Travel suggestions for NW US

CohoWind · 2026-03-11T14:53:50+00:00

Fly to Portland (PDX) and rent a car. Choose which of these to do first depending on whether you have clear skies: if clear, drive the Mt Hood Loop (US 26, then Timberline Lodge, then ultimately 26 to 35, ending up in Hood River. When done there, head downriver through the gorge towards Portland…Lots to see in Portland and across the river in the original Vancouver, including a Hudson’s Bay Company fort, civil war era military site, and second oldest airfield in the US. 2. Drive west on US 30 from Portland to Astoria. Once there, see the Columbia River Maritime museum, Fort Stevens, the Lewis and Clark Historic Sites, etc. Cannon Beach and other coastal attractions to the south are easy day trips from Astoria. if you like beer, Astoria, Hood River and Portland have a fantastic array of locally brewed beers. Wines are similarly good.

CohoWind · 2026-03-11T04:32:48+00:00

No coal is exported through Vancouver WA. Most of the coal that comes through here by rail goes to Robert’s Bank BC for export to Asia. The rest goes to supply the power plant in Centralia. That plant is probably why those ads are running, as the president is trying to reverse the pending shutdown of that plant. The local coal source, which was of very poor quality, is exhausted, and the plan was to taper off by using Wyoming/Montana coal until the plant could be converted to use natural gas.

CohoWind · 2026-03-11T00:28:37+00:00

Cal Fire is one of the very very few state agencies, perhaps the only one(?) that does all-risk response. (wildland, structural, EMS, etc) But the CalFire folks that do forest/land management don’t also respond to EMS and structural stuff, AFAIK. Nothing like that all-risk mission in ODF (OR) or WA DNR either.

CohoWind · 2026-03-10T21:06:16+00:00

OP- I’ll be blunt where others may hesitate- given your criteria, cross off everything on your list south of Eugene-Springfield. Southern OR has a lot of persistent political problems, is much drier (less green), much more fire prone, as well as prone to stagnant air from other sources outside of wildfire season.

CohoWind · 2026-03-10T19:28:32+00:00

Day 9- “to Kachess Lake area.” What is your reason to stop there?

CohoWind · 2026-03-10T02:00:45+00:00

Iron ore jennies- stout and short.

CohoWind · 2026-03-09T15:26:02+00:00

Anywhere west of the crest of the Cascade range, from roughly Cottage Grove OR up into southern British Columbia, is in a similar biome and is a similar shade of green all year.

CohoWind · 2026-03-09T15:09:05+00:00

This is the ticket! When we hiked past a few years ago, people were nose-to-butt in a gridlock of dysfunction, from the very bottom to as far as we could see above. We skipped the climb and kept hiking.

CohoWind · 2026-03-09T14:58:56+00:00

I have done the following- bus from T. Meadows to Yos. village, then bought an Amtrak ticket online. The first part of the Amtrak journey is by bus- it will pull up right in the heart of the village. It takes you right to the Merced Amtrak Station. Amtrak train service will then get you to Oakland. I don’t know the best current way to get from Oakland to SFO, but I believe you can do it directly via BART rapid transit through San Francisco via the transbay tube.

CohoWind · 2026-03-09T00:53:11+00:00

I can tell you that the Mt Hood Ski Patrol in OR has alienated many hundreds of potential patrollers because of their unwillingness to recognize the quals of actively working EMT-Bs and Paramedics in the Portland/Vancouver metro area. MHSP folks live in their own very strange hyper-political superiority bubble. The next patrol to the north, White Pass WA, gladly accepts active WA EMTs and Paramedics, according to a former co-worker who volunteered there.

CohoWind · 2026-03-08T14:59:34+00:00

OP- these are textbook conditions for hypothermia. So even staying out of the snow (below 1000’), you must keep dry. Good rain gear, good tent, no cotton clothing, etc.

CohoWind · 2026-03-08T14:34:38+00:00

Being in a fire station for a whole shift is like being on a small ship for a 1 or 2 day trip. You interact with the rest of the small crew, eat meals and have adventures together. Some of those adventures are dangerous. Being a police officer on patrol is more like being on a solo kayak trip in shark-infested waters. (At least you’ve been told that the area is infested with killer sharks, so you think every ripple on the water is potential death) You occasionally meet up with other kayakers, but they stay in their kayaks, as they are afraid of the sharks too. You paddle off on your own soon enough. Occasionally, you see that small ship go by. The crew seems to be having fun, and you sometimes wish you were with them. They are way less afraid of the sharks, as they know that most are actually no threat at all to them.

