a few bays to admire the rugged scenery in the ahead of our last stay in Washington State, before our plans to cross the bridge into Oregon.

victorian milk shakes?

The inside of the Consulate was delightful, as were the hosts.

We had a good look around at the predominantly Victorian inspired interior.

There is a collection of lutes, some contemporary and slightly steam-punkish looking fancy hats as well as memorabelia including a discovered postage stamp sent from the Consulate to Berlin, which had somehow got lost for ages and then re-discovered.

Then a sunny evening listening to music on the seafront.

And, of course, milk shakes (don't forget to tip out the rest from the shaker) in an all-American diner.

at the consulate

The old German Consulate made an excellent and friendly evening stopover.

By now we were in Port Townsend, an area which seems to have selected elements from prior eras and created its own unique mashup of the results.

The whole character could change quickly from sunshine with everyone spilling out along the sidewalks, to a kind of mystery novel air of quiet, punctuated by a few ravens or crows screeching into the air.

I don't know, it kind of reminded me of an old movie or two...?

timber alert

I have a feeling we will be seeing more of the logger truck warning signs as we move further into the forests around here.

For the moment we are staying by the coastline, and detoured to this little town of Port Gamble, which is like something preserved from the end of the 1800s.

With all those trees around it's not surprising that most of the buildings are made of timber. And down by the water there's the remaining part of a timber transportation facility.

Across Puget Sound

We decided to take a boat from Seattle. Instead of the busy freeways, we could watch the scenery and change gear from urban to a more relaxed style.

We could now watch the Space Needle, Elliott's on the Bay and many other places we'd visited slip away as we headed across Puget Sound further to the North West.

Our plan was to make for the Olympic National Park. So as Mount Ranier bid us a distant farewell, we could see the early ranges of the largely uninhabited million acre park appearing before us.

you can hear happiness staggering on down the street, footprints dress in red

We didn't just look at the flying fishes in Seattle. Along the way we stopped off at the inscrutably named EMP, the centre created by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

With Bill Gates, they sold the original DOS operating system for PCs to IBM (and then bought QDOS because their own wasn't written). Paul did okay from it and along with the sports teams and yacht with two onboard helicopters, he set up the music and media centre.

I'd previously thought it was called the Jimi Hendrix museum, but although it features Hendrix, there's also Nirvana and a range of other musical experiences including many 'try it yourself' displays.

The guitar at the top of the post is a remnant from the famous flambéed Stratocaster at Monterey, and the albums on the wall are from Hendrix's own record collection.

The picture below is one of the famous London ones, outside Montagu Place. Hendrix rented number 24 from Ringo Starr. Paul McCartney had already installed recording gear there and its where Hendrix penned The Wind Cries Mary. After Ringo evicted Hendrix, John and Yoko moved in for a while. It's an English Heritage site nowadays, complete with blue plaque.

Oh, okay. Here's Hendrix playing a chilled Wind Cries Mary, at Monterey, on a black upside-down Stratocaster.

watch out for flying fish

I said we'd get to the place where the fish fly around.

I think the first time I visited Pike Place was before there were any Starbuck's in the UK. I remember that point tangentially because at the time it was commonplace (to my European palate) to find generally weak coffee in America.

Seattle coffee houses seemed to be running a single handed campaign to produce something tastier than the prevalent thin glass beaker coffee types.

Even then, the fish were flying, with waves of tourists outside the famous Pike Place Fish Market. This time, I managed to snap a fish in mid flight as we walked past, although it's something of a 'spot the fish' competition to actually see it.

And just along the way, the original Starbucks is still doing fine, with almost comedy length queues of people outside.

hey baby, I hear the blues a-callin' tossed salads and scrambled eggs...

Time to hit the trail for some road tripping. I've a tee-shirt that says 'Pacific One Hwy' and I think that is the basis of the plan. Along the West Coast of USA. North to South.

We're in Seattle now, after a rather pleasant flight with BA in the comfortable middle part of the plane. We had a sort of mini cabin, with those seats that turn into lie-flat beds.

There was a bit of a technical delay at take-off, but the accommodation was so enjoyable that it really didn't matter.

