Benjamin and Sherry's West Coast Odyssey Diary: Part 6

Last Part! Finally!

Day 9- Wednesday, June 21st (Oregon Coast)

Upon waking in Grants Pass, OR, Ben and I took a lengthy drive (about 2 1/2 hours) through the mountains to get to the coast. I'm talking about roads that were about 12 feet wide at the most, no lines, no signs indicating how fast to go around the corners, and no guardrails. But, we encountered two black bears (one went running, more like lumbering, down the street after spotting us) and a whole bunch of deer acting like mountain goats.

Ben and I saw many brochures for the West Coast Game Park- America's Largest Wild Animal Petting Park, so we decided to check it out. How can you go wrong? Ben and I were able to hold a baby African Lion...

pet a lynx...
and hang around with a whole bunch of animals roaming free like these llamas...

While Ben and I were waiting in line to pet and hold the baby African Lion, the chimpanzees that were right next to us started wildly hitting their basketball against a wooden cage wall. The lady that was monitoring the baby-African-Lion-holding warned everyone to stay back. These chimps were so bored that they save up their poo, and when everyone comes crowding around their cage in curiosity to see what all of the noise is about, the chimps maliciously throw their fecal matter into the unsuspecting crowd. Guess what? Despite the zookeeper warnings, it works everytime. Hee hee hee...

After the zoo fun, we stopped to look at Face Rock. Can you see the face?

Halfway up coastal Oregon, Ben and I stopped at the Sea Lion Caves- the largest sea cave in the world is located here and filled with sea lions.

Sea lions can also be seen lounging near the caves.

Racing against time, Ben and I sped our way up to Cannon Beach for a spectacular sunset. All our worrying, nail biting, and constant watch-checking paid off because we made it just in time to see the sun set behind Haystack Rock.

We stopped at Ecola State Park, where part of the Goonies was filmed.

Day 10- Finish Coastal Oregon and return to Washington State.

Speaking of Goonies, we stopped in Astoria, OR to do some more hunting for Goonies' set locations. Here is the museum where the main character's dad worked...

The county jail from which the criminals escaped...

and the main character's house with Ben doing the "Truffle Shuffle".

Next stop: Aberdeen, WA, where Kurt Cobain grew up. We bought a map and did a little investigating to find the bridge over the Wishkah River, under which Kurt Cobain would sleep after running away from home. As you can tell, a few other fans had visited.

Ben had to leave his mark too. We weren't vandalizing public property... nope...

To finish off the day, we made a few stops in the Olympic National Park. Here are a few pictures from the rainforest. Yes, I did say rainforest. Yes, an actual rainforest. In Washington.

We said our goodbyes to the ocean (I'm tearing up just thinking about it) and went up to get a great view of the Olympic Mountains.

Day 11- Mount St. Helens (again) and cruising time...

Ben and I woke up in Sequim, WA and headed for Seattle. The plan was to catch up on all the things that we didn't get to do in Seattle yet. The day was BEAUTIFUL- not one cloud in the sky. It's Seattle for goodness sake! Mount Rainier towered over us in the sky as we approached Seattle. The wheels were turning in both of our heads and finally I said, "Should we try to see Mount St. Helens today instead?" Since the idea was on both of our minds, he agreed. We raced to Mount St. Helens, and the view was 1,000,000% better than when we were there just over a week before.

We raced back up to Seattle and stopped at the Science Fiction Museum. The first time I saw this building was from the airplane coming into Seattle- that's how colorful it was. The first time I saw this building from down the street I thought it had collapsed- that's how odd it looked. Oh yeah, when we were dropping off our car for valet parking in order to walk around the Seattle Center (where the Space Needle is also located), Ben forgot to take his camera out of the car. Yep, when we went to the top of the Space Needle, we didn't get any pictures. But, it actually wasn't that impressive of a view, and I'm not even being sarcastic. The Space Needle is only 550 feet in the air, and the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada (which I've been up in twice) is about 2,000 feet in the air. Which one would you be more impressed with?

To round off the day and our wonderful trip, Ben and I went on a dinner cruise. We waited to board the ship with 100 elegantly-dressed Japanese business types and felt really out of place before we spotted some other people dressed in business casual- as we were. The dinner cruise came complete with live entertainment. Ben and I were serenaded with such tunes as "Sittin' at the Top of the Bay" and others of this type. You know, the songs where the middle-aged couples get up to show their stuff on the dance floor. Nonetheless, the food was delicious,...

and we got some terrific views of Mount Rainier...

the sunset behind the Olympic Mountains...

and an awesome view of Seattle's night skyline from the water.

A side note: the flight home was a lot worse than the flight to Seattle. When taking off and working our way up to 30,000 feet in the sky, there was a huge bump of turbulent air. About two minutes after Ben and I thought we were going to crash to the ground, the captain announced that the bump that we felt was just from an airplane in front of us. Gee... thanks for letting us know a million years after the fact. Also, the landing was a bit too bumpy for my taste and again I thought we were all going to die.