2023 Summer Vacation

2023-06-30
PA

It's time for another road trip vacation. The destination for this trip is Washington and Oregon, staying to the north on the way out. It's July, and the south is in a heat wave so keeping to the northern route should be cooler.

The trip is already off to a rocky start. This week I reviewed all the hikes that I had planned, and no less than six of them are partially or completely closed indefinitely. Mount St. Helens had a huge landslide, cutting off the last five miles of rt 504 to Johnston Ridge Observatory which eliminated two promising hikes. On the other hand, I'm really glad that my car wasn't on the observatory side when it happened.

Washington SR 504 landslide (photo from DOT)

Another good Mount St. Helens hike has a damaged suspension bridge, which makes 80% of the trail unreachable. The really cool suspension bridge washed out at Grove of the Patriarchs at Mt. Rainier, closing that trail until a new bridge is designed and built. Hurricane Hill at Olympic was closed because the visitor center burned down, but they now have it open on a limited basis. On my previous trip it was closed for goat relocation, so it seems unlikely the fire was started by a goat. And Grinnell Glacier at Glacier National Park is closed about 2/3 of the way up due to unstable snow, although they predict it will be open the last week of July (which is long after we've left).

Cool (albeit wobbly) bridge at Grove of the Patriarchs, Mt. Ranier on my last trip

Since it's a road trip we have just substituted different hikes as best as we can, and we also changed our accommodations around Mount St. Helens to stay northeast instead of southwest. As we travel, more trails may close for bear activity, angry bees, tornado damage, or fires (all these have happened to me before) or maybe it will be something novel like aliens landing or a micro black hole. It's the nature of, well, nature. One of the nice things about a road trip is that you can react readily to these sorts of things and still have a great time wherever you end up. And honestly, I've been to Devils Tower twice and have yet to have a trail closed for a close encounter.

Today's travels take us to Mars PA, just outside of Pittsburgh. The location of Chicago made it challenging to keep the first day's drive to a minimum, so driving four hours tonight will mean that we will be well clear of Chicago tomorrow night, depending on traffic.