And then, once in Seattle, we arrived at the hotel to be greeted by those magic words..."Would you like a complementary upgrade?"

Well, what could we say? And that was before they added the rest of the sentence...

"To the Presidential Suite?"

Let's say we now have a grand piano in the room and yesterday evening we dined at the in-room banquet table.

But now it's time to go watch some fishes being thrown around.

night moves

We were on our way to the restaurant through the packed streets of Soho.

Brewer Street rammed with its mix of clubbers waiting in straggly lines, drinkers spilling across the pavement from the numerous pubs and cafes mixing with high density foot traffic,

We detoured away from the crowds onto a quieter street, just a road back from the main drag. A few taxis and rickshaws drifted through the area, famously overcrowded with its sightseeing pedestrians.

We'd left enough time, our table wasn't until 10:30pm, we could arrive as creatures of the night.

Saint Etienne London Trilogy - the eternal magnet attracting our dreams

I've recently enjoyed watching a trilogy of Saint Etienne videos about London. They been recently re-released as a single DVD collection by the British Film Institute. I popped into the BFI on the way to a meeting to get the DVD.

The first, Finisterre, shows more or less a 24 hour look from sunrise to sunrise of the capital going about its way. From sleepy pigeons, markets, commuters, tourists, nightlife, afters and the quiet streets of 4am.

The film was made in 2003, but seems to come from an older place. Occasionally something will show up that looks strikingly modern as a reminder. Yet the gherkin is still being built, there's not an iPhone in sight and tickets are being fed into slots at the tube.

It's a good example of how things change subtly and how a contemporary environment looks unexpectedly different - an example of wide change.

The film-makers had a budget originally to spend on a 3 minute promotional video (£20k a pop in those days) and decided to instead create something of a love poem to London. I gather the original money was stopped after they'd used the first promo video funds to create the pilot instead of a pop video, but they'd also bought the camera by this point, so carried on anyway.

The next film of a paperboy round was dramatised to appear shot on 7 July 05, when both the Olympic result for London was announced and four tube and bus bombs exploded in the densely populated areas of the capital.

It's a quiet look at the pre-Olympic version of the Lea Valley, which many would have known as The Wick, before its massive makeover. 150 years of history along this river, with the towering Bryant and May site of the Annie Bessant led match girl strikes, the invention of early plastic, and even the first refining of petroleum among the almost forgotten credits of the area. I know parts of the run-down areas shown in the film, much of which has gone since the Olympics ploughed through the area.

And finally, the modern looking update of the area around the Festival Hall. Part of the South Bank and an immensely successful exercise in branding too.

So much that the other riverbank of the Thames around The Strand/Villiers Street is right now considering how to brand itself as 'Northbank'. Confusingly, the area is already well known as 'The Strand' and some of it is already cross branded as 'Theatreland' although most people don't spot this. Also with South Bank being two words, they've chosen to make Northbank one word. Oh well.

I should mention the music in the three films too. A blend of Saint Etienne songs and their other synth-inspired pieces. Some of their songs get right inside.

Here's my ancient video from my own commuting soundtracked by Saint Etienne, when I lived in the Temporary Apartment in Copenhagen.

if a single leaf holds the eye

This time we'd been out somewhere after a spell of that Zen navigation. The one where you reach a destination by travelling in ever decreasing circles. Even the white bear by the Russian road sign couldn't help us, although by the third circuit we were almost as well-known as the landmark.

It was on the way back using a straighter route, that we decided to take another small detour. This time along a gravelled track. Not ex-railway, it was far too switchy for that, but still laid purposefully in a way that gave us easy access to an area of woodland.

Now a week or so ago, we were in some trees when someone asked, "What's that type of tree, then?" Luckily it was an oak tree, so easy to answer. A few more easy ones and then one which we had to say was, well - a tree.

There was a similar sense as we headed through areas of wild blackberries (not yet ripe) some hazelnuts (still green) and further oaks and sycamores.

We compiled a modest dossier of a few in the sheets of a notepad. We knew most of them (even the slightly tricker white willow) although we now have doubts about the one on the far right. It is much easier to identify them whilst still attached.