We got up this morning and found that we had a crisis at hand. We were out of Irish Cream and fortified coffee was therefore impossible. Since Oregon has primitive and onerous liquor laws, we elected to drive back into Washington to buy necessary supplies since their laws are not quite as bizarre. Washington does have sales tax which Oregon does not but liquor in Washington is still less expensive than Oregon. Costco cannot sell liquor in Oregon but they sell it in Washington. We noted that the Washington tax on a half gallon of Irish Cream is over $12 on a bottle with a base price of $17. It must benefit the state considerably where drunks are concerned.
We returned to our trailer and offloaded our loot. We intended to loaf around but soon found we were unable to resist the urge to explore so we hopped back into Charlotte and headed up the Columbia Gorge to a spot called the Portland Women’s Forum viewpoint. It is a great little spot on the south rim of the gorge. The famous Vista House overlooking the gorge can be seen from there, along with the river, massive rock formations, I-84 below and the state of Washington across the river. It is a pretty spectacular spot although I am at a loss to explain how the Portland Women’s Forum is involved. I better read up on it.
Some pictures from the viewpoint can be seen by clicking here

Today was a travel day so we put away our stuff, dumped the tanks and departed from Paradise RV Park in Silver Creek, WA, and headed south out of the state of Washington. We have been in Washington about 5 weeks on this circuit and we will regret leaving. The people have been very nice and the scenery is nothing short of awe-inspiring. The roads, however, are shit.
We headed down I-5 and over the Columbia River into Troutdale, OR, where we pulled into the Sandy Riverfront RV Resort. The campground is located just above the confluence of the Sandy River and the Columbia, east of Portland. The campground boasts of having full hookups, wi-fi, pull-thru sites, nice restrooms and showers, cable TV and a nice stream side location, at least for those in the back-in spaces around the periphery of the park. When I attempted to connect to the cable TV, however, we could only get about 14 channels, all of them crummy. I set up the satellite dish and it works fine.
We were going to take naps once we arrived but hunger set in and we chose to patronize one of the restaurants touted in the resort brochure called Taste of Village. It was very close, right in downtown Historic Troutdale (maybe named because all the buildings look really old and well used). The food was almost unacceptable. The orange chicken I ordered was swimming in what appeared to be and tasted like canned lemon pie filling. I did spot some orange slices in the mix but certainly not enough to overwhelm the distinct lemon flavor. Peggy got egg foo yung, chopped suey and pork fried rice. The egg foo yung should probably be called egg fooey because it resembled a vulcanized disk of brown mysteriousness. The chop suey was bland and tasteless but the rice was nominal.
We soon left Taste of Pillage and headed back to our spot next to the Sandy River. Now we had ample time for napping and took full advantage of the opportunity. Retirement is sooo strenuous.

Our strange neighbor again has demonstrated his ability to remain mostly silent for the daylight hours, choosing to prove he is alive with sustained, obnoxious racket perpetrated in the wee hours of the morning. Plaintive wails of “Daddy! No! I don’t want a spanking” and yelling competitions during disputes with his relatives during the evening hours fill his nights. As I write this today, I can easily hear his screaming children and his dog’s tortured coughing and wheezing. We were hoping they would leave today at the end of the Labor Day weekend but they don’t appear to be going anywhere.
Today was a rest day. We didn’t do anything productive except showers, reading and casual eavesdropping on the neighbors. I did cook a nice breakfast for us but, other than that, nothing much happened.
We went and purchased diesel just before dark. When we returned, we noted our strange neighbor was preparing to take his noisy arguments, screaming kids and asthmatic dog home to wherever he lives. Maybe we will get some uninterrupted sleep tonight.

