Mudflaps and a Volcano

Moclips and Humptulips, Clatsop, Knappa. Even if Knappa didn't have a business called Fanny Tanners it'd be one of my favorite place names so far. Clatsop, too, has a special place in my heart, ever since I spied the Adopt-a-Highway sign stating that the section of highway we were about to traverse was sponsored by the Clatsop County Secular Humanist Society, which was a nice change from the predominantly church-related adopter list we'd previously noted.

We hit the 1000km mark for this trip* at what must have been the fourteenth or twenty-seventh Beaver Creek we've seen, not to mention Beaver Lakes, Beaver Roads, and towns called Beaver. Same goes for Bear and Elk. And Cougar, which is no longer quite as funny as it first was - apparently they're around and about, and if you've been out in the woods, they've seen you, even if you haven't seen them.

Made camp at the Sea Quest State Park, about a mile or so into the woods on the other side of the highway from the Mt St Helens Visitor Centre, which we visited post-eggy-burrito-breakfast** for info on the mountain upon whose shoulder we were perched. It was the 30th anniversary of the 1980 eruption a week ago, which is kind of cool. I remember the thing blowing its top (I would have been six, Janine a scrawny grizzly 3-month-old). We bought the Forest Service topo map of the area, then took the van up the northwestern mountain road for a look at the crater, which was entirely shrouded in cloud. The sights we did get to see were pretty cool, especially the beaver dam and the three pairs of cinnamon teal living on its lake.

We'd hoped to ride on the far side of the mountain*** but instead will be riding at Growler's Gulch, as recommended by the folks at Highlander Cycles, which is in nearby Longview, WA****, and is staffed by a pair of Scotts and a pair of Brians and a Janice. We spoke most to a Scott and to Dirt Brian (Road Brian bailed to do more interesting things once the story of how we sold our road bikes to pay for our mountain-biking trip came out), and they gave us sweet advice on both riding and camping, including hand-drawn maps of how to get to two local ride areas, neither of which was listed on the state mountain-biking coalition maps, and which together comprise over a hundred miles of XC-style singletrack. I haven't been so enamored of a Highlander since I was exposed to that German film series 15 or 20 years ago.

We decided to spend a second night at the same park for the first time, as a) it's quite nice, and b) the women's showers have hot water. Also contributing to our stay-put decision was the amount of effort we (Janine) put into rigging the tarpaulin above the tent and picnic table so that we'd wake warm and dry, and have somewhere comparatively not-drenched to cook/read/babble/eat delicious food/etc. Clever wife!







* = Vancouver Island trip plus noodling around Vancouver (drugstore and food runs, mainly) meant we left the house in North Vancouver having racked 995km onto the van's odometer

** = Hooray!

*** = Much-vaunted epic ride comprising Ape Canyon, The Plains of Abraham, and Windy Ridge as an out-and-back. Could do a loop using the Smiths Creek trail to return, but: Trail that follows a creek + The amount of rain we've had + Dire warnings of how easy it is to miss trail splits on that route + Finishing the ride with a 1300ft climb = not going that way. We`re planning to come back to do this ride at the other end of summer, either on the northward leg of this trip or on a separate mission

**** = Twin city of Rainier, OR. Separated by the Columbia River, which we`ve now crossed twice - into Oregon at Astoria, which was a really neat town, then back into Washington over the startlingly tall bridge between Rainier and Longview, across which we were followed by a white 1970s Mercury Cougar with zebra-patterned roof and mudflaps