Driving across the Yakima Indian Reservation, hands still sticky from gorging ourselves on the biggest peaches we had ever seen, and with the sun burning our necks through the open sun roof we breathed in deeply the heady scents of fruits and berries, ripe vines and recently cut corn fields. The car temperature gauge showed 93 degrees but it felt hotter. Switching from the hell-fire preachers on the car radio to 97.7 KCFM “Live from Dave’s Diner”, Louie Louie played us into Hood River on the Columbia River Gorge and we took the opportunity for a welcome beer and a steak at the only Mexican restaurant in town.
Our September road trip through the Pacific North West was supposed to be a cooling, refreshing fortnight to appreciate the early fall colours in the dense forests of Washington State and hike up some of America’s highest peaks – the guide book didn’t mention that parts of the state out towards Idaho were semi-desert.
This area is largely untroubled by international tourism, and visitors who fly in to Vancouver or Seattle are missing out on a varied and wondrous landscape of glacial peaks and parched lowlands, of alpine meadows, sparkling lakes and unique wildlife, all of which defines this part of North America.
By the end of two weeks in small-town America we had breezed through life on the road with little traffic, climbed mountain tops which left us breathless, traversed semi-desert which found us squinting into the heat haze, and driven through canyons with only bald eagles and elk for company. Although Washington is trying to reinvent itself from the ‘hometown’ values of the Apple State (for it produces much of the country’s fruit) to chic wine country to attract more visitors, many places welcomed us as the first Brits of the season.
We’d spent the whole day driving over the Lost Horse Plateau, a scene of shorn golden hills recently harvested of their cereal crops and occasional wine estates reclaimed from the dry mountain sides by ingenious irrigation and careful tending. Like a scene from Steven Spielberg’s Duel our only road companions were the fearsome Mack trucks, huge loggers forever threatening us in the rear view mirror; gathering speed from the steaming two-lane blacktop over miles of ruler-straight roads - the only thing to do was to pull over and wave them past because they weren’t braking for an Englishman in a rented Lincoln.
Notwithstanding the inspiring landscape, the Yakima Reservation is a dreary collection of non-descript towns, malls and, incongruously, high-rolling casinos, which were built after special dispensation for legal gambling was given to tribal lands in the late 1970s. With more than their fair share of poverty, crime, alcohol abuse and poor educational facilities, casinos seem to be the last thing these areas need.
We finally made it to the vast Columbia River thundering down from the melting glaciers higher up the valley – responsible for half the nation’s hydro-electric power - to follow the awesome construction that is the Columbia River Highway. The scenery is breathtaking from the vantage point of the river road; straddling the mile-wide river and egged on by countless waterfalls on both the Washington and Oregon sides, the two roads and two railway lines race each other down the river’s course all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
The wind funnelling down between the two states over the water makes the resort town of Hood River a mecca for wind surfers, a sporting invention that saved the town from stasis in the 1980s. But the heat made us wish for the cooling breezes of the Cascades we had visited a week before, a range of mountains unfolding hundreds of miles down through Washington into Oregon and throwing up a string of volcanoes including Mount St Helens which blew her top in 1980 (losing 1300 feet from the peak) and devastated a vast forested area killing 57 people and millions of animals. But only America could turn a natural disaster into a compelling tourist destination. With explanations of the geological implications of the volcano and the process of regeneration the ‘Interpretive Center” was a fascinating glimpse into the destructive power of nature and what science has since learned.
Other mountain tops boast names such as Damnation Peak, Mount Despair and Mount Fury and are every bit as untamed as they sound. This is the high country that Jack Kerouac wrote about in his books The Dharma Bums and Desolation Angels after spending two months holed up in a remote shack on Desolation Peak as a fire spotter. Although Kerouac is best known for his seminal trans-American odyssey On the Road, his time spent on the mountain was a God-send for the environmental movement as it introduced many people to the wonders of the unspoilt American countryside and the need to protect a great natural resource. The one-room shack is still a site of literary pilgrimage.
“I went out in my alpine yard and there it was … hundreds of miles of pure snow-covered rocks and virgin lakes and high timber,” he wrote in The Dharma Bums. “Below, instead of the world, I saw a sea of marshmallow clouds …” Thanks to environmentalists who followed him, the view hasn’t changed since.
