Most of the ferries in the Washington State system are named after Native American names (except the MV Evergreen State, MV Rhododendron, and MV Hiyu). Some of these are people, some are places, but either way they're tied to a location in the state. 
The different text sizes correspond to the size of the ferries. Font size equals number of cars divided by ten, more or less. Click on the map to see the image full size and thus the small names.
I think that Geoduck Geotech would be a good name for a soil engineering firm in the Puget Sound region.
Last year, we drove to Portland, South Bend, Kalaloch, North Bend, Long Beach, Gold Bar, North Bend, North Bend, North Bend, Skamokawa, Verlot, Port Gamble, Stevens Pass, Westport, Sunrise, Pacific Beach, and Stevens Pass.
In 2011, we might just visit eastern Washington again...
Have a look at this pre-filed bill in the Washington State Legislature for next year's session. Basically, it says that the federal government is constitutionally prohibited from owning land in the state of Washington without the state's consent, so the state is taking it back.
Oddly enough, I had this very idea a few months ago, as a way to curb the federal government's power. All states should do this.
But I doubt this bill will ever see the light of day. It will probably be "x-filed" or lost in a subcomittee for all time.
Last weekend, we camped at Skamokawa on the Columbia River.
Down the road in Cathlamet, the annual Bald Eagle Days were in full swing. The local fire departments had a game to play.
We then returned to our campgrond and hung out on the beach, watching a couple ships go by.
Then back to Cathlamet for the fireworks show.
We bought a glowing sword.
Sunday, we drove Highway 103 and stopped in Oysterville to buy clams and cherries. The cherries were eaten quickly; the clams waited till we got home.
We then visited the beach at Long Beach. Saturday had been a sandcastle-building competition, but they were washed away by Sunday.
Tiring trip. Fun trip.
More photos on flickr. Many more.
In 2009, we drove to Othello, Auburn, Port Townsend, North Bend, Index, Sultan, North Bend, Colville, Orcas Island, Harrison Hot Springs, Sunnyside, Osoyoos, Alpental, Merritt, Toppenish, Sprague, Hyak, Denny Creek, Fort Spokane, Deer Lake, Artist Point, Potholes State Park, Worley, Hyak, Colville, Worley, Toppenish, Silverton, Spokane Valley, Granite Falls, Yakima, Osoyoos, Chelan, and Tacoma.
Quite a lot of eastern Washington, wouldn't you say?
I fully expect my 2010 map to look completely different. . .
After reading that eastern Maine has the solar system modeled to scale along US Route 1, with 1 mile covering 1 astronomical unit (the distance from the earth to the sun) (scale 1:93,000,000), and that Sweden has the largest solar system model (scale 1:20,000,000), I figured that something bigger and better needed to be built, with the sun in Seattle, naturally.
From the length of Interstate 90 from Seattle to Boston (approximately 3,000 miles), I decided that a good scale for the model would be 1:1,860,000, or 50 miles per 1 astronomical unit. Here's a summary of how it would look:
Sun -- centered at Space Needle, 2400' diameter
Mercury -- Issaquah or Preston (20 miles), 9' diameter
Venus -- east end of North Bend (35 miles), 21' diameter
Earth -- Snoqualmie Pass (50 miles), 22' diameter (with Moon, 6' diameter @ 600')
Mars -- Easton or Cle Elum (75 miles), 12' diameter
Ceres -- Vantage (135 miles), 10" diameter
Jupiter -- Cheney or Spokane (260 miles), 250' diameter
Saturn -- Missoula (475 miles), 200' diameter
Uranus -- Buffalo, Wyo. (980 miles), 90' diameter
Neptune -- Mitchell or Sioux Falls, S.D. (1500 miles), 87' diameter
Pluto -- Mitchell, S.D. to Eire, Pa. (average Chicago, 2000 miles), 24" diameter
Eris -- Chicago to the middle of the Atlantic (average Boston, 3000 miles), 27" diameter
Sedna -- south of Nova Scotia to over twice around the earth (average Seattle), 30" diameter
The circumference of the sun could be painted on the pavement in the Seattle Center (or built with cobble stones or another different paving type), with a model of Sedna in the Pacific Science Center.
A model of Mercury could be in a park or shopping mall area in the Issaquah area.
Venus could be near the truck stop at exit 34 east of North Bend.
Earth could be in the parking lot beside the Travelers Rest at Snoqualmie Pass, with the Moon near the hotel. When standing by the model of the Earth, the Moon model should look the same size as the real Moon in the sky.
Mars would be at the property of whoever in the Easton or Cle Elum area wants a minor tourist attraction.