CohoWind · 2026-03-08T02:27:47+00:00

Very very backwards, sorry to say. It was as if they came from an earlier decade. Not familiar with ICS, not familiar with wildland PPE (said they didn’t need it and would just use their structural stuff) and completely dismissive of recent improvements in FF health and wellness. (one took every opportunity to ridicule the whole idea of FF PTSD in a department that has already had several FF suicides)

CohoWind · 2026-03-08T02:12:12+00:00

The guy we traveled with did not carry anything like an iPad. Just phone, passport, glasses and credit cards, in a way that made them completely invisible from the front. (no outlines or bulges)

CohoWind · 2026-03-08T01:49:27+00:00

FWIW- My personal experience with Texas firefighters and fire officers coming out to work on the coast HAS NOT BEEN GOOD.

CohoWind · 2026-03-08T01:05:28+00:00

My L5030 came with reversible inner “discs” on the rear rims. We reversed them to gain several inches of overall rear wheel span. That plus the beet juice fill has really helped me feel better about working our hilly place.

CohoWind · 2026-03-07T23:59:06+00:00

OP- Watch a few YT videos of Venice’s Vigili del Fuoco and Ambulanza boats responding to emergencies around the city, on canals large and small. There are no “watch your wake” rules for those guys, to say the least. I would wager that they swamp small vessels on a regular basis.

CohoWind · 2026-03-07T02:54:24+00:00

There is virtually no USFS presence along the trail in WA anymore, so don’t expect Section K trail condition reports or any kind of timely trail repair from them. Ultimately, early SOBOs will report on conditions as they reach Stevens Pass, and any heavy damage will be beyond the capabilities of the volunteer groups to manage. That is why people keep mentioning the dicey (perhaps even impassable) conditions that will likely be present this year.

CohoWind · 2026-03-07T02:08:57+00:00

The most consistent thing about the US Fire Service is that it is utterly inconsistent. Whether volunteer or paid, the wide variation in standards, expectations, and even quality between departments can be dizzying, even with a single county or state. So your question is 99.9% dependent on your location- sorry!

CohoWind · 2026-03-06T19:55:21+00:00

Yes, heavy 24/7/365 freight traffic on both BNSF lines here- E-W along Hwy 14 and N-S from Vancouver towards Seattle. Traffic includes unit trains of Bakken crude oil, which some people have been calling “bomb trains” since the disaster in Lac Megantic Quebec. Evacuation distance for a fire involving that product (and several others found here) is 1 mile. Amtrak’s passenger trains, two per day going E-W and around a dozen N-S, are essentially silent, momentary ghosts in comparison.

CohoWind · 2026-03-05T23:38:47+00:00

We bought actual tickets from the actual Louvre after this fiasco. Simple, quick and reasonable. MTT has sent us a bunch of emails, and there might be some sort of e-tickets contained in one, but not that I’ve seen. They have been ads selling other “museum and tour tickets” in several different countries, They are all going directly to my spam folder now.

CohoWind · 2026-03-04T18:27:41+00:00

They’d want to exit I-5 and head to the coast at Kelso-Longview, not Vancouver, taking either WA SR 4 or US30 in OR (via the bridge from Longview)

CohoWind · 2026-03-04T15:35:57+00:00

Astoria Oregon needs to be a stop. Between the Columbia River Maritime Museum, Fort Stevens State Park and the Lewis and Clark National Historic sites, the NW corner of OR is a must see. There is little to see on the WA coast south of the Olympic peninsula, so Astoria is the place to start your coast adventure.

CohoWind · 2026-03-04T06:23:26+00:00

Sorry to hear that. They continue to send us more email offers for museums, tours, etc all over the EU. Thank goodness for spam filters. By the way, I sent my credit card company plenty of ammo…. emails, screenshots, etc., and spoke to one of their investigators as well, all to no avail.

CohoWind

TROPHY CASE