We start in Seattle WA: this isn’t a good shot, but it’s the only shot of the Space Needle I have which is the only iconic landmark in this city, so it seems a good way give the rest some context.
I spent my first few days in the US mooching about Seattle. Staying in a hotel in Downtown, I filled my days there walking along the waterfront, poking about Pike Place Market and in search of second-hand bookshops. My aim was to find some local reading matter to inspire me.
I struck gold on my first day – found a great bookshop with loads to choose from. I picked up a copy of Ken Kesey’s ‘Sometimes A Great Notion’, which had been recommended to me before I set off (I had started to read his better known ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’ on the flight). I also bought ‘Eruption’ by Steve Olson, about the 1980 eruption of Mt St Helens. From these two books I began to find what would most interest me about this place.
Along the waterfront was a raised road, with other minor streets running beneath. It’s the kind of infrastructure familiar from US television and film, but quite alien to me. This particular raised road was actually closed: apparently recently replaced with a tunnel running under the city instead. I don’t know how long it had been closed – it was dirty and covered in graffiti in places: it is no longer even be standing. My walks on the first couple of days often crossed under, over and alongside this road.
Another view over the rundown roadway, but here you can just about see what would make Seattle such an appealing place to me to live and work in. From large parts of the city you can look out over the peaceful Puget Sound and in the distance the mountains of the Olympic National Park.
I always prefer to walk whenever I can. Putting my feet to the pavement is the only way I can build my mental map and get the feel of the place. I am not alone in this I know, it’s not a particularly profound observation, but it was something very hard to do in Seattle – in fact in any town or city in the US. One day I had wandered up to a great viewpoint on one side of the city, but when I want to try and make a loop round I was completely thwarted by a huge road, and had to take a very big detour to find a way across. It made me really appreciate the way London is generally easy to navigate on foot.
Tacoma. I moved on from Seattle and onto the slightly more suburban Tacoma (which gives the airport the other half of it’s abbreviation: SEA-TAC), and is the home of the amazing glass sculptor Dale Chihuly. While there I could wander down to the shore of the Puget Sound, with it’s amazing clear, calm waters lapping the large amount of driftwood that has fallen into the rivers that feed the sound and are smoothed by the current.
Most of the books I bought while on this trip were about the geology of the region –it is formed by the coming together of three different tectonic plates, with a long pre-history of destruction and renewal. To the south of Tacoma, the dominant mountain range are the Cascade mountains, and much of the land to the west of this range has, over millennia, been formed in this range and then pushed out towards the Pacific and smoothed over. Layer on layer of rock can be seen in places.
Trees. Ubiquitous in the Pacific Northwest – the forests that European settlers found were beyond their wildest dreams and the total value of the timber harvested since they arrived is more than that of either gold or iron. Every single ridgeline has the silhouette of trees.
Olympia and Ocean Park WA. Another US cliché: flags. They are proudly displayed in far more places that here in England and for many different reasons.
Long Beach WA. I saw this sign in many places along the coast, a reminder of the potential danger the geology here presents. San Francisco is well known for it’s seismic instability, and the chance of the entire city being destroyed. But the more northerly coast faces similar dangers: earthquakes, undersea-quakes, and volcanos. In 1980, the previously quiet Mt St Helens erupted after months of rumblings, killing 57 people and destroying a huge area.
The little research I did before I flew to the US told me that the climate in Washington is pretty similar to the UK: mild winters and generally quite wet. I was therefore prepared for the warm weather in Seattle on my first few days, and was ready for a damp, cool trip. There was news of a terrible snow storm hitting Chicago in my first few days and a warning that colder weather was heading west. The day before I planned to leave Tacoma and head off to the coast the weather turned: the snow came down in several inches, worse than usual for the area and caused a lot of closures. I managed to get hold of a 4 wheel drive car so I could still set off, but the wintry weather became a constant feature of my trip.
This place has a well-earned name: a long, just-off-straight stretch of flat sand, with the Pacific Ocean constantly rolling in. It is on the westerly side of a narrow peninsular stuck off the main coast. The beach is used as a road by many – running up and down the length of the peninsular on the sand rather than sticking to the roads. I spent a long time at this beach: walking, photographing, listening and reading (sheltering in my car from the bitter cold).
I wasn’t the only one on the beach of course, but there weren’t many others. I’m not sure there was anyone other than me staying in the motel I was in (heated to about a million degrees by the way).
The wide beaches along the west coast of Washington are perfect conditions for the impressive looking phenomena of cross-waves. They are the convergence of two waves – they cross over each other, leaving the square patterns on the surface. These beaches are dangerous though – swimming is not permitted, the currents and tides are strong.
Willapa Lake Bridge WA. Further evidence of what first made this state rich. The scars of ‘clear-cut’ logging are everywhere. With bare patches of hillsides marking the landscape, sometimes with a few trees scattered in the cleared space.
