We purchased a national parks admission pass called America the Beautiful, which allows free access to all the national parks for a year at the cost of $80. This will pay for itself in no time, given the abundance of national parks in the USA.
We started off at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon, a volcano which erupted thousands of years ago and caused the collapse of its tall peak, Mount Mazama. The crater then filled up with water from snow and rain, forming the deepest lake in the USA and perhaps the most pristine lake on earth. Whilst we have seen many beautiful lakes on this trip-we have never seen anything like the deep blue colour of Crater Lake and how clear it is. Due to several unique factors, mainly that the lake has no inlets or tributaries, the waters of Crater Lake are some of the purest in the world because of the absence of pollutants. Two islands are in Crater Lake: Wizard island formed from a cinder cone that erupted after Crater Lake began to fill with water, and the smaller Phantom Ship, which has seven trees living on it.

On day one, we drove around the rim of the crater-stopping at numerous viewpoints along the way and did a couple of short hikes. Everywhere we stopped had a different, stunning perspective of the Lake and its vivid colours. On day two, we hiked to the highest point in the national park, Mount Scott-where we were treated to a panoramic view of the whole Lake. We also hiked down to the Lake and dipped our toes in its cool water.

We then headed towards the Humboldt Redwoods national and state parks, home to the largest remaining old growth redwood forest in the world. On the way, we stopped at Crescent City where we had decided to free camp for the night in Walmart`s car park. Well, what a barrel of laughs that was! We arrived late after having our tea in a scenic lay-by where we met James, a fellow Brit who now lives in California who loves landys! He spotted Ruby and pulled over and we had a great chat about landys, travel etc. When we arrived at Walmart at about 8.30pm, we were followed in by 3 police cars who began searching the bushes next to the car park with flash lights! Shortly afterwards, as we left the store-the security guards were chasing a couple of shop lifters. We hesitantly set up the roof tent and fell asleep. We were only awoken twice in the night-once by a female screaming at a car as it screeched away " don`t leave me here" and another time by another alleged shoplifter shouting at the security guards! Bleary eyed at 6.30 am the next morning-we wound down the roof tent and made us of Walmart`s clean bathrooms and good wifi!

Humboldt state park was simply breathtaking for the sheer size of the trees.  The park is famed for its coast redwoods, many of which grow to over 300 feet (91 m) in height. Over 100 of the 137 known trees over 350 feet (110 m) tall—all coast redwoods—occur in Humboldt Redwoods State Park. It is home to the 4th-tallest measured living redwood, Stratosphere Giant, which was measured at 112.94 metres (370.5 ft) in 2004. Stratosphere Giant was the tallest known living redwood until the discovery of three taller trees in Redwood National Park: the tallest, Hyperion, measuring 115.55 metres (379.1 ft) in September 2006.
Before the discovery of Hyperion, the tallest redwood ever measured was the Dyerville Giant, also in Humboldt Redwoods State Park. It was 113.4 metres (372 ft) high when it fell in March 1991. It was estimated to be 1,600 years old. The Dyerville Giant can be seen on Founders Grove Nature Trail, which honors the creators of Save-the-Redwoods League. Also in this grove is Founders Tree, which is 346 feet (105 m) tall with circumference of 40 feet (12 m).  As we headed down to the Redwood National park-we saw all of these trees and did some hikes among them. We visited Fern Canyon, a location for the film Jurassic Park 2:The Lost World, and wandered up the floor of the Canyon. The walls were covered in wet moss and ferns and the canyon contained fallen trees, which we had to clamber over. We drove down the Avenue of Giants- the world famous scenic drive of 31 miles, driving by the most outstanding display of Redwood trees in the world. We stopped many times to take short walks through the forest and gazed upwards in awe at the height and girth of the trees. We had never seen anything like it before and it is one of our favourite places.

We were in Redwood State park for the total eclipse, and shared the 90% coverage with many others, all of us staring at the moon covering the sun, in awe, whilst wearing our protective glasses! This was  great experience surrounded by the majestic trees and watching nature at its very best. We also met a couple of lovely Aussies here-Jen and Pat-who are on vacation on the US.

