Walla Walla Wine Country

We’ve been home 2 1/2 months, getting the house and yard back in order, some wedding planning and lots of projects, including Bob building a new shore-side deck, so it was time to take a break and have some fun.

Wednesday morning we loaded the car with Bob’s sister Lynn and her husband David, luggage and a cooler full of food and drinks, and headed east. Normally this time of year it’s still cool and cloudy in western Washington where we live, but hot and sunny on the other side of the Cascade Mountains in eastern Washington. Not so this year. Six hours after departing, we arrived in Walla Walla to 62 degrees and light rain.

Fortunately the rental house Lynn found, “Clara’s Cottage”, a 100-year-old Victorian 3-bedroom and 2-bath at a reasonable price and location, was comfortable, well furnished and well-provisioned.

Thursday we visited 3 wineries: L’Ecole 41, Northstar and Seven Hills Winery.  We enjoyed the tastings at all 3, and bought a couple cases of wine from the first two.

It was reminiscent of a trip the four of us took together 8 years ago to Napa Valley, and among other things, we were reminded that mostly our wine tastes and willingness to fork out big bucks for better wine are pretty restrained, so unlike a former colleague of Bob’s, we won’t be making 4 trips a year to Walla Walla for wine.

A staff member at L’Ecole 41 suggested we might enjoy an evening at Charles Smith Winery where dinner would be served that night by students of the Wine Country Culinary Institute and live blues music would be played. So we did! The crowd was small, some of the food was great (other was mediocre) and we enjoyed the music and people-watching for a couple hours.

Friday found us driving through the Palouse, a beautiful region of tall rolling hills and fields with big sky and layered colors and views.

A stop in Waitsburg at the General Mercantile Store and then at the Mace Meadery in Dayton filled our morning.

Not all of us knew that Mead is a type of wine made using honey as the base ingredient instead of grapes. We tried a tasting and were not won over, though it was interesting and educational.

Next up was a stop at Monteillet Fromagerie, a farm run by a middle-aged married couple who raise goats and sheep, milk them, and make artisanal cheeses of an astounding variety.

We sat in the tasting room for an hour being served by Joan and discovering lots of things we didn’t know about cheese-making. The farm was pretty and the goats were interested in the visitors, though we were kept outside the fence.

A two-hour drive led us to a non-descript motel in Sunnyside, Washington headed partway home, but it was situated on the edge of a vineyard, so we outside for a couple of hours with a glass of wine and enjoying the sun and views.

All in all, a pleasant trip, wrapped up with a slower, scenic drive through Mount Rainier National Park, crossing White Pass and Chinook Pass with spectacular views of “The Mountain”, much more close-up than we see from home. 

Now that we’ve crafted a write-up suitable for the Chamber of Commerce to post on their website, we’ll add a postscript.  Nowhere during our visit to Walla Walla was there any mention of the only thing Walla Walla was known for during most of Bob’s growing up years. (It was not wine!)

One thousand nine hundred and sixty eight prisoners call Walla Walla Penitentiary “home”.  There are no directional signs point the way to the prison, and the bus route serving it is called the Pine Street Loop.  You get the clear impression that folks do NOT want to distract you from your wine tour by noting the presence of this facility.

Back on the Water

Days on cruise:  2

Distance traveled:  86 statute miles

Travel time: 7 hours, 45 minutes (over 2 days)

Perfect weather cropped up Tuesday and Wednesday: sunny, high temp of 78, light wind. So we took a break from projects and chores at home and headed out on Always Ahead, our 27-foot Regal Express cruiser, a very different boat from Next To Me, the 42-foot Jefferson on which we traveled 7,000 miles over 15 months recently.

We cruised slowly past the community of Salmon Beach (above), a cluster of 80 homes built on stilts over the water, to see what changes occurred in the past two years. Our new “Gold Loopers” burgee was flying, and we laughed to think that if anyone knew what it was, they might think we did our Loop in THIS boat!

Despite the fact this boat can get up and go, we headed south at more-or-less trawler speed, having become accustomed to seeing the sights in a more relaxed mode.

