Lori's Travels

Today, on the last morning of this short road trip, we ate breakfast in a classy cafe in Seaview about a mile from the hotel. It was called 42nd Street Cafe and one of their specialties was a jam of marionberries, oranges, strawberries and walnuts that Dave really appreciated. I enjoyed a wedge of quiche with a side of fresh fruit. We took off from there toward Ilwaco and our first state park of the day, Cape Disappointment.

We wanted to see the Cape Disappointment lighthouse that overlooks the Columbia River bar, so we hiked a trail that took us uphill to the high point it sits on. Along the way, we saw a Coast Guard station with the boats and personnel who rescue boats in trouble in this dangerous area. At the end of the trail was a spectacular view of the huge waves breaking at the mouth of the Columbia River and around the two jetties that attempt to shelter the ships from the worst of the ocean swells.

The lighthouse, constructed in 1856, wasn’t open to the public nor was the Coast Guard lookout that’s used once an hour to monitor bar conditions, but even so, it was a very interesting place. We watched a huge Manson hopper dredge ship actively dredging the main channel plus several identical Coast Guard boats out on training trips, dropping and retrieving floating man-shaped “buoys”. About 10:30, two Coast Guardsmen came to do their observations and then answered our questions about what we were seeing out there. We learned the CG boats were conducting boat handling training as part of a 2-week class for CG personnel. The dredge, which is probably contracted by the Army Corps of Engineers’ Portland District, dumps the sediment it collects along the sides of the area, next to the spits. And the CG has to go out and rescue someone every 2-3 days or so. We spent quite a while there enjoying the view and the beautiful weather. It wasn’t even windy.

Then it was on to the next park, Fort Columbia Historical State Park. Fort Columbia was active from 1896 to 1947 and still holds several military buildings built between 1904 and World War II. We didn’t go in the buildings, some of which can be rented overnight, but instead enjoyed another great view of the mouth of the Columbia River from its high vantage point.

We proceeded over the Astoria-Megler Bridge that crosses the Columbia, going into Oregon. Driving through Astoria, we went east toward Longview, stopping at a quiet overlook spot on the river that was an eagle sanctuary (we didn’t see any eagles) and at a fish hatchery. We ate the last of our packed food as a picnic lunch at the hatchery and walked around the concrete fish ponds where, funnily, we saw a Belted Kingfisher and an American Dipper in the ponds. Then we drove further, finally crossing back over the river and exiting Oregon at Rainier to get to Longview, WA.

On our way back north on I-5, I decided to skip two parks, Seaquest and Lewis and Clark, in the interest of saving time so that we could end the driving around dinner time. But we did stop at Millersylvania State Park, south of Olympia. It’s a beautifully wooded park with a lake that merits more time than we gave it.

After struggling through some rush hour traffic on I-5 and Hwy. 18, we arrived back in Issaquah and had dinner at my favorite teriyaki place in town, Japan Ginger. Then Dave dropped me off at home and drove the additional 45 minutes to his house.

It was a very enjoyable trip in which we checked ten more state parks off my list and visited a beautiful corner of Washington that I had never previously explored.

Dave and I ate second breakfast again this morning: the first was in the cabin, some of the fruit and veggies we had brought along for picnic lunches. Then after we got underway and made it to the town of Raymond, we stopped at a restaurant there to get Dave the coffee he needed and supplement the picnic food with something more substantial. It was a pleasant sunny day in Raymond and the second meal hit the spot.

Our first state park was a little historical site in Raymond on the side of the road, Willie Keil’s gravesite. He had died in the 1800s just before his family took the Oregon Trail from Missouri to Washington. The family put his body into a barrel of whiskey and brought it on the trail with them, then buried him and the barrel in Washington.

From there, we did a short backtrack to skirt Willapa Bay, heading toward the Long Beach Peninsula. We drove through the town of Long Beach and northward on the peninsula.

