BinaryChatter

Tomorrow we head back to sweltering Tucson. The past five days at the South Hill Resort have just been fantastic. The food was truly outstanding and certainly rates five stars. Just today I had Roma tomatoes and soft mozzarella cheese on a baguette topped with a mildly seasoned smoked salmon while sitting pool-side on the patio just off the north lawn. I was having a difficult decision on which wine should I have during dinner.

The days alternated between dining on excellent food, swimming, great company, shopping, sleeping, reading, napping, and, of course, watching The Dark Knight. It will certainly be difficult to return to the life I stepped from.

Many thanks to the patrons of the South Hill Resort.

Wow. Yesterday I saw ‘Dark Knight’, the latest Batman movie. I agree with the majority of the critics that it was an amazing show. Both the conflicted Bruce Wayne and the psychopathic Joker were captivatingly protrayed. I truly liked this show and will be getting it for my Bluray collection (next to Spiderman.)

Little could top this show except for maybe …. the IMAX. The director Christopher Nolan had it filmed for showing at the IMAX theaters. Most of the show was filmed in the standard wide format and took up only the middle third of the IMAX screen. The images on the larger screen enhanced the viewing, but was not truly spectacular. When the entire screen was used the effect was stunning.

The film flowed between traditional widescreen and IMAX fullscreen to emphasize the more dramatic moments. I was amazed each time our bat winged hero flew through the city of Gotham or the towers of Shanghi. The film would expand to full IMAX mode and triple the number of photons pulling me in to Bob Kane’s universe. City towers would loom up and pass beneath with the typical balance tipping sway associated with many of the IMAX films.

If you still have not seen “The Dark Knight” go see it. If you have an IMAX nearby, go see it again. It is definitely worth it. You might want to smuggle in your own popcorn.

August 3

On the final day of our trip before we headed back to the South Hill Resort, Auntie Erin took treated us to a thin and rich cross-section of Vancouver. We began by sampling items on the menu at the Sequoia Grille in the Stanley Park Tea House. There we sat at a table in the sun room overlooking the ocean. I ordered the Brioche French Toast with bacon and coffee and received a breakfast a order of magnitude above what I expected. Calling it French Toast was like calling prime tenderloin a steak. Auntie Erin, my wife, and my kids all has similar experiences.

Soon enough, we moved our sotted selves out again to the car and made our way to the Vancouver Aquarium. This venue too was in Stanley Park. The Aquarium was a bit busy on this tourist swollen weekend, but as the day wore on, the throng did little to quash our excitement. My son was thrilled to see the sharks being hand fed by a brave scuba diver wearing a black wetsuit and chainmail gloves. My wife and daughter loved the dolphin show so much that we sat through it twice. I always enjoy the bright colors of marine life and especially loved the jellyfish displays. After five hours in the shoes of Jock Cousteau, we made our escape back to downtown Vancouver.

Our Auntie took us to Japadog, a hot dog vendor on a busy street corner. Except that this was no ordinary hotdog vendor, Japadog took beef franks, bratwurst, and even Japanese black pork dogs and dressed them up with an assortment of Miso and wasabi and soy sauces, and embellished the dogs with crunchy seaweed along side some of the more traditional hotdog toppings. Two dogs, two Japanese Black Pork Brats, and two Misomayo dogs, and we were looking for some Japa-good-eating.

We took the deliciously unique dogs to Kitsalano Beach and devoured them while watching Pacific waves ebb and flow in the late afternoon sun. afterwards we soaked our toes in the cool waves of the Pacific Ocean. In contrast to the small pitched beaches where the waves would roll, break, and race up the beach chasing us for dozens of feet, here at Kitsalano beach, the waves would curl, break, and exhaust themselves all within five feet. There was no wave chasing here, just the chance to stand and feel the sand and ocean scrub repetitively scrub our toes.

While at the beach we also visited the Kitsalano pool. It is the longest pool in Canada, and at 137 meters (500 feet), the pool is rather impressive. It was a lot of exercise to walk around it, I was impressed with the people doing laps.

During the entire day, my sister-in-law kept talking about taking us to topless sushi. This was odd at several levels. First, I did not know that there was such places. Is it a place where the waitresses are topless? Is the sushi served on half-naked young ladies? The second oddity was that my sister-in-law was actually recommending it, and lastly, my wife was in favor of going. Clearly I misunderstood what she was saying, but when I asked if she said “topless”, she nodded and coincidentally said yes.