It was a beautiful day with blue skies, calm water, snow-capped mountains including majestic Mt. Rainier (tallest mountain in the 48 contiguous United States at 14,411 feet), lots of marine life including sea lions, seals, otters, Dall’s porpoises, bald eagles, herons and more. This is all gorgeous and familiar boating territory to us.

Arriving at Jarrell Cove on Harstine Island 4 hours later, we tied up at the State Park dock and were the only boat there, a good reason to travel mid-week before kids are out of school and families begin their summer vacations.

Dinner found us grilling Alaskan Copper River Salmon on the barbecue, accompanied by a bottle of wine, and the days are so long this time of year we were able to read our books without turning on lights til after 9pm.

Wednesday morning was a bit cloudy and cooler, but still nice. The tide swung 14 feet from high to low, making the trip up to the campground restrooms like climbing a mountain from the floating dock to the fixed portion, seen above, 1 hour before low tide.

After taking advantage of being on a dock to scrub off the stuff growing at the waterline (our boat stays on a buoy in front of our house where this activity is hard to do) we meandered across the bay to Fair Harbor, (above) a favorite annual stop for fuel and to buy something nautical at the extremely nicely-stocked gift shop. After 7 years of stopping here, Cathryn has yet to leave without at least one, and often several, small purchases.

The trip home was interesting due to the huge 14-foot tidal swing from low to high, and the ensuing current, especially coming through The Narrows, above. Running the engine at 2300 rpm, our pace slowed to 3.4 mph bucking the strong current as we headed north, and it wasn’t until 6 miles later after rounding Point Defiance that our speed picked up to 11 mph, still at the same rpm!

Things we noticed about our boat on this trip: we missed having autopilot; we missed having twin engines when docking, even though the wind and current gave us no problems this trip; we missed having anywhere particularly comfortable to sit in a salon; the bed is fine but not as comfortable. Oh, we’re spoiled after living on a larger boat! What are the implications, you ask? We’ll report later when we know too.

So it was a good shake-down cruise to remind us how this boat works, what we need to bring back aboard to be fully provisioned, and how it feels. Great trip!

End of The Loop Blog

Days since our Loop was completed:  57

Days since we left the boat in Florida: 38

Days since we arrived home in Seattle:  32

Days since the sale of “Next To Me” closed:  19

A month ago we said we’d write a “Reflections on the Loop” post within a week, and we obviously failed to meet that deadline. But it’s been crazy busy. It’s amazing how much work it is to settle back into land-based life after being away on a boat for most of 15 months. And we flew to Texas for 4 days to attend Cathryn’s niece’s wedding April 20. And we had lots of questions to answer and paperwork to process to close on the sale of our Loop boat “Next To Me” to Jack and Sara on April 18, assisted by our boat broker Curtis Stokes. Jack and Sara have now been trained by Captains Chris and Alyse Caldwell for 3 days (as we were) and successfully, and happily too, we’re told, completed their first solo overnight journey. “Next To Me” is soon to be re-christened “Ithaka” and will begin her second Loop in January 2014.

After a month at home, we launched our boat “Always Ahead” this past Sunday, a beautiful 84-degree, sunny day in Seattle. She’d been sitting on her trailer for 18 months. Monday we spent the afternoon on the water re-discovering what it’s like to be on a 27-foot single engine boat, practicing docking (harder on a single screw with no thrusters) and enjoying the spectacular cruising grounds of Puget Sound.

So with a month to reflect on the Loop, how do we see it now that it’s in our rearview mirror? Observations include:

1.  The journey was more fun, interesting and challenging than anticipated, so exceeded our expectations on almost all levels. We knew we’d have steep learning curves in terms of boating, as we were somewhat novices when we began. We didn’t know how very much we’d learn about ourselves as individuals and a couple, and about U.S. and Canadian  history, and the degree to which various regions of  North America are culturally SO different from one another.

In some ways, various parts of our country now strike us as being as different from one another as if the U.S. were five countries in one, all speaking more or less, but not quite, the same language given the accents and colloquialisms that vary so tremendously. The differences between our Pacific Northwest culture and the South are in many ways larger than between the PNW and Ontario, for example.