I had plans to visit two parks on the northern end, but before we got there, we were surprised to see signs for a state park not on my list, Loomis Lake park. The sign looked new but the park facilities were sparse and older looking, so we guessed that perhaps the state had perhaps recently taken over a county park. We took the required sign photo and used the park’s restroom before moving on.

Next was Leadbetter Point park, sharing the northern end of the peninsula with a wildlife refuge. There were trails in this park to the shore of Willapa Bay as well as the ocean beach side of the peninsula, so we hike the trails to both, with the rebound trip being about 3.5 miles total. The tide was way out in Willapa Bay and very quiet. But we could hear the ocean surf on the other side, so we turned and walked toward the ocean side. Once on the ocean shore, we sat in the sand dunes and watched several flocks of Sanderlings and other small shorebirds fly by, heading south.

After a while, we returned to the truck then drove to the final park of the day, Pacific Pines State Park. This was another small, simple park with just picnic tables and a restroom. We ate some more of our picnic food for lunch.

And then we headed back to Long Beach to find a place to stay for the night. We settled on the Oceanview Inn at the Arch – Long Beach, where we have views of the dunes and the ocean. We walked three blocks to a recommended restaurant, Castaway’s, for dinner and on the way back Dave stopped by the hotel lobby for a couple free cookies for dessert.

Today my friend Dave and I started on a circuit around Washington’s lower left corner to visit state parks I’ve never been to before. Eleven parks are on the list and we explored three of them today.

Starting out just after sunrise from my house on a drizzly morning, we headed south along highway 18 and I-5 to Olympia. Thankfully, there weren’t any slowdowns or accidents along the way, so it was smooth sailing in Dave’s Toyota pickup through Tacoma, Olympia, and clear to Aberdeen, where we broke out into sunshine. There we stopped for second breakfast at Duffy’s, where there were few other people on a Monday morning around 9 a.m. but lots of variety on the menu. We enjoyed a leisurely meal while sitting at a pleasantly sunny table.

We then traveled on to our destination for the day: state parks around Westport. First up was Twin Harbor State Park, just a couple miles south of Westport. It appeared to be a great camping park with nearly 300 campsites that sits among the coastal pines and behind sand dunes next to the Pacific Ocean. We parked and took a short trail to the beach through pine tress and grassy dunes.

Next, we visited Grayland Beach State Park, just a few miles south of Twin Harbors. Also on the Pacific shore, this park had a really wide beach, which we walked across. And we spotted our our first Brown Pelicans of the day here.

Our third park was Westport Light State Park, which is really large. We chose the part next to the Westport jetty and found a spot on the bank behind the jetty to sit and watch the waves and the birds. The waves were huge, 9-11 feet according to a weather report, and there were lots of pelicans as well as several other species of birds plus a sea lion in the surf. We could see Ocean Shores across the mouth of Grays Harbor, but mostly we enjoyed watching the waves break on the jetty and the pelicans flying overhead. (I didn’t get any photos of pelicans.)

We ate our packed lunches here and then drove into Westport to explore the town. We found a little cabin to rent at the Westport Inn and relaxed there for a couple of hours, listening to the wind howl outside. Then we walked to a nearby fish place for dinner, where I had a fish taco that was much bigger than expected and clam chowder while Dave had fish and chips.

Today, Tuesday, was our last full day in Ireland. We’ll fly home tomorrow. So it was our last opportunity to visit some Dublin places still on our list. Trinity College was the first, just across the River Liffey from our hotel. This college was founded in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth I and among its graduates are Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker. We had decided that we didn’t especially want to see The Book of Kells in the college’s library, which required purchased tickets. We just looked around the campus on our own. It was a beautifully sunny morning to do that.

Next on our list was to visit St. Patrick’s Cathedral. We walked to this Anglican Church which was first built in 1220 and underwent significant restoration in the 1860s, funded by the Guinness family. We went on a very interesting 45-minute guided tour inside, from which we learned that Jonathan Swift had been an 18th century dean and pastor in this church and was buried here.