After free camping at another casino for the night (we had  a little flutter!), we made our way to the famous Yosemite national park, where we camped outside the boundaries for 4 nights. We explored the park over a couple of days. Yosemite is internationally recognized for its granite cliffs, waterfalls, clear streams, giant sequoia groves, lakes, mountains, glaciers, and biological diversity. On day one, we caught the shuttle bus in the park, the length of Yosemite valley, doing some short walks along the way. At El Capitan, a vertical granite rock formation, that is one of the world`s favourite challenges for rock climbers. There are many climbing routes up the sheer granite face, all of them arduous and many requiring 2 or 3 nights sleeping  on the rock. We met a lovely couple of lads from the UK here, Joe and Sam, who were climbing it the next day. We loved meeting them as they were down to earth, funny and inspirational and we resolved to come back and watch them climb it through the telescopes that the park sets up. On night one of their climb, we received a message from them on Facebook about what they were having for tea on the side of a vertical rock face! We went into the park the next day and found them through the telescope, telling everybody at the bottom about them so they could all have a peak! We heard through Joe`s Dad that they reached the top on the 3rd day.

Just a little aside here about the wonderful American people we are meeting on a daily basis. They have such a genuine interest and curiosity about our car and our trip and we are stopped by them at least 3 or 4 times a day, as they ask about the car, our travels etc. This has been the most interest people in any country have shown so far, and we have really enjoyed chatting to people and sharing stories with them.

We left Yosemite to head towards Utah and our next workaway placement. We drove into a heat wave when we stopped in Bakersfield, the temperatures pushing 111 degrees!! We had a very hot night in the rooftent and got up early to head ever closer to Utah. That was until Ruby had other ideas! She decided to stop whilst trying to turn right at traffic lights and we were stranded in the middle of the road! A lovely lady, who must have been at least in her 60s, jumped out of her car and helped us to push the 3 tonnes Ruby to the side of the road!! We were amazed!

To cut a long story short-it is clear that Ruby wishes to seek fame and fortune in Los Angeles, as she has had her head turned by all the interest she has had in her! So we are driving her there to a mechanics tomorrow- and will probably leave her there whilst we do our month in Utah, hiring a car (air conditioned!!) to take us to Utah in time to start our work. Ruby, meanwhile, will be in LA, daaaarling, so watch out as she may be on a screen near you, sometime soon!
 
 

We left Seattle and headed to the Mount Rainier National Park, where we camped for 2 nights. Ascending to 14,410 feet above sea level, Mount Rainier stands as an icon in the Washington landscape. It is an active volcano, and the most glaciated peak in the U.S.A. (outside of Alaska). Subalpine wildflower meadows ring the icy volcano while ancient forest cloaks Mount Rainier’s lower slopes. On day 1 we visited an area of the park called Paradise and it was so beautiful, particularly the superb views of ice clad Mount Rainier and the meadows covered with a variety of colourful subalpine flowers. It was one of the prettiest places we had ever been. We did 2 short hikes here to admire the views and then hiked a short trail nearby called the Grove of the Patriots, where we walked through massive thousand year old trees. The following day we went to Sunrise, another area of the park where we took another couple of short hikes and saw the Mountain from a different angle.

Ruby is quite the attraction in the US, with numerous people approaching us to ask about her, admire her etc. The people have been brilliant-very friendly and curious. We met a lovely lady called Jo (Patti) who was hiking past our camp spot with a friend, we have since received such a kind email from her wishing us well on our trip and sharing some of her own history with us. One man kept walking past for a look at Ruby and when we stopped to talk, he said (in a deep southern drawl, imagine Forest Gump`s accent) " that`s about the sweetest car I ever did see"! Well I could swear that Ruby batted her headlamps at him in delight!

From Rainier, we made our way to Mount St Helens, another active volcano which erupted violently in 1980, with its north side collapsing and triggering a lateral blast that devastated 150 square miles and sent up an eruption column that reached the stratosphere. It also caused the largest landslide ever. We visited the Mount St Helen`s Forest learning centre, which showed a short film about the eruption and had some excellent displays about its impact and the regeneration work that has gone on since. We also visited Johnston ridge observatory, which had spectacular views of the volcano and surrounding area. It was so interesting to see how the once conical volcano, had a gaping space on the side where it blew and how the valleys have been shaped by the eruption.

We decided to head to Portland, the capital of the State of Oregon, as we had read about a land rover mechanics there and Ruby (the sweet thing!) was in need of some TLC, in particular we were leaking oil out of the rear wheel hub. We had met the great family in Alaska (Stacey, Ryun, Paton and Heath) on the cruise who lived in Oregon, so we messaged them and they immediately invited us to stay with them. We had such a great 2 nights with them, playing pool, listening to music and chatting away to them. Whilst we were there they told us about the Tillamook county fair, on the coast, which was due the following weekend. When Gav heard that there was a race at the fair that involved people racing Ford model T cars whilst holding a piglet under their arm, we were destined to go there!

