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Back to Seattle
I thought we had plenty of charge left in the car when we left Centralia, but we were running low by the time we stopped in Puyallup for coffee and lunch. We went to my favourite coffee shop in Washington, Anthem, where a super cheery barista sold us on coffee drinks with silly names, and […]
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A meeting of minds
After a long day of doing nothing apart from swim in the hotel pool and wander around small parts of Centralia, we got the girls to leave the hotel room for dinner. They sprinted down the corridor, as they only go at two speeds, stationary and 100mph, and then they collided. I looked down for […]
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Returning to the north
We’ve had our last night under canvas; I woke up early in the morning, racked with upper back pain from sleeping on the floor in the cold, and treated myself by eating blueberries and reading. (It kind of worked.) When everyone was up, I dismantled the tent while my wife packed the car up, and […]
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Getting out of the smoke, into the rain
We woke to another sunny morning, but with the air quality index above 150 and heading upwards. So rather than going to the High Plains Desert Museum, it was an easy decision to pack the car up and head north instead. Our next campsite was about seventy miles away, and so we stopped half way […]
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Smokier
Disappointingly, the air quality was worse today than yesterday, precluding going to the High Plains Desert Museum. Instead, we had pancakes then drove to see the caves in Redmond. I’d had no coffee and I blame that for driving straight to the caves, rather than back to the chalet to pick up more stuff for […]
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Into the haze
We got up early, checked the air quality index in Crater Lake (49) then roused the children and drove down. That took about two hours. By the time we reached Crater Lake, the index was rising, the smell of burning was noticeable if you didn’t wear a mask, and there was a fogginess to all […]
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Hanging about
Every room at the Loge in Bend comes with a bright orange hammock, suspended from the beams running the length of the ceiling. The kids have been obsessed with it, but tonight, after I put them to bed by reading about snakes and Germans from Roald Dahl’s Going Solo, and after walking up the hill […]
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Out of my tree(house)
Last night we stayed in a treehouse in a field by a farmhouse, eight miles out of Salem. This was fun (the kids particularly loved the rope swing that was set up for them) but there was zero internet, which is probably a good thing. My wife slipped me a cannabis jelly and the evening […]
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Oh, Oswego
We drove to Oswego today, with nothing particular in mind apart from to charge the car and try to meet friends we met camping up in Long Beach. Oswego is basically the polar opposite of where we’re staying in Portland. It’s soulless boutique shops, posh ice cream and sculptures on every street corner, instead of […]
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Happy places
This morning we got up and went on a tour of doughnut shops. Well, La Serpiente and I got up first and went to get coffee round the corner (best latte I’ve had in Portland) and we we’d all had breakfast, we walked to Coco, got a lavender frosted old-fashioned, a maple doughnut for La […]
