Expedition to Portland

We left spring in Port Angeles. Winter came back and went away and came back day after day. We walked around the neighborhood, read the weather forecast (dire), postponed our slow trip down the coast. Set forth on Saturday morning after another neighborhood walk,

The Bulbs Are Up In The Front Yards, Port Angeles, February 25, 2012 (Click for larger image.)

heading down Hood Canal to Olympia. Long leisurely lunch with JK's friend, Mike, after touring his backyard rain forest. Down the highway again through heavy rainshowers to a fine motel in Vancouver, WA.

Pit stop on Hood Canal: Triton Cove State Park, February 25, 2012 (Click for larger image.)

Mike had proposed Beacon Rock on the north side of the Columbia River for a Sunday morning expedition. We rolled on upriver in the morning, sweeping views and rain and snowshowers. Hiked up to the top of Beacon Rock. It was highly satisfactory, in every sense but the photographic (misty rainy snowy). Views, our daily dose of aerobic exercise, trains on both sides of the river—wooo-oo chuggachugga chugga chugga; ships on the Columbia, Bonneville Dam just upstream. Could not make out through the murk and rain where the locks were, though saw a ship heading in that direction. Wouldn't watching a big ship through the lock (1) (2) be a sight to see?

JK at Beacon Rock State Park, February 26, 2012 (Click for larger image.)

Beacon Rock is 848 feet tall. A sign on top of the rock says, "If you were standing here during the largest of the ice age floods, you would see icebergs floating in a churning mass of mud and water a mere 150' below you." Works for me. Here and there along the trail/walkway, some old railings remain. Though surely they can't date from the construction of the trail in 1918...

Beacon Rock Trail (Click for larger image.)

Then onward to a "Pacific Northwest Carcinoid Support and Advocacy Group - Oregon & SW Washington Chapter" meeting. (What, you were thinking this was a recreational expedition?) Met a number of very-long-term survivors (you don't ever meet non-survivors), learned a lot about courses of treatment and people's stories, technical language, treatment names, doctors' names, etc. Then on into Portland in the dark to a bad motel.

In the morning, appointment at the OHSU Center for Health and Healing. Consultation with super-expert doctor guy in my kind of disease. An astonishing sight out the windows of the waiting area: an aerial tram connects the CHH on the South Waterfront with an unseen main campus of OHSU up the hill somewhere.

Aerial tram, (Click for larger image.)

More in next post.