Ceres could go in one of the parks or a restaurant in the Vantage area, with possibly some other asteroids nearby.
Jupiter would be painted or paved similar to the Sun, at Eastern Washington University, Gonzaga University, or Riverfront Park in Spokane, unless students at one of the schools decided they wanted to build a huge sphere.
Saturn would either be marked with paving stones around the Grizzly Statue at the center of the University of Montana, or perhaps on the grassy hillside above the campus near the giant M, so it's visible from all over town. I can envision the rings protruding from the hillside as a pedestrian walkway.
Uranus would be constructed wherever in northeastern Wyoming someone will take it.
Neptune would go at one of the small universities in Sioux Falls, or perhaps right next to the Corn Palace in Mitchell. Wouldn't that be nice?
Pluto would go at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, or one of the other museums or universities in Chicago, or perhaps the University of Wisconsin in Madison or Notre Dame or Toledo or . . . whoever takes it.
Eris would be located at the Boston Children's Museum or the Harvard Museum of Natural History or some such.
Each location would have a sign (or maybe multiple signs around the Sun) that describes the whole project and shows where all the planets are.
In summary: wouldn't that be cool?
UPDATE: If none of the museums, universities, or parks near I-90 in the midwest want Pluto, there's always Pluto's Beef and Hot Dogs in Oak Lawn, just west of Chicago!
A good overall photo of the massive landslide in Yakima County. Many more good ones alongside it, too.
I wonder what 410 will look like when I next drive it. . .
This is one of only two triple-numbered stretches of highway in Washington. This one's in Yakima. Where's the other?
Whenever I see multiple directions on a highway sign like this, I try to calculate the resulting vector in my head. This one's almost due southeast (82+12 vs. 97). (The highway itself is running almost due south, though.)
Shopping and viewing livestock can be very tiring.
But teenagers recover quickly.
If you ever are near Soap Lake, go play in the mud.
Apparently the mud is good for the skin, but Christina said it just made her legs itchy.
Nevertheless, a nice place to visit.
. . . More photos from Soap Lake are on flickr -- as are photos from last week's hike to Lake Lillian and the previous week's drive of Highways 26 and 27 -- see the WSU football team! I guess I haven't blogged my photos in quite a while. Oh well. . .
Even though its the second (or third) largest city in Washington, Spokane is severely lacking in freeway mileage.
In the Spokane area, the following highways handle over 20,000 vehicles a day, even though they're not high-speed expressways, but mostly just urban arterials with stop lights: US 2, US 395, US 195, SR 27, SR 290, and SR 291. Curiously enough, that's also a complete list of the state highways in the Spokane area that aren't I-90.
So here's my proposal for new freeways in Spokane:
Go ahead and click on it to zoom in, etc.
If, by the way, you're from Spokane and I drew a line over your house. . . I'm sorry. We can move the line.
Welcome to King County, where you're now forced to vote by mail.
If my ballot actually makes it through the post office system to the elections department, I wonder if it will actually be counted properly. . .
In any case, most of the Seattle races seem to be about the Tunnel, with most of the candidates wanting to stop its construction. Naturally, this makes crossing off potential candidates rather easy. There's no way I'm going to vote for someone who's anti-growth and anti-infrastructure.
Plus, any candidate that talks about fixing government bureaucratic waste always gets a thumbs-up.
Therefore, for Seattle Mayor, I've voted for James Donaldson.
For Seattle City Council, I've voted for Dorsol Plants, Nick Licata, and Jordan Royer.
I quite wholeheartedly voted to reject the Seattle Referendum to tax grocery bags.
With the Port of Seattle, it was easy enough to discard everyone with overt union ties. For Port Commissioners, I voted for Al Yuen and Robert Walker.
For Court of Appeals Division 1, District 1, Judge 3, I voted for the less-liberal-seeming Robert D. Kelly.
And the only election for which I didn't bother to read through the online blurbs was King County Executive, because I didn't need to. I've already read my candidate's blurb in previous elections. I voted rather quickly for Goodspaceguy. Sorry, Stan.
The highest-numbered state highway in Washington that does not connect to any lower-numbered state highways is State Route 194, which only connects to US 195.
Just so you know.
This weekend is a stay-at-home weekend. The house and yard need a lot of work, even after I've spent all morning working on it!
And do you know why the yard needs so much work? I've been neglecting it by taking long trips over the past few weekends.
A week ago Friday, we took care of some business at home after work, then hit the road. On I-90 in Bellevue, I realized that we didn't have Chunlin's passport nor my birth certificate, so I had to double-back for home. 520 was jammed westbound. I picked up the documents, then we left home the second time after 8 p.m.
