Thursday, August 29, 2013

REDWOOD and SAN FRANCISCO





So Noah just managed to clear airport security with a large railroad spike in his knapsack and we're now flying home to Toronto....but we're getting ahead of ourselves. Last you heard we were en route to the Redwood Forest, so let's take it from there.

After the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, we headed off to camp for three nights in Redwood National and State Park. We hiked once again, and saw some f#@$ing huge trees, including the Boy Scout Tree "arguably the largest Redwood tree," according to the ranger. Arguably, because it's actually two trees fused together. Here we are in front of it.



N.B. this photo was taken by a Korean couple who had the exact same camera as us. We took a picture of them, too. Luckily we were all compulsive enough to make sure we didn't end up with a camera full of their X-rated honeymoon photos!

The second day of our hike took us along a coastal trail. We ate blackberries along the way (despite some fears that they were toxic, we survived).


About halfway through that second hike, we began to hear strange animal sounds coming out of the fog, a kind of barking noise. As we made our way along the coast, we realized the sounds were coming from the shore....sea lions! We actually never saw them, but they made a racket.

After Redwood we made the long trek down to San Francisco where we stayed in another totally unique space in The Castro (district). This was not our first time in the city, but we finally made it to Alcatraz (you have to buy the tickets weeks in advance...thank you to those who forewarned us about that). The "award-winning" audio tour really is excellent. For those of you Shawshank Redemption nerds, some of the real-life prison stories sounded very familiar. E.g., burrowing through a wall for a year with a spoon to try to escape, etc.


We also celebrated Rob and Diane's 22nd anniversary here. Our airbnb host, Aldo, made reservations for the two of us in one restaurant, and booked Aviva, Aaron and Noah into the sister restaurant; both Argentinian/latin american fusion/tapas type places. When we arrived at the restaurants, half an hour late and worried we might have missed out on our tables, all we had to say was, "Aldo sent us," and we were swept in. When the bouncer tried to card the kids, all they had to say was, "Aldo semt us," and they got waved through. And when we got to our respective hostesses, all we had say was, "Aldo sent us," and we we were seated immediately. Evidently Aldo has schlep!


We saw Chinatown (see pics above) and took a bike tour of San Francisco as well. BIKE TOUR?!?!? In San Francisco?!? Yep, and it was one of the best we've ever been on and actually no major hills were involved.
They do this thing here called "The Wiggle", where cyclists actually follow a bike path that wiggles around the hills. It sits in an old dried up creek and was used 100s of years ago by the missionaries who first settled here. In the afternoon we rented our bikes to keep on riding - making it all the way out onto the Golden Gate Bridge.



Of course we ate yummy yummy things the whole time we were in San Francisco. After the bike tour we tried this place where they make their ice cream to order, using liquid nitrogen. It was very good, but it reminded us we forgot to mention an even better ice cream place in Portland - Salt and Straw. Rob had Pear and Blue Cheese Ice Cream there that was seriously to die for...okay, you do have to like blue cheese to like this.

Now back to Noah's rail road spike. The rest of us had all cleared security for the flight home, when we saw that Noah had been detained for questioning. We had no idea why, assuming it was some sort of random spot check; we had no gels, liquids, or nail clippers. We even stowed away our camping frying pan, thinking that could be construed as a weapon. But what we had forgotten was a large railway spike that we'd picked up along the way, that was stored in the bag Noah happened to be carrying. After measuring it (seriously) and banging it on their table (again...seriously), the security guards actually gave the spike back to Noah and sent him and us on our way!

So that's it for this summer..... till the next time.

And as we listen to a choir of about 4 babies crying through much of the flight from San Francisco to Toronto, we leave you with a few more of the signs we've seen along the way...



RANAD

Monday, August 26, 2013

PORTLAND and THE OREGON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL

For this instalment, we added two new members to our trip making us RANADEZ - RobAvivaNoahAaronDiane....Eva P. and Zane. Through no planning on our part, their planes arrived in Portland within 6 minutes of each other and we all met up at the airport.

Continuing on our theme of trailer park culture, Portland has a bunch of trailer park dining experiences - a series of trailers set up in defunct parking lots, each serving up delicacies from some other far-flung part of the world. We ate a mish-mash of Indian, Thai, Guamese, Southern BBQ and local beer that first night.

The next day was the Portland Saturday Market (which also runs on Sundays) where we got some artisan crafts....but much more interesting is Aaron and Noah's story. They were just wandering around the market when they stumbled on a sculptor who happened to have a TV crew with him. The boys inquired what the fuss was all about and before they new it, they were part of a documentary about the sculptor! You can see the show in September on K5 the Seattle NBC affiliate....and come to our house to see the grossly inaccurate sculpture of "their" face.

