I have owned my wagon since December (28th, I believe) of 2008. Since that time I have driven over 40,000 miles, mostly within Washington state (or just into Oregon or BC). About half of that has been commuting to work. Thankfully the new job is a bit closer, and I will likely be riding the bus and/or working from home more often, so the car won’t be seeing as much wear and tear as time goes on. My manufacturer warranty expired when the car passed 36,000 miles (that happened about 13 months after buying the car). I’m now on an extended warranty which appears to be very good, but I hope I never have to use it.

Anyway, I do have a few things planned for this summer, including a drive to the Spokane area for a big car cruise in the first part of May, and a group drive to Las Vegas in June for a car show there.

In the mean time, here’s one photo I took in February while driving around the Snohomish River Valley:

This is what I think I will do this morning (click for google map):

It is essentially double the normal trip, with about 2 hours of driving, and over 80 miles. The scenery is awesome out there, and the roads aren’t bad either. Less traffic is also a nice plus.

However, I wasn’t in the mood to take the boring route via I-5, so I began looking for a “detour”. I came up with this:

Google Maps estimates seven hours for the drive. It ended up taking me about 6.5 hours with a few quick stops. The route took me from I-90 & Snoqualmie Pass, to Canyon Rd. west of I-82/US-97 near Yakima, and then south on US-97 to Goldendale where I got off the highway and headed west, and then south on SR-142. Instead of crossing into Oregon from there I stayed in Washington and cruised along the Columbia using SR-14… I find it’s best to stay out of Oregon for as long as possible.

I had swapped the 18″ wheels out for the factory 16″ rims earlier that day… and then mounted the new Michelin Pilot Sport A/S Plus tires. They’re a high performance all-season tire that I’ll use through the winter months and likely for a few lapping sessions and autocrosses later in the year. This drive was a good excuse to ‘test’ the tires a little while enjoying the roads and avoiding large amounts of other cars.

Canyon Rd. near Yakima was awesome, and beautiful. That said, you apparently need to watch for cops as much as possible. I did pass a couple unmarked units toward the south end of the road before getting back on the main highway. The road is designated as SR-821 and it follows the Yakima River from I-90 to the southern part of Yakima.

from wikipedia:

US-97 is actually a rather nice stretch of road from Yakima to the Columbia Gorge, and without too much traffic (at least during this time of year). A little south of Toppenish I lost my Verizon data signal and lost my AT&T signal all together. It wasn’t until Goldendale that I got the AT&T signal back, maintaining full Edge service the whole way to the Gorge while my Verizon phone continued with a signal, but no data coverage. I’m still amazed at how well AT&T’s Edge covers random places in eastern WA.

Goldendale is mostly known for its observatory, as far as I’m concerned. The observatory is why I first passed through Goldendale (high school field trip). Now I mostly view it as a confluence of roads leading to cool and interesting places.

Some of my favorite roads at the moment are north of the Columbia Gorge, in between Goldendale and Trout Lake. There just a couple state highways and a few local roads connecting the communities in this region, all of which are worth driving. It can be a beautiful area; a sort of grassy plateau with amazing views of Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams, Mt. St. Helens, and sometimes Mt. Rainier.

I first ended up on the “Glenwood-Goldendale Rd” back in 2003 when my brother and I drove around eastern Washington in his ‘84 GTI. I was using my first digital camera back then and didn’t really know what I was doing, but I did capture this shot of Mt. Adams with a barn in the foreground (which I believe no longer exists).

The Glenwood Hwy is a very long road taking you from Goldendale to Glenwood and then to Trout Lake. You end up following the Klickitat River along an awesome canyon full of twisty turns and amazing views, before driving on some incredibly boring straight sections of road toward the end.

a shot of Mt. Adams near Glenwood from a drive I did in May..

This time I turned south fairly quickly after Goldendale onto SR-142. This road is, for the moment, my new favorite driving road. It’s a state highway which, for a few miles, narrows to about 1.5 lanes wide with no center line, a reduced amount of signs, and no real barrier to keep you from driving off the edge into the deep Klickitat River valley below. This tight canyon-following twisty road is awesome fun with almost no traffic (though from my experience you are nearly guaranteed to run across a deputy sheriff since there aren’t many roads in the area).

Once you get further down hill (heading south, toward the Columbia Gorge) you a dropped onto a more normal state highway with regular markings and barriers. The road eventually takes you more level with the river as the canyon widens out, passing you through a couple of towns along the way. The area is apparently known for its fishing, so the road can be a little more full of the tourist types in the warmer months.

The highway is a roughly 13 miles long, so it’s not quite as long as I’d like (this is where SR-112 comes in, along the Strait of Juan de Fuca), but I believe it’s still a really special section of road.