We started the day with a trip to Spiffy’s, a restaurant I had been interested in ever since reading about them on the net and in the Paradise RV’s blurb. I wanted to go there a couple days ago but we had gone instead to Lisa’s Diner in Onalaska where they have excellent food. Peggy graciously agreed to go to Spiffy’s and we started our exploration for today by driving the 15 miles to their parking lot.
My desire to eat here was diminished somewhat after we had their food. First, we encountered a truly frightening looking waitress who took our order. When she finally returned with the food, my disappointment began. The chicken fried steak looked strange and was nestled in a slurry of bone-colored gravy. It was crummy. Peggy had a scramble with red potatoes and sausage but the sausage turned out to be slices of weiners, maybe left over from last night’s kiddy special. My hash browns were nominal; they looked like they were derived from potatoes but they were strangely tasteless. Prices were pretty reasonable until one remembers that the price should reflect the food quality. In that case, the place was a gyp.
Today we were able to make a second visit in four days to Mount St. Helens, which produced some inconvenient and devastating effects when it erupted in May, 1980. Our trip to St. Helens a few days ago (see September 1 entry) took us along the north and east side of St. Helens and the now-devastated Spirit Lake. Despite the low clouds obscuring the top 3000 feet of the volcano, it was still a magnificent drive through the mountains to the numerous overlooks where you can gaze at this monstrous stratovolcano. It is a bit less strato- since 1980 because the eruption blew 1300 feet off the top.
Today we approached from the west, driving up the Toutle River. From the Johnston Ridge Volcanic Observatory, our furthest destination, amazing views of the collapsed northern face, the crater, Spirit Lake and the remarkable devastation remaining from the eruption can be seen. Massive areas that used to be canyons were filled with millions of tons of exploded rock and ash, completely revising the old terrain. Ash deposits hundreds of feet deep have been cut by glacial melt and rain flows, changing the layouts of entire rivers, including the Toutle. The Observatory, despite being many miles from the volcano, is surrounded with the effects of the scouring action of blasted rock passing over the landscape at 300 miles per hour for more than 3 minutes. The soil is gone from large sections of terrain, exposing the bedrock beneath. All the windfall timber leveled by the blast points in the same direction. Nothing of the old pre-eruption terrain exists anymore. It must have been a big wallop. Very few folks in the area survived the eruption.
After a few hours of enjoying the fantastic views of the volcano and surrounding, mixed-up country, we headed back to Silver Creek and our RV spot at Paradise. Not too much later, we left the trailer and headed north to South Sound Speedway for an evening of mishap-filled stock car racing. The evening was filled with much crazy driving and numerous crashes but, by the time we left at 10:30, nobody had been killed.
We got a few pix around the mountain and you can see some of them if you click here

Yesterday I noted that our neighbor could be a bit strange. Last night our suspicions were validated. We spent a good part of the morning carefully avoiding contact with this fellow camper who I wrote might be a bit weird in yesterday’s entry. The neighbor is almost silent during the daylight hours, skulking around his trailer and campsite appearing to be looking for something to do. He really comes into his own at night, electing to make lots of racket during the dark hours instead. Much door slamming, cooler rearrangement, outside furniture reorganization, heated discussions with family and periodic releases of his asthmatic, wheezing dog for coughing fits fill his nights. By 1:00 AM, I was considering drastic action to silence the cacophony but cooler heads prevailed and I was left with merely being amused at the amount of noise one camper could make during the park’s posted “quiet hours.”
Today we were obliged to go the laundromat here at Paradise RV, one of the onerous tasks we face while traveling. We took all our dirty clothes down to the facility and spent a couple hours renewing our wardrobe. It was the usual boring stuff but I am fortunate to have a better half who is very good at processing our duds quickly considering the bulk of the task. My handicap with proper clothes folding techniques is a source of disgusted amusement for my spouse.
We returned for dinner to Lisa’s, where we had lunch yesterday. Tonight the big draw was prime rib. We ordered two of the special and soon Lisa returned with two excellent pieces of beef which were served alongside almost football-sized baked potatoes (with butter, bacon, cheese, onions AND sour cream), a bowl of salad and garlic bread, all for $16.50 a head. It was excellent food. Lisa’s Diner in Onanlaska is definitely worth the trip.