Lastly, we wanted to visit the Guinness Storehouse, an exhibit housed next to the St. James Gate location of the Guinness brewery. We had to walk some blocks further to reach it. Along the way, we stopped for a leisurely lunch in an Italian restaurant. Once we had entered the Storehouse, we started a self-guided tour that went past explanations of the beer’s ingredients, brewing and cooperage processes, plus the various advertising campaigns from the past. We learned that the brewery was founded by Arthur Guinness in 1759 in Dublin. At the end of the tour, everyone is rewarded with a free pint of Guinness (or a soft drink) at the Gravity Bar on the 5th floor. From there we had a good view of the city.

We returned to our hotel by taxi for a short rest. Then we went out for a dinner of traditional Irish food at the Quays restaurant in the Temple Bar area. Gary had some bangers and mash which he had been wanting to try, while Caroline ordered beef and Guinness stew. I had seafood chowder and Matt requested their salmon and spinach pasta. We all enjoyed our food at this final Dublin meal.

We’ll fly home tomorrow, taking off just after 12 p.m. It’s been a very enjoyable family vacation!

Yesterday we took a rest day, staying in the hotel. Matt and Caroline both had caught colds, so we took a day off from sightseeing. It was rainy pretty much all day, so just as well. But today we hit the tourist path again, starting early to travel to the opposite coast of Ireland to see the Cliffs of Moher and Galway on the Atlantic side.

We had tickets for a day tour with Wild Rover Tours, whose bus departed at 7 a.m. from a street that was a few minute’s walk away. So we picked up cold, bagged breakfasts ordered last night from the hotel restaurant, ate in our rooms, and then we were off to the tour pick-up spot. Our bus wasn’t full for this tour and we had a very energetic, fun guide named Yvonne describing the sights, which made for an enjoyable experience.

About 2 hours into the drive west, we stopped at a rest stop near a location where President and Michelle Obama had visited on their trip to Ireland, near where his 3rd great grandfather had been born. So the new, spacious, well-equipped rest stop had been named in the President’s honor and even featured a life-sized cutout of them.

We continued driving on after the stop, exiting the freeway after a while and getting on the Wild Atlantic Way (the name of a coastal drive) that led through two quaint coastal towns and brought us to the Cliffs of Moher. We arrived about 10:45 a.m. and it was blowing like everything and occasionally raining. We decided to eat an early lunch in the restaurant at the visitor’s center first in order to avoid crowds later and that turned out to be a good strategy. Our table in the restaurant had a view of the path to the cliffs and we could see that we had avoided a short downpour that happened while we ate.

After lunch we walked out to view the cliffs. It was blowing quite hard for the entire time, which evidently is the normal condition at the cliffs. It was blowing so hard that it blew a small waterfall upward onto the path, getting us all wet, as seen in this great video that Gary shot.

During our 2 hours at the cliffs, we also walked through the interpretive displays at the visitor center, which were about the geology, animals and natural history of the area. Then we got back on the bus and drove for another hour along the rugged and beautiful coastal countryside to the city of Galway. I wanted to take photos of the pretty area we drove through, but being in a moving bus driving through rain showers wasn’t conducive to picture taking.

In Galway, we got off the bus and our guide led us along the pedestrian streets in the tourist area for about 15 minutes, telling us a little about the city, before letting us explore on our own for the next 2 hours. There were lots of shops, pubs and restaurants in the area. We walked down to the waterfront where there was a wall and arch remaining from the mid-1500s city wall, which is named the Spanish Arch.

We got coffee, did a little shopping, and then stopped to buy “traditional Irish chips” (French fries) from a shop that only sold those, to which you could add a variety of sauces, salts, and/or Parmesan cheese. Those were our snacks before reboarding the bus at 4:45.

The bus ride back to Dublin took 3 hours along a different freeway, including one short rest stop along the way. We were dropped off on the opposite side of the River Liffey from our hotel and walked back to our rooms. Back in Dublin, it was sunny and breezy. It had been a long but very good sightseeing day.