As the sun arced behind the tall buildings casting shadows across the streets and denizens of Vancouver, our path wound it way through the city maze the the red painted door of the ‘Red Door Tapas Lounge’. I paused for a moment, realized my homonymistic error, chuckled, and went in for one of the best dinners I have had in my life.

Fireworks day!

We woke up today on the 21st floor of one of the many tall stacks of condos that shoot up like bristles of a hairbrush along the False Creek in Vancouver.  I enjoy heights.  This was a fantastic view that only lacked an Adirondack chair and the four feet of balcony to put it.  *Alas*, thanks Rick.

That day we took small rainbow emblazoned ferries across the bay to Granville Island.  There we spent the day ogling the dense carefully stacked piles and racks of produce, meats, and wares.  It is a large marketplace where all forms of food and spice was represented by no less than 22 vendors (I think it must be a law).  The throngs of tourists and natives were both annoying and entertaining.  People watching was a great pastime while eating by pastry covered ceramic tureen filled with clam chowder.

I could enjoy the idea of living in an high rise condo by the bay and shopping for a fine home cooked meal from the market just a quaint ferry ride away.

That evening we ate at the Macaroni Grill in Vancouver.  Why a Macaroni Grill while visiting a place with diverse collection of cusines available?  Atmosphere!  The Macaroni Grill is located in an old Adam’s Family style mansion built in 1898 called the ‘Gabriola Mansion’.  We ate dinner at a table in a bay window of the library (yep, Mrs. White, in the Library, with the rope)  and I must say that pasta in an ancient mansion tastes quite a bit better than in a modern faux-historic big box restaurants with black girders and air ducts lining the ceiling.

From dinner we were off to see the fireworks.  It seems that British Columbia was celebrating their 150th year.  Part of their celebration was to hold a fireworks competition between Canada, the USA, and China.  The competition was close.  As a matter of fact it was a three way tie.  But despite this indecisive outcome, the show made for a great display of pyrotechnics, so off we went.

And so did 400,000 other people.  Canadians and tourists alike streamed down to the beach like ants on a cookie.  The beaches and parks in the area filled up to capacity and then overflowed.  We arrived an hour and a half early, and still were relegated to a small patch of grass with a limited view of the ocean.  It sufficed, and as the event came closer, the remaining nearby patches of empty turf filled in with stragglers until there was just a sea of people.

The fireworks were outstanding.  There were four sets of fireworks with each country displaying their best, followed by a group effort that rivaled the individuals.  Somehow, amidst the distant explosions, three bottles of wine emptied themselves transitioning the show from tingling excitement to passively preeminence. The three countries outdid themselves with this competition.  Kudos to them all.

After the last grand finale, the mass of people collectively stood, stretched, and ebbed from the beach and flowed into the towered city.  Sixty million pounds of people all hiked en masse from the north beach.  I could feel the entire Vancouver peninsula sliding northward counteracting the souther migration.  Heads all around bobbed like molecules subjection to Brownian law.  The edges of the mob sloughed off to cars, to buildings, and temporarily behind trees and bushes eventually disbursing readily across Vancouver like an ideal gas.

We too thinned from the crowd escaping the throng to our nest high on the twenty-first floor. -whew-

Today was a marathon day where we raced from Sol Duc Hot Springs on the Olympic peninsula to Auntie Erin’s place in Vancouver, BC.  For the most part the drive was beautifully dulling.  It seems that my senses are not as amazed by the endless count of trees and the multitude of streams, rivers, lakes, bays, sounds, and oceans as I was four days ago.  The drive blurred by in a river or murky green and brown and blue.  Well, maybe the ferry ride from Kingston to Edmonds was a little exciting.

It was the first time that my kids were old enough to enjoy the ferry ride.  The whole car-on-a-boat thing, the wind-in-your-face-at-the-bow, and the walk-as-fast-as-the-boat-is-moving illusion.  Great fun and even a GPS track to relive the adventure.

That night we had sushi at Tsunami’s in Vancouver.  Vancouver sushi is oh so much better than the Tucson fare.  I get a little used to the desert sushi which is always labeled ‘fresh’, but is at best a B- when compared with a coastal cosmopolitan city. Tsunami’s was great.  They even had the little boats floating by burdened with the labors of the sushi chefs which my kids thoroughly enjoyed.  Boats who’s load was always lighter on the downstream side.