Willapa National Wildlife Reserve WA. I finally got to step into forest and get among the trees. It was of course too early in the year for many of the national parks, which would have been closed no matter the weather, but others that would have been open were closed by the weather and one of the federal ‘shut-downs’ forced by Trump (so easily forgotten with everything he got up to – while I was there the news was all about the shutdown and the arrest of Roger Stone, huge events at the time but mere footnotes now). This little bit of woodland was ‘new growth’, but very nearby was also some ‘old-growth’ that I managed to walk around and photograph (on the other camera).
Point Wilson Lighthouse, Port Townsend WA. After a few days at Long Beach, I moved on – heading down the coast, south into Oregon and then east, through the forests, toward Portland. From there I headed a little further south and then east again, between the Cascade mountains and into Bend. I stopped at times to photograph. I almost got trapped by the snow in places that were not where I wanted to stay for long, but still managed to spend time in Portland and visit the best book shop I’ve ever seen (Powell’s). I then headed back north to Tacoma for a brief stop (and to let the worst of the weather to pass) before heading out around the Olympic National Park (literally round it – I couldn’t go in due to the snow). My first stop on this trip was a pretty port on the mouth of the Puget Sound – looking across to Canada.
Lake Crescent WA. On this leg of the trip, I was hoping the weather would improve and some of the hiking trails in the national parks would be open. Sadly, whilst it didn’t snow heavily again, the temperature didn’t rise and so the snow remained, keeping me out of most of the forest trails. But the main roads were clear, and I could get round to some beautiful, and sparsely populated areas.
My loop around the Olympic National Park was part of a very large detour on this part of the trip. My reading had made me focus on Mount St Helens – the eruption in 1980 and how the history of this part of the country had led to the deaths of 57 people when it erupted. There had been plenty of warning that something big was coming – it first announced its awakening in March and didn’t erupt explosively until May, and yet many people died. I read how most of the land around volcano was actually owned by one of the largest logging corporations in the world. Their control over that much land limited the state government’s willingness and ability to clear the danger area of people. The volcano and the economics of logging made me want to focus on the geology and the forests of the area. I was heading towards the volcano but taking a long way around in the hope that the weather would ease up and make access possible. In the meantime I was taking in as many other forests and sights as I could.
Ruby Beach WA. After rounding the edge of the peninsular I weaved my way along the coast road with tantalising glimpses to my right of the ocean below me. So when I saw a sign for parking and a beach I pulled over and wandered down the trail. I’ve never seen so much driftwood. A huge pile of it. The beach is at the mouth of a small creek that runs through what remains of the coastal forest. Have a look on Google Earth: you can see find Ruby Beach, Washington State and you will see the logs on the beach, and you can follow the creek back in land, with further logs along the banks, through a patch of forest and eventually come to a clear cut. That is why there is so much driftwood in the water in this part – logs that have been cut down and either rejected or lost, that end up in the river and eventually make it to sea.
As well as the driftwood, this beach also had great examples of the classic costal geology: great chunks of granite doing their best to stand their ground against the constant battering of the Pacific.
Route 505 WA. My first attempt to get close to Mt St Helens was thwarted by low cloud. I got to the visitor centre that is quite close to the interstate – visitors are advised to always stop there first to get guidance from the ranger on duty, and the centre itself is good, with lots to teach you about the volcano. I was advised that if I tried to get closer that day I wouldn’t see anything, and they hadn’t managed to clear many of the roads and carparks yet. Waiting a day would mean I would have a better chance of seeing my quarry. So I took another diversion and found this clearcut right by the side of the road, and a chance to get in close with the stumps of what was left.
Lewis And Clark State Park WA. This is a small patch of “new growth” forest, where forest has been allowed to re-grow. It’s a natural process: even without our intervention, forests get cleared by natural processes and have to re-establish themselves. Though in this case I’m pretty sure the old forest was removed by logging, but presumably at least 100 years ago.
Vancouver, WA. I did make it up closer to Mt St Helens. I had one glorious view as the low cloud cleared, with just enough time to shoot two rolls of medium format film. Only after the cloud blew back in and I had driven off did I realise I had not checked something and pretty much wasted both rolls. I never got another clear shot. After that I headed back south to Vancouver (no, not that one), and then travelled up the gorge of the Columbia river.
Columbia Gorge, WA/OR. The Columbia River forms a very large portion of the state line between Washington and Oregon and Portland, Oregon’s largest city, sits at the end of a long gorge cut by the river over millennia. The impressive rock formations, scattered with pine trees, loom over the roads and the railway that wind their way beside the river.
Of course, the river has been exploited as much as the forests: it has 14 dams on its main stem, many of them for hydro-electric generation. The Bonneville dam is the closest to Portland, and a just out of sight in this image, and has a rather curious visitor attraction: a fish ladder, where (at the right time of the year) you can join in with the scientific exercise of counting the salmon, and other species, making use of the ladder to return upstream of the dam to their spawning sites.
Beacon Rock, WA. This large outcrop of granite rock stands alone in a small plane by the Columbia. Saved from destruction in the early 20th century (when it was proposed to blow it up with dynamite to clear the area for easier road and rail access), its saviour Henry J Biddle bought it and cut a winding trail up to the very top which is still accessible today – and well used even in the treacherous conditions when I visited.
