Gresham to Seattle, WA
The final post. Two Dads One Land Yacht
-6:00am Left hotel in Gresham, Oregon
As we left our hotel in Gresham, and made our way to our first destination of our last day on the road, Slick Rick kept ripping on me for the amount of stuff I would bring into the hotel every night. He would only bring in one or two bags, meanwhile I'd bring in like 7 bags. I'm basically a pack mule, but at least none of my stuff got stolen out of Land Yacht
-7:00am Land Yacht injured
As we were driving on interstate 5, some truck swerved in front of me and kicked up a bunch of rocks, pelting Land Yacht right in the windshield. Needless to say I now have an 8 inch crack on the side of the windshield that seems to be growing larger and larger by the hour. Slick Rick thinks I should wait until the end of the summer to fix it, but being a perfectionist about Land Yacht, I don't know if I can make it to the end of the summer…
-8:00am Mount Saint Helens
As we finally came across our first destination of the day, Slick Rick was on his nerd websites reading out facts about the 1980 eruption that took place here. He told me that the ash cloud went 12 miles high into the atmosphere, caused around 3 billion dollars in damage to the surrounding areas, and killed almost 60 people. As we approached the mountain we could still see the enormous paths of destruction this thing had caused. Huge piles of ash lay below us in a valley, and trees that had been blown up to 8 miles like missiles still lay everywhere, 37 years later:
-9:00am Blurry trees
As we headed down the back road that originally lead us up to Mount Saint Helens, Slick Rick turned to me and asked "am I going blind, or do those trees look blurry". For once, it wasn't his old man eyes failing him like they normally do. These trees legitimately looked blurry to us. I think it had to do with how skinny the tree branches were, and the way they lined up, but driving down the road it was super disorienting, and I almost felt like I was staring at a hologram. No, the below images aren't out of focus, they actually look like that...
-11:00am Lost (shocker) again
As we took the scenic byway, route 12 along the outskirts of Mount Saint Helens and Mount Rainer, we saw a sign for something called Mineral Lake and decided to check it out. Slick had heard that this lake was basically a postcard photo and that it would be dumb not to drive the 22 mile round trip to check it out. Of course when we got there, we couldn't see a single thing, and wound up turning around. We really suck at going down roads we think will be cool, but on the way down we spotted this Sasquatch statue that was taller than the dude's house who owned it. Middle of nowhere Washington is a little weird.
-11:40am Mount Rainer
After driving on route 12 for way too long, we finally came to an overlook and could see the mountain way off in the distance. This is the 4th highest mountain on the continent, at 14,411 feet, and can be seen even from downtown Seattle. This thing is a monster, and almost doesn't seem real that's how intimidatingly huge it is.
-1:00pm Waterfalls
After continuing along scenic route 12, and passing through the mountain village of White Pass, Washington, we came across this really cool overlook with a waterfall. I have no idea what the waterfall was called, or what the name of the valley it flowed into, but when we pulled into the parking lot Land Yacht's thermometer said 77 degrees, and after 2 minutes read 58 degrees, that's how cold the air surrounding the melted snow waterfall was.
-4:00pm Seattle Traffic
After driving through our first ever traffic jam of this entire trip, we were almost in Seattle. I was excited to finally arrive at our final destination, but not as hype as Slick Rick is about his old man gray beard
-4:30pm Seattle, Washington
We had finally made it to our destination of Seattle, and arrived at our hotel. Lizagna (mom) and Legendary Lois (grandma) had flown out to meet us in Seattle to see what it was all about. Slick Rick had a flight home at 10:30, and after eating dinner and packing some stuff up I never really got to take a good picture of all of us, but managed to snipe this snapchat with me looking like an egg in the foreground, and all the other people having no idea what's going on in the background.
This blog has officially come to a close. Slick Rick, thank you for taking time off work to come along on this journey to move me across the country for the summer. I know I'll see you in July when you come to visit but spending the last 8 days with you in the Land Yacht is an experience I'll never forget. Whether it was me making fun of your dad shorts, hiking shoes, or collection of reading glasses, I would've been so bored on this trip without you. We drove 4,713 miles in the span of about 100 hours in the car, and I can't wait to do it again in August to bring the Land Yacht home. Thanks for everything dad.