Today was a travel day. We gathered up all our stuff, crammed it into the proper hiding places, hooked the Barbarian Invader to Charlotte and took off for the dump station. Soon, we were on our way through the nightmare which is Seattle metropolitan area traffic. I don’t like repeating myself but in the case of Washington traffic, I will make an exception.
Many scary hazards were encountered as we worked our way through the maniac-filled alleged roadway system in our quest to go south. After an hour or so of abject horror, we made it to a point on I-5 south of Olympia where the traffic calmed down to Bedlam-like activity. Driving anywhere in the Seattle metropolitan area, which extends from Olympia to north of Everett, is a crazed journey through abrupt maneuvers, disappearing lanes, poor merging and outright lunacy by local drivers. There are no straight or level roads here. This portion of the world is exquisitely beautiful but traveling through it in a vehicle is an exercise in terror.
An hour after passing south of Olympia, we turned east on US-12 toward Silver Lake, WA. There we pulled into a Thousand Trails facility known as Paradise. We have stayed here before, in 2014. It is a pleasant campground with full hookups and even has some spots where a satellite antenna can be directed to the source of TV signals. Unfortunately, the good reception and the sewer hookups are not in the same place so we settled for a sewer hookup and set up the Invader for a four-day stay.
The RV spots are pretty close together here. Only after getting fully set up did we realize our neighbor was a bit bizarre. He had three very friendly dogs but one of them seems to have something like emphysema. Today the neighbor was alone but he has set up a veritable conference room’s worth of chairs so we expect some family to join him soon.
To avoid too much hobnobbing with the neighbor, we decided to go eat at a restaurant, something we do rarely because we enjoy our own cooking better than most other folk’s efforts. I had seen ads both on the internet and in Paradise RV park’s brochure about a nearby restaurant called Spiffy’s. I believed Spiffy’s to be immune from being lousy since it had a name like Spiffy’s. Peggy, however, had found an equally close diner called Lisa’s that had 5 stars on Yelp. We took off for Lisa’s.
In the middle of the tiny community of Onalaska we found Lisa’s Diner in a very small building on the main drag. We were greeted inside by Lisa herself who holds court in the tiny dining room. As usual, I ordered chicken fried steak and Peggy got the fish and chips special. The chicken fried steak was pretty good (although not as good as Dean’s, in Clackamas, Oregon) and Peggy’s fish and chips were great. Two big pieces of fish are served with a salad and the best hush puppies I have ever had. All other hush puppies I have encountered in the past, even those served down in the South, are crummy compared to the units here. Lisa served them with honey and the combination was delicious. Prices were very reasonable.
After lunch, Peggy drove me on a long, hard to describe trip through many parts of the Washington countryside. I am unable to tell exactly where we went, other than a town called Winlock where they had lots of statues of chickens, since Peggy does a lot of random turns while exploring and I had eaten some special chocolate candy a bit earlier in the day. How astute Washington voters are; recreational marijuana use is perfectly legal here and I would be remiss if I failed to take advantage of their reasonable laws while visiting the state.
We took a few pix while driving wherever we went after lunch and you can see some of them if you click here

At the south end of Washington State’s Cascades Range lies Mt. St. Helens, a recently taller stratovolcano, and the adjacent Spirit Lake. In 1980, St. Helens erupted, sending the entire northern face of this enormous mountain either up to around 60,000 feet or sideways and downhill into Spirit Lake. The shock wave from the blast thundered across the landscape on the mountain’s northeast side, blowing down a couple hundred square miles of timber. All the terrain facing the blast was scoured of life and pummeled with hot rock, sand and dust. Six to fourteen feet of ash fell from the enormous column of smoke and rock that spewed from the mountain for the next few days. 1300 feet of the top of the volcano was vaporized.
Millions of tons of rock and mud from the mountain and its almost instantly melted glaciers slid down the lower portion of the mountain with a large salient of goo sliding into the formerly scenic Spirit Lake. The mini-tsunamis created by the abrupt change in scenery sent lake waters up to scour the adjacent hillsides of timber and return the destroyed material into the lake. Bacteria worked its magic and the lake became a fetid swamp emitting carbon dioxide and other nasty gases into the environment, killing all life. A few years later, dilution from rains and glacial runoff allowed the lake to start recovering and by the time ten years had passed, the lake’s waters were again pristine. There is an enormous raft of decaying logs covering substantial amounts of the lake surface, bleached by more than 35 years of exposure.

We decided to go give this amazing place a sniff. We started east on Centralia Alpha Road until we hit WA-507 which continued mostly east. Eventually we encountered WA-12 at Morton. Again turning east we went to the village of Randal where we turned into the Gifford Pinchot National Forest on WA-131 to FR-25 to FR-99 into Mt. St. Helens National Monument. 10 or so miles down FR-99 brought us to the Windy Ridge Overlook. The volcano, or at least the bottom of it because today was cloudy, fills the horizon on one side and Spirit Lake fills the other. On the enormous slide between them, elk graze in the new growth that is just getting started on the surface of the slide. It is a colossal landscape.
The quality of the first 25 miles of road from our RV park to Randal is ordinary Washington highway; nominal. Once past Randal on 131, all bets are off. The road surface is terrible, even for Washington. Large sections of sunken grade try to pitch the unsuspecting into deep chasms along the road. Despite the dreadful road surfaces and widths, the scenery alongside WA-131, FR-25 and FR-99 is magnificent. Large expanses of timber blown down in 3 minutes of absolute shitstorm can be seen on some hillsides. All these partially rotted trees point the same direction. Flowers have regained their foothold here and are abundant and colorful. The extent of devastation caused by the eruption is truly impressive and plainly evident even though 36 years have elapsed since the blast.
FR-99 does not go through to anywhere so we were obliged to backtrack down the minefield-like road through the amazing scenery to get back to our park. The round trip is a bit over 100 miles from Chehalis and it is worth every minute required to get there and back.
We took a few photos during our drive through this gorgeous area. You can see some if you click here