Washington is pretty much like Oregon. It rains in the west, snows in the east, and volcanoes in the south. The state has very little to offer historically. According to my ninth grade history teacher, Mr. Robert E. Lee Smith, the British were the first to explore the coast, the southernmost parts of which they named Deception Bay and Cape Disappointment. Lewis and Clark later landed there and, after journeying only nine miles, apparently confirmed the earlier assessment. Nevertheless, the Americans settled there and effectively ruined it for the British as a fur trading center when some of the women organized an animal rights group. The U.S. bought the territory and nothing much happened for a long time until a woman named Georgia Pacific discovered a revolutionary way to build houses using warped lumber. After that the state’s economy boomed until just recently when another women’s group discovered that timber harvesting was causing the owls to have spots. They started protesting by chaining themselves to the trees, making the work a lot more labor intensive since the protesters had to be hand-separated from the logs before processing. This sounds pretty entertaining to watch, but it’s not.
Washington is packed with parks. The unwitting tourist could easily squander his entire vacation by wandering from one to another trying to see it all or, as is the case along the coast, hoping the fog would lift so he could at least see where he parked his vehicle. The astute traveler, on the other hand, is aware that, with the exception of Mt. Rainier, there is no recognizable landmark in the entire state! On the one hand, the coastal forests are a dark, impenetrable mass of wet foliage. This means that you can take one picture right off the tarmac in Seattle and use it interchangeably for your slide shows for all of the Northwest, plus New Guinea and the Amazon. The Cascades, on the other hand, are a dark, impenetrable mass of dry foliage, meaning that one picture here will work for almost every place else except for the Gobi Desert and Nevada. Actually, you don’t even need to make the trip to Washington at all — it’s not exactly “on the way” to many places — since excellent slides of Mt. Rainier are available by mail. A legitimate picture will show a single, tall peak with snow on top. A picture which claims to be Mt. Rainier but shows areas of clear-cutting, which vaguely resembles psoriasis, means either that the picture is a fraud or that the timber industry recently threw a major party in our nation’s capital.
There are only three other notable things about Washington. One is Puget Sound, where you actually can take your date to see the submarine races. The second is apples, lots and lots of apples. Oddly, they don’t appear to have a major festival celebrating the apple and its importance to the state, although this probably won’t be the case for long since I sent them some suggestions. The highlight of the event as I conceived it would be the election of the king and queen, immediately after which all their clothes are taken away and they’re chased out of the Seattle Arboretum by William Tell, Sir Isaac Newton, and a herpetologist wearing white robes and a beard. The symbolism is epic. Finally, there’s Walla Walla. The city itself isn’t interesting, just the fact that somebody would name a town that way. There’s no literal translation for the Indian word that inspired it, but it means, roughly, “Hold the mayo.”
A quick fashion note here. As it rains daily in the coastal areas except during the dry season, August 6-7, the shower shoe is acceptable, even de rigueur, footwear for all social occasions. They’re available here in many stunning models, including pumps.
Two words of caution. If you plan on vacationing here, take along more than a smile for your umbrella. And, although it’s highly unlikely that a volcano will erupt in or near your campsite, it pays to be careful. Indications of real or potential danger include:
1) Empty crates in the area that are marked, “Seismographic Equipment.”
2) Grave markers made from crates marked, “Seismographic Equipment.”
3) You awake to find your RV reads “US Steel” where it used to read “Winnebago.”
4) You hear a continuous rumbling and eating won’t make it go away.
5) The Last Days of Pompeii heads the local best seller list.
Real Travel Adventures 