This morning began earlier than the custom we had established for this trip.  Breakfast was included in the price of the cabin, and they let you know it.  Greasy bacon, stale home fried potatoes, scrambled eggs by the carton, and muffins from the box.  There was a silver lining though, breakfast came with Starbucks coffee.  Whew.  Three cups later we were racing up the mountain on our way to Hurricane Ridge.

Hurricane ridge is the spine of the Olympic mountains.  A lodge was built there to look across the sweeping mountain slopes that gird the Elhwa river valley toward the dramatic range of mountains which are home to Mount Olympus, the home of the Gods.  The lodge was built at an elevation of 5800 feet and Mount Olympus reaches up to just under 8000 feet.  Both are dwarfed by Mount Lemmon just outside of Tucson, but in vertial feet only.  Here, in the heart of the Olympic peninsula, the view from hurricane ridge causes your heart to coincidentally ache with pleasure at the raw beauty of this land, and a lust for adventure to explore such an untamed world.

We, however, arrived just after noon after cursing the road construction and the slow drivers.  What took the better part of a month to get to Hurricane Ridge a century ago now takes about 45 minutes.  With road construction it took a full hour.  It is so nice at times to be an honorary outdoorsman.

As we drove higher and higher up the mountain we watched to our dismay as the clouds became thicker in direct proportion to our ever-increasing elevation.  Once reaching the lodge I leapt from the car, camera in hand and snapped a quick set of photos for a panorama before the clouds scuttled the view.  I then dashed to the lodge and snapped off another quick set.  After that I looked back to see my wife and kids exiting the car and making their way to the lodge.  Less than ten minutes later the clouds rolled in and turned the scenery to varying shades of gray.

We gathered at one o’clock to hear a park ranger spin tales of historical grandeur.  Our kids took notes an applied the experience toward earning another shiny Junior Ranger badge.  No kidding, they had to raise their hands and take an oath to protect the environment and everything.  I was beamed with pride, and, of course, took a movie of the moment.

As the afternoon matured the weather continued its trajectory to full storm.  The wind picked and the rain spat intermittently hinting at a greater imminent tirade.  We, however, would not be daunted. We who collectively have hiked and backpacked in grueling conditions.  We who have come to the top of the Olympic peninsula would most certainly have to hike a trail just to prove our outdoorsiness.  Our kids had other ideas.  They looked up at us with their sandals, shorts, and chocolate mustaches painted from steaming cups of hot cocoa.

We told them it would be only for a short time. We told them that after they reached the crest , we would be shielded from the wind.  We told them that the view from the other side of the ridge would be spectacular.  “You can see the ocean.  You can even see Canada,” we told them.  They bought it.  One out of three wasn’t bad.

Clouds obscured the view.  The ridge indeed sheltered us from the wind.  The time it took to get there was short, but once there, they saw the snow.  Had we known snow was there we could have used that as a bribe.  All else became moot, for the kids from Tucson.  We moved up the ridge taking photos, playing in the snow, and expounding upon the amazing view that we could have if only the clouds did not block it.  If only…

Then the rain came.  We made a run for the car, but once over the ridge, the wind battered us as well.  I could see our skin turning red from the abusive elements.  The rain was driven through our clothes.  My son turned toward me and said, “Dad, it’s really cold.”  We still had several hundred yards to go.  Not knowing what else to do, my wife and I scooped up our kids and stumbled down the muddy path back to our L. L. Bean edition Subaru Outback.  Next time I will just buy an Outdoor magazine.

Our car took us back down the way we came, stopping even for the road construction.  It didn’t take long until we had warmed ourselves and began to look for another  adventure.

Since our day in the mountains was cut short by the weather, we decided to wander down to the waterfront region of Port Angeles.  There we toured the sand sculptures form the recent Masters Competition (my favorite was the sand castle maker), toured the Discovery Bay Exhibition, and wandered through the tide pool aquarium.  The last being a wonderful stop.  There we were shown a diversity of sea life, including the sea worms which would suck in their afro-like tops when we touched them, to the 21 legged sea-star.  There was also a very shy octopus showing only a tentacle and its breathing vent.

We had dinner by the sea in an upstairs seaside bar, and then raced home for another soak in the natural hot springs of Sol Duc.