You eventually reach the Columbia Gorge at the town of Lyle, where I turned west toward Vancouver and Portland. I much prefer taking SR-14 rather than I-84 on the Oregon side (even though this choice can add an extra 20 – 40 minutes to the trip). However, the last couple of times I’ve traveled this highway I have taken a few quick detours back up into the hills above the gorge. This time I only took the “Lyle White Salmon Rd”, which is designated as an “old hwy” on a few signs. It’s an immediate turn-off once you cross the Klickitat River from Lyle, and it takes you back up into the hills a bit so you can see Mt. Hood across the river on a clear day. The sun was just setting for me on this drive, so I stopped over “Rowland Lake” (just a section of the river cut off by SR-14) and took this pano:

There are a few more fun (and relatively curvy) side roads like this farther west as you drive closer to Vancouver, but it was getting dark quickly so I ended up staying on the main highway for the rest of the trip. SR-14 is a beautiful piece of road in every way, but it’s mostly just two lanes with few passing areas and way too many cars. The drive gets a bit boring, so I just used this part to relax after the fun trip down.

Nearly seven hours, 400 miles, and 34mpg after I started I arrived in Portland, having thoroughly tested and broken in my tires (and boosted my adrenaline level a little). If it hasn’t been made clear already those tires are awesome in the wet, and I have since confirmed that they’re pretty freakin’ good in the dry as well. They cost me a lot of money but were well worth the purchase for the versatility and longevity (compared to other similar options).

And the roads weren’t too bad either…

Google Maps link when you click on the image.

The part that really bothers me about that map so far is highway 395. Every time I’ve been on 395 I could swear the engineers attempted to find the most boring way to drive through an area. There are often no passing zones, speed limits are too low, roads are too straight, and there are too many cars. I’m sure I’ll have to modify this route quite a bit to avoid some of the more crowded and boring stretches of road, but it will likely be worth it.

So far Google tells me this route is nearly 1500 miles and 35 hours of driving. I’m up for it..

Why follow roads that use 2.5 hours of your time when you can use roads that use 7 hours of your time?

Am I crazy?

The big question then presents itself: Should I drive to Montreal and back in my own car, or should I fly to Montreal and then rent a car for the few days I’m there. Wanting a car to drive around in while in Montreal is not a question. I definitely want a car while I’m there. It would definitely be cheaper to drive there and back (diesel is awesome like that) than to fly round-trip, however I would obviously save time, save paid-time-off hours from work, and save the wear-and-tear on my car.

However, I have been wanting to make a cross-country road trip since I got this car, and this would be a great opportunity to do so. That said, I’ve already seen a majority of the country along the preferred route (mostly I-90, before turning north). I could drive straight up into Canada and then head east from there, but this path would add time, miles, and cost to the overall trip very quickly.

Another option is to rent a car, one-way, to drive to Montreal, and then fly on-way back home. To me this seems the most practical option, but it is also the most expensive by far. All of the car rental quotes I have seen for such a plan would be astronomically high, and the single plane ticket would be higher than two for the round-trip as well. With these things in mind I have given up on this possibility.

I think I would prefer driving over and back if possible. The biggest negatives are the wear on the car and the extra time away from work. I can try to make the drives as quickly as possible, but that sort of defeats the purpose of a cross-country road trip for me. So, in the end, if I do decide to drive both ways I will need to take off around 5 – 7 days of work, similar to the time I used while in Germany this year. That is nearly half of my available time off for the whole year, so I will need to consider this choice carefully.

The least fun option, but still the cheapest, is simply to fly both to and from Montreal. I would only need a few days off from work, I would avoid putting the six or seven thousand extra miles on my car, and I could completely avoid the monotony that is driving through parts of Montana and the Dakotas.

The more I think about this the more I move toward the ’safe’ choice of simply flying both ways. It isn’t too much more expensive than driving and it avoids a lot of other ‘issues’ involved in driving across the United States.

I would certainly still thoroughly enjoy my time in Montreal, and I might even be able to squeeze some sight-seeing in when not enjoying the grand prix weekend events. Then the only concern is the large expense required to properly enjoy one’s first F1 Grand Prix weekend.

You can count on updates as June grows closer.

It was a very long day. I had already seen everything on my trip at least once, and I had been to some areas three times. But the point of the day was to get out, enjoy some awesome roads, and to spend some time with my brother, showing him part of the state he hadn’t ever seen.

We left the Seattle area by around 9am on Saturday and headed south toward Olympia and hwy 101. We were both anxious to get off of I-5 and away from the mass of Saturday morning traffic. We both enjoy driving and find it quite relaxing as long as there isn’t much traffic around. Large amounts of traffic, however, make me a little stressed. Once on 101 things calmed down and we started to enjoy the trip, feeling like we were getting somewhere.

Instead of making the boring and slow trip into Aberdeen on SR-12, we left the highway at Montesano, dropped south on 107, and then got off on Blue Slough Rd before joining back up with 101 and making the slow trek through Aberdeen and Hoquiam. My brother had never been north of Grays Harbor, so once we left Hoquiam is was all new. We left behind what most people would call ‘civilization’ at that point and made our way toward Lake Quinalt. The weather was mostly dry, but clouded over.

We stopped quickly to take in the view from the side of the lake before driving a little deeper into the hills to check out a sweet waterfall where I’ve taken some of my more popular photos.