After the market we went to Powell's Bookstore,
one of the largest bookstores in the world (of course not as big as The World's Biggest Bookstore - in Toronto). It spans over a city block. Being a bundle of bookworms, we spent a couple of hours there reading and browsing.

That evening we were looking for a movie theatre when we ran into the Oregon Lindy Society's evening of dance with a live band in Director Square. The Lindy is kind of like the Swing, and so Rob and Diane were able to teach the younger generation (and refresh the older generation) and we spent the whole evening dancing to our hearts' content. It was neat to see that most of the people there were 20-somethings with hipster grooming: spats, bloomers, fedoras, bow-ties, suspenders.... dancing to music from the 1940's, and even the occasional Charleston. And they were good!!


The next day we took a MEDIOCRE, over-priced, hop-on hop off bus tour, that left us all unclear on Portland's history, purpose or existence (Wikipedia later proved to be far more useful). After the tour we ate our lunches and got a Bollywood dance lesson at the Indian Festival going on that day in Pioneer Square. We also watched dance performances from various local Indian Dance schools including an adorable class of little girls and equally adorable (although not so Indian) moms.

Since arriving in the US, Zane and Aviva have had the rude awakening that they are considered minors here. So the only two people who could check out one of the local breweries were Eva and Rob (Diane hates beer; Eva hates beer too, but she needed a place to sit down).


In fact, Oregon is quite surprisingly rigid about their drinking laws, so much so that we were also not able to go to the hipster movie theatre, The Living Room, since minors aren't allowed in after 7:00 pm because they serve beer. Oddly they're not so strict about other laws. The Mexican restaurant we went to one evening shared its restroom with a strip club. Imagine the shock that some of us had when we went to wash our hands for supper and saw a naked woman with full-body tattoos flying around on a pole!!


After Portland we headed to Ashland, home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. We saw a modern adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew and The Tenth Muse (which Aaron describes as "The Sound of Music" meets "The Crucible"), and we took a backstage tour on the last morning. It's really in Stratford's league.


Our lodgings for this leg of the trip were, as Noah describes, "Where chalet chic meets shanty town". Others in our group described it as The Weasley's house from Harry Potter.
Either way, it was way beyond vintage - cluttered with all kinds of old stuff, no door knobs on any of the doors, 100's of stuffed animals, books about Hare Krishna, the shower curtain fell down religiously, no curtains on any of the bedrooms, and one of the "bedrooms" looked more like a dog's bed. But we actually quite loved it - it was cozy and rustic, 5 1/2 km down a dirt road, with deer and other wild life hopping about the property and fabulous views of the surrounding hills. In fact, we liked it so much we had dinner and shmoozed there two of the evenings.

Now we're back to just RANAD (our Go-go Granny and Zane have each flown home), We're en route to Redwood National Park, but first we have to crack a coconut on the side of the road (of course!?). Talk to you soon! Here's some more from our interesting signs collection!

Saturday, August 17, 2013

American Northwest - SEATTLE AND MOUNT RAINIER



So we raced to make it to our train from Montanna to Seattle, only to discover that Amtrak, as always, was running two hours late. After an extremely restful night (for a train that is), we awoke to a view of desert and mountains, and wondered if we took a wrong turn and ended up somehow in Nevada. But we weren't. Moral of the story: Washington State is diverse. Back on terra firma and in Seattle, our cabbies managed to get lost en route to our apartment, but eventually we made it.

One word to describe our place in Seattle: Vintage. From the vintage street lamp in the boys' room, to the display case of 20th century video cameras, to the red velvet, movie theatre seats in the living room, to the Texas license plate dustbin, it was definitely a pack rat's heaven.


We determined that vintage is a great aesthetic touch, but some things should never be vintage......

Like our bicycles. Seattle is a great city for biking, brimming with bike lanes and off-road trails. For the next five days, our prime means of transportation was biking. The first day there, we went on a very informative and historical bike tour. At the end of the tour, our guide valiantly attempted to court Diane, proclaiming (as she removed her helmet and shook out her luscious locks) "I love your curls!"

Our hosts (the vintage people), lent us their bikes, which were of course vintage. Biggest problem: no gears no hand brakes no adjusting the seat height up. (Luckily we rented two from Diane's new boyfriend).


Now if decorating their home in all vintage regalia isn't enough, our hosts also own a vintage trailer park mall. For those of you who are too mainstream to know this, they sell vintage clothes out of vintage trailers in the most hipster district in Seattle. There, Aaron and Noah bought a vintage electric razor from the 1960s, and it still works! Meanwhile Rob and Diane realized that their childhoods (and they) are now vintage.


There was a woman we met on our first night who told us the best thing to do in Seattle is "eat eat eat". And boy did we ever! From Kenyan, to Asian fusion, to vegetarian Indian, to upscale bistro, to an Italian meal where every course was a secret until it was on our plate in front of us, every bite was delicious.