We took Ruby into the wonderful PDX British garage and met Francis, the owner and his wife, Elsa. They showed us such tremendous kindness, taking us out for lunch, having such an interest in our trip and ultimately not charging us for the 4 or so hours of work they did on Ruby. We loved meeting such kind, interesting people and hope to see them some day on the road.

Off we went again, arranging to meet our Oregon family at the weekend. We headed for the Oregon coast and highway 101, one of the most scenic coastal roads in the US. We started out at Cannon beach, where we camped overnight next to the beach, earning us a telling off at 7am the following morning when a ranger pulled up and told us we should not have camped there! Cannon beach was a beautiful sandy beach, with dramatic shoreline rock formations, such as Haystacks, which is home to puffins and other birds. We visited it early in the morning at low tide, where you can walk right up to it and see the birds and the marine life in the rockpools. It was beautiful. We visited Ecola park, which had wonderful views of the beaches and rock formations and hiked into the forest which hugs the coastline. We drove the coastline on the way to the Tillamook cheese factory, stopping at the numerous viewpoints to see the sandy beaches, the forests, and the caves. At the cheese factory we tasted some of the lovely cheese (the best we have tasted this trip!) and their glorious ice cream!

We stopped by at Astoria, visiting the tower and the County jail, where part of the Goonies was filmed. It is  now a film museum and we spent a great hour in here, as you can act our short scenes from films that have been filmed in the area. We threw ourselves into this with gusto, earning a few looks from other customers, none who wanted to join in! We did scenes from The Shining, Point Break, Twilight  and Kindergarten Cop. The best was Twilight where Gav had a long wig and crown and I thought I was wearing a unicorn hat, which was actually a broken Viking hat!

We met some characters whilst camping in the RV park at Cannon beach. Bob was a lovely gentleman in his mid seventies, who would come and chat a few times a day and give us good advice on places to visit in the US. He made me smile when he asked me what I did for a living. When I told him I worked with people who got into trouble-he made a firing gun gesture and said "I'd shoot them all"."So you`re a liberal then Bob?! I teased him. He was a super gentleman in spite of our differences of opinion on certain matters, with a genuine curiosity in our trip.

The weekend dawned and it was time to reunite with our Oregon family to go to the Tillamook fair. We met them at their beach house (amazing terrace with sea views) and we headed off. We had a great day there, looking at the livestock, eating the best fried food (corn dogs and chips) and betting a couple of dollars on the horse racing. The highlight was undoubtedly the Pig n Ford world championship finals, which are world famous. It involved the driver collecting a piglet from a pen, cranking up their ford model T car and driving it around the arena,  swapping piglets each lap! The commentator said it is one of the most redneck things you will ever see! There was also a demolition derby which was equally as entertaining.

We spent the following day with the family, crabbing in their small boat and chilling out together on their wonderful balcony. In the evening, we played poker and had a fire with s`mores! We really hope to meet these guys again one day.

Saying goodbye on the Monday, we headed off again down the coast and spotted numerous grey whales close to the shore along the way. We camped at a casino overnight which offered free RV camping. We had a little flutter in the casino and made use of the free sodas and coffees, and the immaculate toilets! We stayed for one night in Sutherlin in an RV park and met a wonderful lady in her 70s who asked me where I was from. When I replied "England" she came over and, in all seriousness, asked me "what does the Queen think of Trump?!" she followed it up by saying "because I think he`s a Motherfuc...."! (you can guess the rest!). "I think that`s probably what the Queen thinks too" I spluttered! The RV park was originally the location of a drive in movie theatre and it still has its huge screen. The owners have invested in a huge projector and a sound system. we asked whether they were showing a film that night and they told us we could choose one! Gav chose the Goonies, as we had just passed through where it was filmed and we spent the evening on the grass, watching it on the big screen. It was brilliant!
Our next stop is the beautiful Crater Lake National Park, where we will spend a few days before heading towards Utah and our next workaway placement!
 