2. It was harder to meet our “Co-Captain Objective” than we expected. When we began, Bob was way ahead of Cathryn on the overall knowledge and comfort curve. It took 3 months for Cathryn to get as comfortable driving and docking the boat as Bob, for example. Over time we learned we had some different strengths than we thought we had, different skills from each other, and different ideas about how some situations should be handled. Sometimes sorting out these differences was easy, and other times it was very, very hard. Bob turned out to have much better problem-solving and mechanical aptitude for what to do when things broke, which maybe he expected, but for some reason Cathryn thought she could learn to contribute to as an equal. That didn’t happen. And Cathryn turned out to be far more adept and comfortable driving and docking the boat than either of us expected.

We imagine boats that have one person functioning as Captain at all times may have it easier in some ways, but we’re still glad we had two of us who grew to be competent at most aspects of managing our boat and Loop experience, especially at times like our overnight Gulf of Mexico crossing. Had either of us had any life-threatening emergencies (medical, man overboard, or otherwise) it might have saved a life.

In some areas we had challenges sorting out how to handle certain activities. Eventually we took 1 of 3 approaches: we discussed it and agreed on a mutually acceptable approach; we agreed to disagree, but let each of us handle it our own way; or the toughest of all, one of us just “walked away” (there isn’t that far to walk on a 42’ boat) and let the other one do it the way they wanted.

3. We’ll never look at any waterway the same again. Now as we travel our world, any lake, river, ocean, gulf, inlet, bay or creek raises questions in our minds about depth, currents, navigability, point of origin and end, amenities available along its length, and much more. We understand each one is much more diverse and complex than we understood from boating in the Pacific Northwest.

Above is the Ashepoo-Coosaw Cut-Off, the first place we touched bottom, clogged a strainer with sand, and overheated an engine so it was out of commission for the rest of that day.  Later that afternoon, our windlass failed, locking our primary anchor to the deck, so we spent a sleepless night on our spare anchor and its’ then unknown length of rode in a reversing tide of 9 feet. Let’s just call that a learning experience.

Waterways are beyond scenic now, and are instead paths of travel and exploration, like highways, roads, and  trails that pose their own travel challenges and adventures, and we want to know and explore them.

We see the occasional freighter or gravel barge go by our home here on Colvos Passage near Seattle and see the results of international trade at the Ports of Seattle and Tacoma.

Above: The tow Chippewaw. We went through locks secured to this tug two mornings in a row. The Captain and crew couldn’t have been more helpful in speeding our passage.

But we now understand in ways we did not before, the  degree to which our economy benefits from the marine highway that our nation’s rivers represent.  Every time we see a news story about flooding or drought on the Illinois or Mississippi Rivers, we think about the huge volume of barge traffic affected and the work the Corps of Engineers must do to maintain this system.

4. Our everyday life at home mostly brings us into contact with a lot of people with whom we have a whole lot in common in terms of culture, socio-economic status, educational level, and to a large extent political and religious leanings. On this journey we found ourselves surrounded more often by people not “just like us” on those measures, but people who are at the further ends of several of these spectrums.

Political and religious beliefs are the most obvious example: our closest friends at the end of the Loop were folks who were either Canadians (socially very liberal, and not at all religious) or Southerners or Midwesterners who are politically conservative and religious, including people who consider themselves evangelicals. We had great conversations with folks at both ends of the continuum and deepened our understanding that most of us come to our beliefs as a result of our life experiences and where those naturally lead us.  We could write lots more on this topic, but won’t. Suffice it to say, we came home with a heightened understanding, we think, of why our country is so divided on so many issues, and how honest, smart, well-intentioned people come to hold such divergent views.

5. Living on a boat is much more fun and harder than we expected. We never had the problem of feeling the spaces were “too small” and we needed to get away from each other. Our surroundings were more beautiful, the lifestyle more freeing, and the peace and beauty of it more rewarding than we understood it would be.