-Yawn-.  Today we rolled out of bed at 9:40.  Even later than yesterday.  The morning began with a little of last night’s pizza and packing up the car.  We ate breakfast at ‘The In Place’ which was catty-corner to the Forks’ Cafe.  The atmosphere was a little less home-town, had a little more of a college feel.  There, too, had a small blurb about Bella and the Twilight series in the menu.  The place was newer and cleaner, the wait staff younger and complained about their ‘bitch’ of a manager, and the food more like middle americana.  All in all, I would go back the the Forks’ Cafe (though this place did have flavored creamer to cover up the coffee.)

We set off north and east to Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort.  Along the way we picked up a geocache along the side of the Sol Duc river.  A little more east, and 10 miles past any road our onboard GPS guide knew about, we arrived at the Resort.  And wow … an amazingly spectaculay place until you saw the cabins.  The Sol Duc Resort is nestled in a narrow valley between steep heavily wooded mountains next to the Sol Duc river.  The main lodge is beautifully constructed and hides three large spring fed hot pools.  The cabins lay in front of the main lodge and are arranged and built like army barracks.  Two dozen square plywood cabins standing in formation within a barricade of multicolored Toyota Priuses (and our L.L. Bean limited edition Subaru Outback).

Check-in wasn’t until four PM so we drove to the end of the road and parked at the trailhead to the Sol Duc waterfall.  The hike to the waterfall is a 1.8 mile round trip slice of nature loving heaven.  It is an easy walk through some of the best old growth moss covered rain forest that I have seen.  It crosses four small bridges and one large one.  Each crossing comes with tumbling water, mossy rocks, a soothing presence, and a score of photos.

The last crossing is on the bridge at Sol Duc falls.  Here I used up a gig of smart media and nearly cascaded to my own demise twice.  But the pictures were worth it.

Upon our return, we unpacked and slid into the hot pools at the resort.  I must admit that I like the warm water amidst the beautiful mountains.  I did have a hard time getting used to the smell of sulphur, but managed by imagining that the brimstone smell came from the breath of a tamed dragon used to heat the water in which I sat.

That evening we had dinner at the resort.  I again tried their version of clam chowder and a chicken Caesar salad.  It was better here than at the Kalaloch lodge.

We woke up at the crack of nine o’clock, rolled over, and reveled in just the knowing that we did not have a rigid schedule.  My stomach, though, had other plans.  As the day pulled itself closer to ten AM my stomach decided to make me cranky enough to get my family motivated enough to go out and get breakfast.  That wasn’t too hard to do since their stomachs had somehow agreed with mine and provided enough drive to get everyone into the car.

The Forks’ Cafe is a typical breakfast joint that one enters through a sliding glass door, seat yourselves, and are greeted by a rough and thick waitress calling you ‘hon’ and sporting a lace tattoo around her left arm.  The coffee is bottomless and only limited by your tolerance and the breakfast is as deliciously greasy as those eaten with hangovers during the college days.  We grazed casually trying to answer Bella trivia printed on the back of the local newsletter.

The drive to the Hoh rainforest was a brief 30 minutes away through a patchwork countryside quilted together from plots of clearcut land in varying stages of regrowth.  The taller pieces hinted at the majesty of the soon to come national park.  I was captivated by the tunnel of trees closed off the gray sky overhead, obscuring, yet not protecting from the mist-like drizzle condensing from the the air.  Everything was wet.  I suppose that is the best way to see a rain forest.

The ‘Hall of Moss’ trail within the Hoh rainforest is a short loop with many small spurs.  Each spur uncovers yet another fascinating aspect of the rainforest.  One led to an array of trees long since outgrown their nurse log, but still linearly arrayed in memorandum.  Another led to a hollowed out remnant of an evergreen giant.  The stump was large enough to make my kids look like small fledgling birds in an oversized nest.  The most astounding  spur took us to the Maple Grove at the far end of the ‘Hall of Moss’ trail.  There, an entanglement of large Maple trees with soaring arms stretching over the ground holding long and shaggy coats of epiphytic moss.  Though all the colors in a this rain forest were confined to browns and greens and yellows, the deciduous sentinels made excellent use of the available color spectrum and gracefully held a static pose conveying both patience and strength.