Next stop was the Mount Rainier National Park for three days of hiking on Washington’s highest peak. At 14,411 feet (4392 metres) the mountain stands as a snow-capped beacon for the state, although approached more closely, it hides behind a frustrating curtain of cloud. We braved fierce rain at 4500 feet and freezing snow at 5400 feet but were never rewarded with a sight of the icy peak close up. In fact I was more anxious to remember the park warden’s advice on what my response should be if I encountered a bear: “Black bears - fight back, grizzly bears - play dead”. Or was it the other way around?
After all that activity our bodies deserved some pampering but hotels can be an impersonal way to meet people while travelling so, for the most part, we sought out bed and breakfasts. Meeting the innkeepers in their own homes proved to be an entertaining highlight of the trip. We stayed at B&Bs that left us alone with stunning views, and others that seemed loathe to let us leave in the morning. One wouldn’t leave out any food for an early start, while another served a seven course breakfast of fresh fruit, baked apple, apple fritters, oatmeal with brown sugar and cream, eggs and pork chop or grilled trout with hash brown potatoes, biscuits (a kind of heavy scone), rounded off by a stack of buttermilk pancakes covered in maple syrup. ‘Good morning’ cocktails and champagne was extra.
Our favourite was a two-night stay at A Touch of Europe, set in the wine lands of the Yakima Valley, and which promised an evening meal – a welcome relief from cruising a strange town for sustenance. But the twee name of the house turned out to be no idle boast. Jim, of Italian descent, and Erica, who had not yet shaken off her East German accent, have transformed a unique Victorian mansion (now on the National Register of Historic Places) into the B&B of our dreams. Unashamedly luxurious, the house was stuffed with period fittings and furnishings, authentic wall coverings and an ambient calm, the effect on the visitor was one of immediate serenity and separation from the outside world. This clearly wasn’t just another B&B.
A swift visit to a local winery ensured a robust accompaniment to the main event - Erica’s sensational cooking. Jim – quiet, helpful, brimming with old-world charm – was the perfect foil for the ebullient Erica who exuded a love of life, and cooked that way. After eating some of the best food we have ever eaten in the US, Erica joined us and admitted that she is being feted by TV crews and food writers from around the world, although the house is still run exclusively by the couple who see it as their duty to provide an outpost of seriously good nosh among the ubiquitous fast food in this part of the world.
Memorable too was Mountain Meadows Inn on Mount Rainier, a mixture of ultra-laid back service (the once-sophisticated owners had gone decidedly native) and an ecological shrine. The bed (a room filled with curios of Native American culture) and breakfast (vegetable soufflé and French toast with cream anyone?) was more enjoyable than most. Proprietors Harry and Michelle saw themselves as protectors of the ecological faith as told by the man who many think started the movement – John Muir.
Muir, a Scot who moved to the US as a child in the 1840s, was the first person to call for action to protect the world’s wild places. He became a founding father of the conservation movement in his adopted homeland and devoted his life to safeguarding vulnerable landscapes for future generations.
Harry and Michelle became inspired by the conservationist and gave up their careers to move to the remote outpost to be closer to untamed nature, filling their house (or more accurately, museum) with first editions, letters and mementoes of Muir’s life and a library reflecting their sensitive appreciation of the contribution of the Native American – latterly known as First Nation peoples. The stop was a fascinating insight into a little-known side of Americana.
The final leg of the trip brought us over the border to Vancouver. There’s no denying the Pacific Rim city is a delight on the eye, but after the rugged country of the Cascades and the Columbia River Gorge the Canadian city seemed too tame by half. It is as if the city fathers read the text book on how to build a city – and they achieved it. How boring is that? The city had no edge and little excitement for us, unlike the best cities which seem to make it up as they go along. This is probably anathema to the many people who rate Vancouver the most beautiful city in the world. Doyenne of travel writers Jan Morris once said that Vancouver is ‘a city everyone would like to live in’ … but they don’t. She probably preferred the untamed Mount Fury and 97.7 live from Dave’s Diner, as I did.