We also eventually learned that having to think about battery and fuel management, waste tank pump-outs, garbage and water management (6 gallon hot water tank, 200 gallon fresh water tank), and how to get groceries, boat parts and prescriptions filled with no regular access to a car would not be a desirable way of life for us on a full-time, long-term basis. But Oh! Those stars at anchor at night, and those sunsets! We still have cruising in our future, and are already talking about what type of boat might work for us on the Inside Passage to Alaska in a couple of years.

6. We laughed often about the “norm” of American travel standards compared to the Loop travel standards. By that we mean that North Americans are accustomed to traveling 60 or 70 miles an hour and perhaps 200-600 miles per day when on a road trip, or 1,000 – 4,000 miles per day when flying. Traveling on the Loop at 8-10 miles per hour, the most fuel efficient speed, normally meant traveling 25-75 miles per day, only rarely more or less.  The goals and pace are more modest, and the scenery better absorbed at that speed than going faster. A blog excerpt below:

We also found that the “feel” of it can be equally tiring compared to long road trips, depending on weather and other conditions, and whether anything breaks or any misfortunes are encountered along the way. 

7. Things break a whole lot more often on a boat than they do in a house, a car or an airplane. Part of this is because of the high number of mechanical and electrical components required to make a boat go. But a lot of it is because of the difficult conditions under which a boat survives: it lives in water, and often it’s in highly corrosive salt water; in bad weather or big waves it gets battered around violently, much like a house does in an earthquake, high wind, tornado or hurricane.

And many Loopers are relative novice boaters who start their journeys without knowing their boats well, but gain skills and knowledge as they go along. So they (we included) make mistakes and cause problems for themselves.

8. Traveling the Loop strengthened our relationship. While we certainly had times we were grumpy or annoyed with each other, more often we found ourselves having a huge amount of fun together and with the friends we made along the way.

We also saw each other grow in skills and confidence, and found there was a great deal of new stuff to admire about each other. We each chose to stretch our limits, and we each pushed each other at times to grow and learn. This was good.

9. Finally, this was truly an adventure of a lifetime, and we wouldn’t trade the experience for anything! We feel very, very fortunate to have been able to do this trip, are glad we decided to do it before we got too old or unhealthy, and are pleased we’ll have our blog to re-read when we’re sitting in our rocking chairs on our deck in our really old age and can’t remember the details without some reference material. We’re already beginning to experience this phenomenon, as the Loop gets further in our rear view mirror.

For those of you anticipating doing the Loop someday, we say: Go For It!  To those of you who traveled it with us and became our friends, we say: We love you, value the time we spent with you, and hope to see you again.  To those family and friends back home who supported our journey or took care of lots of things at home for us, we say: Thank you, we love you, and we’re glad to be back home with you!

Loop By The Numbers

Days back home:   5
Tears shed:  none
We’ve been home 5 days and nights, and it’s been wildly busy, a mixture of fun and work. Saturday, friends Jim and Phebe (who spent a week with us in the Keys) dropped by for coffee. Later son Ryan, his fiancée Jaime and 4 members of their extended family came to visit for a few hours. That night we had dinner with Bob’s sister Lynn and her husband David (who spent a week with us on the Tennessee River).  But Bob still managed to unload 18 bins from the back of the truck into our workshop.
Sunday friend Hobie came for coffee, then daughter Mackenzie and son-in-law Matt arrived mid-day and stayed through dinner. We didn’t accomplish much work but had an awfully nice time.
Finally Monday and Tuesday we got a lot of stuff done: groceries, laundry, unpacking the rest of the truck, sorting items to put away, Cathryn starting our 2012 tax return and Bob pressure-washing our decks which looked really scuzzy after 15 months of neglect. Dinner Monday night at Jim and Phebe’s house with our group of 7 neighbors made us feel we really were settled in back home! It’s great to be here.