Not only should Seattle be known for its great food, but also for its people! Each day, we would meet strangers on our journey who would tell us the best things to do in Seattle. One day we asked a family we met on a street corner for directions to the light rail, and we wound up talking to them for an hour. They told us to take the ferry to Bainbridge island the next day, which we did!

On the last day, we biked out to see the salmon locks (not lox). The Seattleites created a canal and lock system for passing boats, connecting lake Washington to Puget Sound & the Ocean. But up until then, salmon had been using the pre-existing streams to swim to lake Washington to spawn. To let the salmon through, they created a "salmon ladder", so they can swim up the "stairs" to get across the canals.


We were ready to drive off to Mount Ranier, for camping, hiking, and all things physical. Then, right before we left Seattle, Diane pulled her back to the dismay of everyone. One visit to a sweaty chiropractor later, we were on the road to Mount Ranier, which we had been admiring from Seattle. Diane (who's back was still pulled) was a good sport and came on all the rigorous hikes, and participated in all the camping extravaganzas. She fashioned her own walking sticks out of two branches she found on the ground.

We did three very intense hikes, two of which went above the tree line, one of which traversed snow fields, and all of which were between 10-20 km each round trip.


Now we're driving to Portland, and we've only gotten lost once so far!

Some more signs for your reading pleasure. Draw your own conclusions:


Friday, August 09, 2013

The American Northwest - MONTANA




The express route to Montana would be by air. But we (Aaron, Noah, Rob & Diane) decided to take the slowest possible means of transportation other than riding a bike: a Greyhound bus to Dearborn Michigan, taken entirely on country roads; a train from Dearborn to Chicago,
a Pilates break in Chicago, and then a 35 hour train-ride to Whitefish, Montana. But this ride was not without entertainment. A war vet. across the aisle from us, got quite inebriated on the overnighter to Montana, and told way too much personal information to Aaron and Noah, as we raced across the plains of North Dakota.
This included a grossly incorrect explanation of how identical twinning occurs (i.e. "usually the first sperm fends off all the others, but with identical twins a second one sneaks in!"), advice on how to find a woman (based on his own sketchy experiences) and how to pick a suitable water bottle to discretely hold Jack Daniels.

Aviva joined us in small town Montana, but not without her own adventures. Upon arriving at the airport, she was surprised to find there were no taxis available. With no phone coverage or taxi service in sight, Aviva resorted to splitting a shuttle with a nice old couple from Baltimore. When the shuttle pulled up, the couple asked if he was Randy, the shuttle driver they were promised. He responded: "There are two Randys...I'm the other Randy". We never found out who the original Randy was. This shuttle ride caught Randy mid-phone call with his buddies, whom he was instructing to arrange his arsenal of guns for him. Welcome to America! Randy then decided to give a tour of the area, which consisted of driving onto someone else's ranch (luckily only the gardener was home) while Randy pointed out the zebras the owner had imported to his ranch. On the heels of Randy's gun phone call, Aviva was just praying they'd get off this stranger's property ASAP, which they did.

Now with RANAD together in Montana (Big Sky Country), we stayed at Artemis Acres Horse Ranch,

located in a beautiful valley tucked far away from everything. The animals were all extremely friendly, including a moaning dog that woke us up in the morning and a drooling cat that was supremely affectionate but kinda disgusting at the same time. We went riding on 2 different days.Both Diane and Noah had the pleasure of riding a very special horse named, York, who was a real "trailblazer". He regularly went off the trail into thorny bushes to scratch his belly....and his rider. He also had TREMENDOUS gas issues when going up hill. Rob's horse, Jack, had a reputation of being "the lazy one", but we diagnosed him with social anxiety disorder as he just needed to keep a social distance from all the other horses. Here we are all geared up on our first day with some random extra kid:

We also did 3 hikes: Apgar, Mt. Brown and Hidden Lake. Apgar looked like it had forest fires a few years ago, and so there was a great view of the park....but absolutely no shade. Mt. Brown was one of the more intense hikes we've done. The switch backs were tight and steep, but the panoramic view at the top was well worth the 8 hours and 22 km it took there and back.

And here's from the hike to Hidden Lake:







Aaron's adventures with Wildlife: On two of the hikes Aaron had to go on a "nature call". This type of situation is already hard enough out in the woods...without further complications from a couple of unplanned rendez-vous with exceptionally curious mountain goats with exceptionally sharp horns.


Luckily the goats were mostly just voyeurs and Aaron sustained no injuries.











Here are some interesting t-shirts that tell you something about the values in this neck of the woods:







K. That's it for now. We're off to Seattle for the next adventures.

RANAD!!!