Mt Ranier, taken from Reflection Lake

My Pacific Northwest vacation, otherwise entitled "The Volcano Tour", turned out to have one of my more aggressive schedules. I drove almost 4,000 miles on my 10-day trip, and there were days when I hardly drove anywhere at all. Yes, as the name implies, I saw old (and recently active) volcanos or geological features caused by Volcanos. Well, let's face it, almost every facet of our Earth's surface was caused by some sort of volcanic activity at one point or other.

Most of the places I visited met or exceeded my expectations. Yeah! There were a couple I was disappointed in, however. (If you send me an email, I will tell you what they were but I won't say bad things about them in public. I wouldn't want to influence anyone.)

Probably the place that most surprised me was Mt. Saint Helen's Volcanic Park. I expected to be somewhat interested. Unfortunately, I did not budget enough time to spend there as I could have easily stayed more than the hour or so I'd planned. It is on the list of places I'd like to visit again, as is Mt Ranier National Park, Crater Lake National Park, John Day Fossil Beds, and Hell's Canyon.

I found I really liked Oregon. And eastern Washington. I wasn't too excited about western Washington or the part of Idaho I visited. But I can understand Idaho - Lewiston doesn't smell all that great with the paper mill there. But I plan to visit the eastern part of Idaho in 2005, so we'll see what I think then. Western Washington, I think, just had way too many trees. Everything just seemed really crowded - the trees, the people, the cars - it just did nothing for me.

Northern California, at least inland from the coast, did nothing for me either. Not much up there and what is there is pretty barren. I did visit Redwoods, and I liked that. Let me qualify that, I liked the Jedediah Smith State Park, which is where I camped. Very well kept Park. Redwoods is pretty but, after a while, the trees all start to look alike.

I mentioned that I drove quite a bit. Yes, the actual itinerary could have been more efficient - I am sure there was a reason I decided to drive east across Oregon, then west across Washington, then sort of southeast across Oregon down into California to Truckee. For the life of me, I cannot remember why.

But I had a good time, got to see some pretty spectacular sites and just get away from it all.

I took pictures (a given) and I selected some for you to look at and go "ooh" and "ahh" over. I also provided a little bit of commentary (it is quite a bit after the fact in most cases, so the commentary may be pretty sparse - for me; we all know I enjoy waxing poetic about the rocks!).