Our Loop by the Numbers:
Statute miles traveled:  6,282
Days on cruise:  304
Days boat moved:  166 (55%)
Days boat stayed in port:  138 (45%)
Distance moved on travel days, range:  0.3 – 174 miles
Typical distance moved on travel days: 20 – 60 miles
Average miles traveled on days moved:  38
Nights in marinas:  58%
Nights at anchor or on lock walls or free town walls: 42%
Gallons of fuel used: 3,949 (including 798 miles before and after our Loop)
Average Price Per Gallon: $4.25
The first 8 months of our Loop, from the time we left Fort Pierce, Florida until we left the boat in Mobile, Alabama to go home for six weeks over the holidays, we moved the boat more often and further. During that time, we were driven by the seasons, always needing to keep moving so we wouldn’t get stuck in Canada or the Great Lakes and have to leave the boat to winter over when the marinas and fuel docks close for the season in September. That’s a reality for all folks who plan to do the Loop in approximately one year.
The portion of the trip after the holidays, all in Florida, resulted in fewer and shorter days of travel for us, as it’s easy to be in that area from November to April before it’s time to move north again.
We would add that we don’t think there’s any such thing as a “normal” Loop trip, mirroring the experience of most Loopers. Each boat’s journey is unique, and statistics like those we’ve offered above would vary widely depending on whose stats you read. Some people travel at higher speeds, spend most nights in marinas (especially folks with dogs for whom anchoring out is more complicated), and make fewer stops, but stay in each place longer. Others travel more slowly, make more stops or take multiple years to complete their Loop, and anchor out much more often. Some people eat dinner at restaurants most nights, while others cook on board their boats most nights. Some people take lots of side trips off the main Loop route, others take none. That’s part of the beauty of doing the Loop: you can tailor it to fit your lifestyle, your boat, your budget and your schedule, and make it exactly the trip you want it to be! We have yet to meet a Looper who wasn’t pleased with the choices they made in all those categories.
Up next: Reflections on the Loop, promised sometime within the week . . . really!

Home Sweet Home

Days on cruise control:  6

Distance traveled:  589 miles

Travel time:  10 hours, 30 minutes

Total trip odometer:  3,425 statute miles

It’s not like anyone held a gun to our heads and forced us to do it this way, but once we left Fort Pierce, with the exception of our day in Denver with Adrienne and Justin, we were 100% focused on getting this road trip over with! No stops for National Parks, museums, scenic overlooks, nothing. We drove all day, every day for six days, only stopping to re-fuel or change drivers. As on Next To Me, we’re co-Captains on road trips, changing drivers every 2-3 hours. Bob is still the Navigator, figuring out our route and stopping points each night, and Cathryn is still Keeper-of-Contact-With-People-We-Love, making phone calls, writing emails and texting with lots of folks.

We pulled out of Mountain Home, ID at 7am and by 9am  crossed into Oregon, state #12. The scenery turned greener, and the highway more winding with steep ups and downs.

We gained an hour as we crossed into the Pacific Time zone, and mid-day entered our home state, Washington, state #13 for this journey.

Heavy rain and an accident on the last mountain pass added considerable delay, then Friday afternoon traffic near Seattle slowed our travel further.  Finally at 4:30 we pulled into our driveway, happy to have the road trip behind us.

Next To Me and the Great Loop feel a long way away. This weekend we’ll compile some “Loop By The Numbers” statistics for publication here, and finally our “Reflections on the Loop” thereafter. Text messages from crew on Blue Heron, Jackets II, Wind Song, Proud Lady, The Zone and Second Wind remind us there are lots of our Looper friends still out there enjoying this Grand Adventure, and we treasure our time with each of them and hope they continue to enjoy smooth sailing.

Day Five and Weary of This Road

Days on cruise control:  5

Distance traveled:  788 miles

Travel time: 11 hours, 15 minutes

Total trip odometer:  2,836 statute miles

This trip from Fort Pierce, Florida to our home in Olalla, Washington is about 800 miles shorter than the same one we made in January 2012 in the opposite direction. Then, because it was January, we didn’t want to risk driving over the Continental Divide in the dead of winter, so we went south on Interstate 5 from Seattle to Los Angeles, then east on Interstate 10 all the way to Florida, over 4,000 miles one way. We’re glad it’s shorter this time.

We pulled out of Denver at 7am in cool, mild weather. They had a huge blizzard in the mountains a week ago, so we were happy to have no concerns this week. A couple hours later we crossed into Wyoming, state #9 for this trip.