Of all the parks I have been to, the Hoh is probably the one you have to see for yourself.  All others I have seen excellent images of, and while not truly portraying the essence of the park, come remarkably close at times.  The hall of mosses is not like these.  Of the many images I have seen both prior and after my experience there, none come close.  Perhaps the reason for this is that the rain forest is an experience of all dimensions and one that necessarily fills out all three dimensions.  Simply closing one eye while viewing the Maple Grove shuts out more than 90% of the experience.  Another 9% is lost when the camera flash dulls the subtle pallet of natures composition.

Though breathtaking, our vacation moved on, and down the road to Kalaloch beach and resort.  The rain still came in the misting sigh that is common to the northwest and so we opted to postpone our site seeing to a more compatible indoor activity.  Besides our tummies were growling again, and so we ate a late lunch at the Lodge.  The clam chowder was great, but the service and rest of the food lacked any fine polish more resembling typical bar fare.  Lunch was nothing really special except for the extraordinary view that lay just out the window at the end of our table.  Our view was to the west across the glass sculpted Kalaloch bay and storm ravaged Pacific Ocean to the iron gray and silver lined storm clouds.  Yepper: gas $4.48/gallon; lunch: $32.48; eating lunch overlooking the amazing view of the Pacific coast with my wife and kids; truly priceless.

After lunch we wandered down to the beach and gathered shells and small pretty stones.  We chased seagulls, examined beached jellyfish, and poked the ravaged remains of a Manta Ray.  Somewhere between the crashing waves and the miles of driftwood graveyard at the high-tide line, we came across a tall stack of purposefully stacked logs.

The stack consisted of four layers.  Each layer had four to six logs lying in parallel.  Each layer was perpendicular to the last making a cross-hatch with each succesive layer.  After four layers were stacked, sand was used to fill the gaps, and the construct made for an inpervious refuge from the occasional surge of ocean water that would race up the sand and destroy lesser constructs.  We adopted the abandoned structure and once again dodged waves using the construct as a bastion against the larger waves.

Wave after wave raced up the beach, and time and time again we escaped onto our fortress of solitude.  Only when inattention closed its fist around our senses did the wave catch us.  But even then, we jumped quickly to our fortress and grudgingly gave only a partial victory to the eager sea.  High tide was approaching and the number of attempts from the sea increased in both frequency and magnitude.  Many surges now would surround our construct, assult it from all sides, and make an island temporarily isolated from the rest of the North American continent.  Each attempt would again drain away to the sea and in doing so grab another handful of sand from the base.

As late afternoon transitioned into evening and the sun began to color the horizon, we tallied our score with the ocean and decided that we had won.  We took our shells, our shoes, and our leave looking wistfully back to the construct as it was assulted again and again by the sea.  We knew it would not last until high tide for few things can resist the periodic surge, but as we left the beach the construct remained strong, and even now there is a chance that it still remains.

That night we ate a late night pizza from Pacific Pizza in Forks (I resisted the Bellasagne with EdBread) and settled down for the second night of our trip.

Our family just launched itself into an orbit that includes the Olympic rain forest and Vancouver, BC. Today was the first brutal drawn out leg consisting of 485 miles and as few bathroom breaks as a six and eight year old can manage. The drive took us across the middle (yawn) of Washington state, over the cascades, around the southern tip of the sound, and up the east side and across the top of the Olympic peninsula, and finally slumped at the Olympic Suites Inn just in Forks, WA. All the while a sheet of thin white clouds slid from the west like the lid of an eye closing. Once in Forks, the day was entirely overcast.

The Olympic Suites Inn is an array of older condo style suites that have been refurbished recently. They are a blend of old dark paneled cupboards and granite topped counters. The appliances are new and so is the paint, but the buildings are a little old and dated. All in all it was still a good stay.

We grabbed a quick bite at Sully’s Burger joint where you could get a Bella burger (with pineapple) and then sped down to First beach at LaPush.

Bella, of course, is the main character of the Twilight series which takes place in the Forks region.

It was too cold to go swimming, so we amused ourselves with wave dodging and beach combing. Wave dodging consists of running down the beach after receding waves until the next wave surges up from the ocean. You can successfully dodge a wave if you do not get wet. After teasing the ocean far too long and letting the waves catch us one too many times, we sped back to the Inn and showered. Once clean and dry, we tucked ourselves in and watched a few episodes of Ninja Warrior. Both my kids think I could successfully run the Ninja Warrior gauntlets. All four stages! My kids are the greatest.