Seattle so far...

After a lengthy walk from the railway station I made it to City Hostel, it's a very big and well kept hostel and is surprisingly well situated (15 min walks away from the space needle and other attractions)

After I'd been for a shop and sorted out my room I immediately made for the harbour front and kerry park view, which is known as one of the best spots to see the whole of downtown Seattles skyline.

After I'd visited there and took a few pictures I made my way to the harbour front and had a look around, its just shops and restaurants really, not a huge deal but still quite a nice chilled out place.  The Olympic sculpture park was definitely worth a visit too.

I then had a look around the famous Pike street market but it was closing because I arrived there at about 5ish when all the stalls were packing up to leave.

13/05/2014

Today was incredibly unorganised but was surprisingly productive and most of all fun!

I randomly set off at 10ish and made my way to Pike street market and grabbed a coffee from the original Starbucks store and had a look around the various stalls and tat shops before I walked all the way to Smith tower.

Smith tower was Seattles first skyscraper opening on July 4th 1914.  At 522 feet it was the worlds fourth tallest building.  You can pay to go to the observation deck on the top floor, so I thought I'd give it a go.  Needless to say, from such a height and on a day with weather like this the view was spectacular.

Afterwards I went on an underground tour of Seattles forgotten street tunnels that once housed all of Seattles illegal activities such as "sewing" (prostitution), gambling, drinking (illegal during prohibition) and the opium dens.  The tour was as expected, smelly, dark and cold yet interesting!

I had been recommended to go to Bainbridge island for the day so I bought a return ticket and hopped on the ferry to explore over there for a couple of hours.  The town of Winslow (Bainbridges main town) is a rather uneventful place, its more of a shopping and residential area.  I plan on going to Bainbirdge again tomorrow but will be renting a bike in order to travel to a lake amd wildlife reserve on the other side of the island. 

Portland, Oregon pictures - day 2 (Mt St Hellens, fort vancouver, columbia gorge)

You can just see the top of Mt St Hellens, shame about the cloud

Gravestone of the old forest

At the Hummocks

Without the cloud the volcano would be visible, but i still thought this looked nice regardless.

Hudsons bay company flag at fort Vancouver

The actual fort itself

Columbia river gorge

And to top it all off, a heart attack in a bag.

Portland, Oregon pictures - day1

Portland markets - a hub of activity, a lot of the stalls sell food or hippy produce which sell stuff like homemade shampoo, rugs, bracelets you know, crap.

Freaky silver man

The Willamette river 

Portland, Columbia gorge and Mt St Hellens

I arrived in Portland at around 10ish by plane from San Jose and caught the next train to the centre of "The city of bridges" .  Riding the train gave me a brief but very engaging insight to the character of this really cool and modern city, cafes and independent coffee shops (yes that's right, not starbucks!!) line the streets along with art galleries, antique shops and book stores.

There is a huge mix of people from all over Oregon and the west coast here, attracted by Portlands brilliant economic opportunities but by also the booming tourism industry that generates a significant amount of the activity in this beautiful city.

One of the most famous attractions of Portland is the huge number of microbreweries (which I sadly cannot make use of), it is also very famous for its weekend markets and cool "hipster", "hippy" atmosphere.

Once I had made my way to the hostel I dumped my stuff and went on to explore the city.  I went to Powells bookstore, the biggest and most successful privately owned bookstore in the US where I bought "A clash of kings" by George Martin! 

Following on from that I basically wandered the markets and art galleries till it got dark.

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Today (11/05/2014) was an incredibly eventful day I have to say.  This morning Taylor (a good friend I had met in New Zealand who so happens to live in Portland) picked me up and we drove to Mt St Hellens along the highways that elegantly cut through the Oregon and Washington pine forests.

We got to Mt St Hellens at around 10ish and went to the visitor centre before going on a small hike around the Hummocks.  Unfortunately the Moutain was shrouded in cloud which was a bit disappointing. 