Wyoming went on for a LOOOOONG time! But at least the scenery included mountains, some snow in the distance, and a few wild animals including elk and deer, though we got no photos of either.

And then it was Utah, state #10 where the mountains and rocks, up close instead of big but distant like Wyoming, were pretty, . . . . .

. . . . followed three hours later by Idaho, State #11.  We planned to spend the night in Twin Falls, ID further east, but we want tomorrow to be a somewhat shorter day, so kept going long after we were tired and tempted to quit.

Finally we pulled into Mountain Home, Idaho (a little east of Boise) and called it a day.

Another Day Living In The Truck

Days on cruise control:  4

Distance traveled:  317 miles

Travel time: 5 hours, 15 minutes

Total trip odometer:  1,937 statute miles (approximately one third the distance of The Great Loop, done in 4 days instead of 4 months)

We don’t look exactly like the Joads and their piled-high truck from John Steinbeck’s “"Grapes of Wrath”, but we sort of imagine we look that way to others. We’ve had the truck four years, but bought the canopy shortly before we left for our Loop trip so we could fill it with the many boating items we already owned at home, and didn’t want to buy in Florida to outfit Next To Me. In back we have two bicycles, 8 bins of boat stuff including dishes, pots, pans, blankets and bed sheets, toolboxes, extra fenders we brought from home, and lots more.

The backseat has a rod across it, holding all our hanging clothes, a small cooler for lunch foods so we don’t have to stop for a mid-day meal, plus our camera and computer equipment and overnight bags we take into a motel each night. So it’s chock-a-block full, and Bob warns Cathryn it’s heavier in back than the front, so be prepared to go very slowly if we get into snow or icy weather, as the front wheels may not have much traction or weight on them. It’s 4-wheel drive, so that helps.

The rest of Kansas looked about like the first half: brown, flat and empty. The statewide population density must be pretty low. At one point it was 29 degrees outside and raining, a long way from Florida weather!

Finally: “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore!” Crossing into Colorado brings us to State #8 since moving off Next To Me.

Eastern Colorado looks a lot like Kansas, but we could tell we were still climbing to higher elevation.

We gained an hour as we moved into Mountain Time near the border, so arrived at our Denver motel shortly after noon. Our daughter Adrienne was able to get off work a little early, so we drove to Boulder where her fiancée Justin works at Rally Software.

We forgot to take a photo of “the kids” at the restaurant where we had dinner, so here’s a photo of Adrienne and Justin taken last Christmas when they visited us at home. We had Dungeness Crab for dinner one night, a local favorite which Justin enjoys catching with our crab pots when they visit in the summer months.

Tomorrow is a layover day in Denver: no truck driving!

The Long Slog: Day 3

Days on cruise:  3

Distance traveled:  614 miles

Travel time:  9 hours, 30 minutes

Total trip odometer:  1,618 statute miles

Not a lot to report today except that we made a great deal of progress in achieving our goal of arriving in Denver tomorrow afternoon. Barring a blizzard or a truck break down, we should be there mid-afternoon Tuesday.

We left Conway, Arkansas at 7:30am, found the western half of Arkansas to be much prettier than the eastern half, and crossed into State #6 since leaving Next To Me.

There’s not much to say about Oklahoma except that it’s largely flat, brown and full of oil drilling rigs.

And several hours later we entered State #7 of this trip.

We were slowly gaining elevation all day, and by late afternoon were cruising along just below 2000 feet. Temperatures near Wichita were 36 degrees with heavy rain, and the wind blew hard enough to justify the many wind farms we saw along the way.

So at 5:30 we pulled into Ellis, Kansas (anyone ever heard of it?) and checked into tonight’s motel.

We do want to thank our many blog readers who sent emails in the past few days telling us who you are, where you live, and why you’re reading our blog. It’s great fun for us to receive these introductions! For those of you actively planning or dreaming about doing The Loop, we invite you to send us a link to your blog when you get started, or to ask questions if you have any. We owe a considerable debt to the folks whose blogs we read, and the folks who answered our many questions as we planned for our Loop, so it’s time for Payback!