Near Cle Elum, we called a few motels in the Yakima valley till we found a good price and good distance. Since my destination the next morning was the Juniper Dunes Wilderness Area, Othello would probably have been the quickest route, but there are only a couple motels in that town.
So we stayed at an inexpensive motel in Sunnyside, watched Jay Leno's last episode of the Tonight Show, had a continental breakfast, then headed out into the desert.
Juniper Dunes Wilderness is a big area of sand dunes northeast of the Tri-Cities. It's also the northernmost home of wild junipers in the U.S., hence its name. We didn't venture too far into the wilderness. We climbed the big hill/dune near the north entrance, walked around in a circle atop the hill/dune, and called it good. Why venture down into the low dunes when you can see it all from the top? True, we could still see farms and ranches to the north, but that's no problem.
So then we headed across rural Franklin County toward Kahlotus, the "hole in the ground" at the start of Highway 21.
The highway had a constant supply of little birds sitting on it. I never hit one -- they always flew away in time -- but several gave me a scare. Were they sunning themselves on the hot asphalt like lizards? Or was the road the only place they felt safe from predators?
We stopped in Odessa for lunch.
Not the Odessa in Ukraine nor Texas, by the way.
One from the outskirts of Wilbur:
It was a bit odd to come across US 2 way out in the middle of the state. We'd driven through Wilbur in February 2008 without stopping, and yet it was familiar. Back then, it was cold and foggy, though. Quite a difference.
Next up, the mighty Columbia River!
(Chunlin's photo above)
All the rivers we encountered on our trip (Yakima, Sanpoil, Kettle, Similkameen) were nearly overflowing their banks racing to get to the Columbia, and yet the water level on Roosevelt Lake (behind Grand Coulee Dam) was surprisingly low.
The log boom surrounding the swimming area at Keller Ferry Campground was high and dry. That was too much hot sand to cross for my liking, so instead of jumping in the lake, we rested at the picnic shelter and listened to the wind blow the trees.
Eventually, we decided to hit the road . . . or more precisely, the ferryboat. There's no bridge across the river/lake here, just a ferry that's been going back and forth every day for fifty-some years. WSDOT is working on designing the replacement.
With the extreme changes in water level, I'd think designing a new dock will be the hard part.
As we boarded the little ferry, a deer ran down to the lake for a drink.
And away we go. . .
What's the typical abbreviation for boatswain, hm?
After dinner in Republic and lots of forest valley driving, we hit Canada.
The Canadian border guard thought we were pretty suspicious, from what I gathered. We'd been to Canada a week earlier; it was seven o'clock in the evening; we didn't have a hotel reservation; we were from Seattle and crossing several hundred miles east; and Chunlin's passport still has her maiden name (the guard noticed our wedding rings). I think if I had told him at the beginning about driving the length of every Washington highway in numerical order, we might not have seemed so suspicious. Chunlin thought that would be too weird, though.
But let us in, he did. So off we drove to the west, on the Crowsnest Highway, toward Osoyoos (however you pronounce it). The last major mountain pass to the east of Osoyoos is not really a pass. If there wasn't an international border at 49°, the road would simply travel down a valley to the Okanogan River a couple miles south of Osoyoos. As it is, the Canadians had to enact a good chunk of engineering to get this road over the ridge. You'd think we could've sold them a few square miles for a good road. . .
By the time we got to Osoyoos and checked into a motel, the sun was setting.
That's from our motel balcony, by the way.
After the Suze Orman Show and a good night's sleep, we took a walk along the lake.
A long drive through the mountains of British Columbia later, we arrived at Harrison Hot Springs for the second time in a week. Much more crowded than Monday, but just as windy.
We only had enough time to walk along the lakefront, exchange a Canada hockey jersey for a smaller size for Christina, have lunch, and then it was time to head for home.
The U.S. border guards gave us no trouble. We belonged in the U.S., after all. He did remind me that that was the last day I could use my driver's license and birth certificate to enter, however. I knew. It was part of the reason I wanted to get the drive done the last weekend in May. My passport application is now in the mail. Four to six weeks, they say.
. . . My car got a heck of a lot of mileage in May. Seattle to Burlington to Twisp to Republic to Colville to Newport to Spokane to Seattle to Burlington to Doe Bay to Friday Harbor to Mount Vernon to Seattle to Bellingham to Harrison Hot Springs to Bellingham to Seattle to Ellensburg to Sunnyside to Juniper Dunes to Odessa to Republic to Danville to Osoyoos to Harrison Hot Springs to Bellingham to Seattle!