I did however see some relics of the 1980 eruption as twisted and blackened stumps covered the somewhat barren landscape.  Life is still finding its way back here though, the once ash covered plains beside the coneless volcano have now seen an explosion of life.  Pioneer species scatter the plains below and small to medium size trees are scattered along with wild plants.  There is a lot of bird life in the park and the elk have also returned which is encouraging as they can help spread seeds in their droppings.

We then grabbed lunch before driving to fort Vancouver.  We drove past it but were curious as to what it was because Taylor had never been there himself.  Fort Vancouver was once an important fort for the Hudsons Bay Company in the British Portland territory.  Archaeologists and historians have managed to build an accurate copy of fort Vancouver. 

The Hudsons bay company were once the most successful company in the world and was a major trader in the Americas.  Their main business was with the furs that north america had to offer, particularly beaver pelts that were used to make top hats in Europe.

The northwest of the USA and western Canada was a hotspot for high quality fur and these pelts and furs were sent all over the British empire and the rest of the world.

After the USA expanded westwards and American settlers claimed rights to the lands of Portland the Oregon treaty set the US–Canadian border at the 49th parallel north and Fort Vancouver found itself within American territory. Although the treaty ensured that the Hudson's Bay Company could continue to operate and had free access to navigate the Columbia, company operations were effectively stifled by the treaty and became unprofitable and were soon closed down.

After that Taylor took me to the Columbia river gorge for the views which were as expected, amazing.

We then went to Voodoo donuts where we bought some heart stoppingly good donuts (theyre a portland speciality so I couldnt refuse) 

Tomorrow I'm heading up to Seattle early in the morning and will around at around 12ish.

Leaving Menlo Park

I have to admit I am quite sad about leaving the San Francisco bay area.  It's such a vibrant and beautiful part of California and I very much look forwarrd to returning to Menlo Park in the future and working with the USGS again.

Now, however I am on my way back to the UK via the west coast of the USA, Vancouver, Calgary and New York.  This journey is going to take a month and I'll be stopping with my family in Canada on the way!

Currently sat in San Jose airport waiting for my flight to Portland, I hope it's not raining there! 

Yosemite day 2

On our second day in Yosemite we got up early and made our way to the visitor centre in curry village for recommendations from the staff for hikes we could do.  We were told to go to the Stanford point hike.

The hike itself was 5.7 miles long but was all uphill and was pretty exhausting, but we got through it and it was so worth it.  The view from Stanford point has to be one of the most beautiful things I've seen on this journey, the entire valley was in front of us and the weather was perfect so we could see for miles and miles.  We found some bear tracks!  But no bear, thankfully. 

Bear track!

We made it!

View from Stanford point

Yosemite day 1 - Vernal falls

Last week I suddenly decided to go to Yosemite from the 03/05/2014-04/05/2014 with my friends; becky, mehdi and Stella.

We'd all expressed how we wanted to go there and camp for the weekend and had been putting it off for a while, but we decided to do it that weekend as I am leaving this coming Saturday.

We booked a toyota prius and bought some cheap sleeping bags and a $40 4 man tent and hit the road on the morning of the 3rd.

It took us 3 hours to get to Yosemite, we quickly found out to our horror that all the campsites in Yosemite were either full or closed, so after asking a Yosemite employee for advice we decided to try the hetch hetchy campsite, just outside of the Park boundaries.

We set up camp and then made our way to the central Yosemite valley where we found a small half day hike we could do, the hike was up from the base of the valley to Vernal falls.

The walk took about 3 hours and was a gentle climb until we got the bottom of the falls where it quickly turned into a steep scramble up the hundreds of small and broken steps crowded with tourists.  In short, the walk was nice but not my cup of tea.  There were too many people for my liking it got a bit hairy at times on the steps as people would stop suddenly or come running down at us for some stupid reason, besides that the views from the top were beautiful and we got to see the full power of the waterfall.

We then made our way back down and drove back the campsite and enjoyed a very uncomfortable nights' sleep haha.

Our tent, not much but it was okay.

Our reliable and environmentally friendly Prius 

Me, Becky, Mehdi, and Stella with Yosemite valley in the background

Can just about see vernal falls in between the trees