I shouldn’t forget to mention that along the way is the world’s largest Spruce tree. It’s an ancient Sitka Spruce sitting on the side of Lake Quinalt. Even when seeing it in person it’s difficult to grasp the immensity of this beast until you see a person standing at its feet. The other photos I show below illustrate what the surrounding area is like, as we were rather deep into the Olympic Mountain foothills. It’s a beautiful area. Access to the Quinalt Rain Forest can also be had from this part of the lake.

We quickly turned around back toward 101 after the waterfall and continued north toward the Pacific coastal section of Olympic National Park. Hwy 101 follows the coast only for about 10 miles in the park before turning back inland. There are a few beach access areas along the way, with the most popular one being Ruby Beach. This is where Washington’s sea stacks start to appear, so it’s definitely an amazing place to see.

We were only a couple of hours away from sunset at this time, and we still wanted to spend some time make it to the Hall of Mosses at the Hoh Rain Forest, so after spending a few minutes taking in the sound and feeling of the ocean’s waves coming in around us, we drove further north and back toward the main part of Olympic National Park. We made a very quick stop at the “big cedar”. This is far from being the “largest” of anything around, but the Pacific Northwest does house the largest red cedars in the world, so this tree is still simply huge. The “big cedar” in this case is actually an ancient nurse stump which is now supporting at least eight other trees. This is another situation where you need to be standing right under the tree to understand the true size of this thing.

You first cross the Hoh River before turning off onto the Upper Hoh Road toward the rain forest. It’s an awesome road that follows the river through what is mostly state forest land. Large patches of the road have been completely rebuilt after storms from a couple of years ago, and the ranger we met at the visitor’s center reminded us that the road may not be there after this next week due to large incoming storms. The wind and rain that hits our coast is a major hazard. On Saturday, however, the weather was cold, but dry. We crossed into the national park, paid our fee, and headed toward the Hall of Mosses. There is a lot of explore at the Hoh Rain Forest, with several extensive trails making there way through the hills, but if you just want a quick glimpse of this amazing area then the Hall of Mosses is for you. It’s a roughly .75 mile trail across a stream from the visitor’s center parking lot, with occasional interpretive signs along the way. You cross this stream, where spawning salmon supposedly exist (never saw any) and then make a short hike up the hill to a much older portion of the forest. The age of this area is immediately apparent, with downed trees everywhere and moss hanging far down off of the tree limbs. Everywhere you go nurse logs harbor trees that are themselves hundreds of years old. This is a truly amazing area that I fear can only be properly understood when seen in person. That said, I did take several photos the last time I was there which I hope convey some of what I saw.

By the time we headed back toward 101 the sun was setting. It was dark when we rolled into Forks looking for some food. The town was once a sleepy logging town, known for its wet climate and its nearby state corrections center. Now it seems that the entire town exists to support Twilight movie fans. There are tourist stores that sell only Twilight movie items, and the restaurant we ate at (Pacific Pizza) had a special “Twilight Menu”. You have to be kidding me…

After topping off my wagon with diesel we escaped the town with our lives, keeping our eyes out for the SR-113 sign. If it hadn’t already been dark, I would have happily made the 30 minute detour toward Neah Bay simply so I could enjoy the best road I’ve ever driven in the northwest. Sadly we were running out of time, forcing me to drive only the first half of SR-112 along the coast of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

It was raining most of the eastward trip back home. Add the pitch black darkness to that equation and the ultra-twisty roads weren’t very enjoyable at the end of our trip. I managed to enjoy what I could, but I will definitely need to make my back to this road later this year, before the snow arrives.

We made it to Port Angeles in good time and then continued along a very boring part of 101 before making the 9:20pm Edmonds-Kingston ferry just in time. The night was cold and breezy, but we still managed to check out the top deck on both the front and back of the boat before docking at the other side in Edmonds. One last stop beckoned however. We drove a little north to Henry’s Donuts in Mukilteo. One good snack later and I was dropping my brother off at his place in Lynnwood before making my way back home in Bothell.

All told, the car drove for over 12 hours and almost 500 miles. We averaged about 34mpg, including all of the fuel wasting twisty roads. I have nearly 29000 miles on that car and I’ve loved every minute of it. It’s proven to be the most versatile car I’ve ever owned, checking all of the boxes along the way (spacious, handles, fun, quick, practical, safe, fuel efficient, good looking, etc.).

And, uh.. I’ll get the rest of the Germany trip reports up sooner or later

We’ll make a few quick side trips on the way before stopping near Lake Quinalt to check out a waterfall. There are a couple of big trees to see along the way before making it out to Olympic National Park on the coast. We will probably stop at Ruby Beach to take a look at the sea stacks before heading back inland and driving to the Hoh Rain Forest visitor center. I’ll try to stop and talk to the German family that runs the cafe just outside the national park before turning north and driving back along the Strait of Juan de Fuca along some of the best roads in the world before taking a ferry back toward Seattle.

This trip is about a few things: the amazing roads, the amazing scenery, taking a few photos, and enjoying some time with my brother.

I also made a quick trip into BC the week after I arrived back from Germany, so I’ll be posting about that as well.

In the mean time, I’m making a trip out to the Olympic coast this weekend. I can’t wait.

In the mean time, I’m planning on driving to BC this weekend and making a big loop around the mountains, passing through Whistler.