In Washington, the Columbia River is crossable by car in 25 locations, including three ferries. 21 of those crossings are Washington state highways (US 101, SR 433, I-5, I-205, US 197, US 97, I-82, SR 397, US 395, I-182, SR 24, I-90, SR 285, US 2 [also signed US 97], US 97, SR 173, SR 17, SR 155, SR 21 [ferry], SR 20 [& US 395], SR 25).
Curiously (at least for me), the only US Routes and Interstates in Washington that don't cross the Columbia are I-405, I-705, US 195, US 730, and US 12 (technically, but it is signed crossing the river concurrent with I-182).
The other four river crossings are the Bridge of the Gods (near Stevenson), the Hood River Bridge (near White Salmon), the Wahkiakum County Ferry (near Cathlamet), and the Gifford-Inchelium Ferry (near Inchelium).
I've walked across the Bridge of the Gods as part of the Pacific Crest Trail. The bridge was built in the 1920s by a private toll company and named after a geological event. It's still a toll bridge (for vehicles -- no charge for pedestrians).
The Washington legislature told the DOT (via a new law in 1997) to build a new bridge near the Hood River Bridge (and call it SR 35), but that hasn't happened yet. The Hood River Bridge was constructed in the 1920s and its operated as a toll bridge by the Port of Hood River. They don't allow pedestrians.
The Wahkiakum County Ferry is operated by Wahkiakum County. It sails from the end of SR 409 across the river to US 30 in Oregon, every hour.
The Gifford-Inchelium Ferry is operated by the Colville Tribes. They don't charge anything for this trip across Roosevelt Lake.
The Columbia River has other crossings (railroads, dams, and a pedestrian bridge), but you're not allowed to drive over those. Here's a list.
Boom! goes the volcano, twenty-nine years ago today.
You'll be prepared next time, won't you? It's Mount Rainier's turn, I think.
. . . And by the way, never spell out the "St." It was part of someone's name, and that's how his family always spelt it.
Are you in the San Juans? We are. It's very nice here!
... I tried to upload a photo, but I guess the connection is too slow. For shame, for shame. You'll just have to wait to see how nice it is.
This weekend, I didn't do anything terribly photo-worthy (vacuum house, water plants, lunch with in-laws, lunch with mother, run, study Chinese, mow lawn, weed, fix rental house stairs, file bills, shred bills, order fridge parts, relocate website from Geocities to Webs, and upload last weekend's photos onto Flickr), but the previous weekend, we drove a huge loop across the state that warranted uploading photos onto Flickr (also Flickr).
We stopped in Newhalem for a picnic lunch. A pleasant meal under the trees. The contant bell-ringing by kids on the nearby locomotive was a bit distracting, however.
And then we had to stop at the Diablo Lake overlook, as must everyone.
Lovely mountains abound.
Zoooom!
I'm used to Diablo Lake being very green from glacial run-off, but I guess early in the year, the snowfield run-off dominates the flow and the lake's plain blue.
Up over Washington Pass, through the avalanche chutes. Still plenty of snow piled around.
We stopped for a bit in popular Winthrop, home of the wooden sidewalks. All we bought was an ice cream cone, however.
Near Republic, highways 20 and 21 overlap. This is fairly unusual in Washington, except for the U.S. Routes which often overlay interstates and each other.
Or like here, where 395 overlaps 20. We're just about to cross the Columbia River (Lake Roosevelt here) at Kettle Falls (the falls are now under the lake). In many ways, SR 20 is like a U.S. Route, in that various bits of existing highway (and a couple new stretchs) were assigned a number to make a unified route. To make the northernmost cross-state highway, the state had to include many stretches of "eastbound 20" that were actually north or south, or in extreme cases, west. Is it thus any wonder that SR 20 is the longest highway in the state, even though it doesn't go all the way to the Pacific?
An oddity northwest of Newport. This sign would imply that you should take SR 211 to get to Newport, when rather you should keep going straight. I hope not many get confused.
Ponderay in Pend Oreille! I blame the French, for not knowing how to properly pronounce their own language. Also: why do we call it newsprint when it has neither news nor print? Shouldn't it be called paper or, perhaps, newspaper? And then call newspaper newsprint, because it actually has words printed on it? . . . I blame the French.
Sotosoroto Husband, author, architect, king-abdicate, etc. etc. etc. |
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California Roadtrip, Summer 2006
Light Rail Neighborhood Density
The World Does Not Agree with You
Failure Should Never Be Rewarded
Thoughts on Illegal Immigration
I'm a Native American, Dammit!
More "Global Warming" Skepticism
Giant Solar System Model along I-90
Restaurant at the End of the Universe Movie Idea