 

We camped for a couple of nights at Lake Ki, North of Seattle whilst we prepared for our cruise. We headed to a huge outlet park to buy some decent clothes to wear on the ship for "Gala nights"! I purchased a frock and Gav got some decent trousers-all at a massive discount so we were happy! After 14 months on the road-our clothes have a permanent grubbiness about them and we did not want to let the side down on the ship!

The day of the cruise dawned. We were heading off for 2 weeks down the inside passage of Alaska, on a mid size ship carrying about 1300 passengers. We parked Ruby at the car park on the docks and boarded the ship. It was massive compared to the Fram, our wonderful boat that took us to the Antarctic. There were 9 floors for passenger use, which contained a few restaurants,2 swimming pools, bars, lounges, shops, an art gallery, cinema and casino! Our room was lovely and had a big window with a sea view. It also had a comfy seating area and flat screen TV, which we became glued to every night watching American politics! It made us feel slightly better about British politics!

Well this cruise turned into the longest 2 weeks of our trip so far! Whist we loved Alaska and really enjoyed the wonderful staff and food aboard the ship, we soon realised the cruising life is not one for us! There was a huge emphasis on shopping and gambling and much less focus on the places and wildlife we would be seeing. We met a lot of lovely people on the ship and also met quite a lot that were rude and greedy. More of that later!

Gav and I were super excited on the first couple of days on the boat. By 9am on morning 1, we had: been to the gym (at 6am!!!); had breakfast and lost $10 in the casino! This was our first and last time in the casino and we were gobsmacked at people who seemed to be in the casino day and night, feeding the machines and tables. One man told us he would not care if the boat never stopped at ports-so he could play in the casino all the time!

Now to Alaska, the biggest state in the USA although one of the least populous. What a beautiful, wild and remote place. We sailed past miles and miles of rugged, mountainous coastline covered with thousands of fir trees, saw numerous whales blowing in the sea and floated past some spectacular glaciers. wildlife is in abundance here, bears, bald eagles, moose, elks, salmon, and many more. Our first stop was Ketchikan, a small Alaskan town, where we did our own walking tour using a great visitor`s map. The ship docked at the edge of town, so we literally got off and were in the middle of things. We visited the totem heritage centre, which holds a world renowned collection of original, unrestored totem poles from the 19th century. We also visited the very picturesque Creek Street, which was the red light district from 1902. More than 30 "bawdy" houses lined the creek over the years. With prohibition, some became speak easies; rowboats slipped in at night on a high tide and liquor rose through trap doors. Now the houses had been converted to small shops and cafes all built on wooden stilts over the creek.

Our next stop was Juneau, the capital of Alaska, but not possible to reach by road! It was a pretty, small City with the water on one side and mountains behind it. Juneau was originally inhabited by the Tlinglit  people who hunted and fished along its shores. It then became known for gold mining, and grew to be one of the most elaborate gold mining operations in the world. We took a tour here to the nearby Mendenhall glacier, Alaska`s most accessible glacier. We took a short walk to Mendenhall lake where a huge waterfall crashed down and we could also view the glacier. Alaska has 100,000 glaciers covering 28,000 square miles, equal to 5% of the state. Mendenhall glacier is one of the 38 large glaciers that flow from the 1,500 square mile expanse of snow and ice known as the Juneau ice field.  As the glacial ice accumulates seasonally, gravity pulls the ice down valleys. Slowly and steadily the glacier scours bedrock, grinding everything to powder or transporting huge boulders on its 13 mile path to Mendenhall Lake. Nearby, were short walking trails which led to salmon spawning grounds-a prime place to see bears! We saw none on this day-but did see massive red salmon flipping and jumping out of the water which was an incredible sight! We also saw a porcupine up a tree. We spotted a lot of electric wires and a TV camera. Mum had already told us that the BBC were going to filming wild Alaska live over a few days. We spotted a camera man checking the equipment so we rushed over to him, and told him that we were from England and loved the BBC! We had a little chat about the programme and he told us who the presenters were and where they were filming. It was due to go out from that spot live, the following evening in England. After the glacier, we returned to town and caught a cable car tram up Mount Roberts. The views from the top were great, of Juneau, Douglas island, Gastineau channel and the Chilkat mountains.

In addition to our landings, we had some days spent at sea. On these days, there were activities and talks which you could go to. It became very clear very soon that there was a huge focus on shopping, with a lot of talks about what to buy in various ports and what deals were on at the shops in the ship. I went to some of these talks and experienced some people pushing, in fact one lady pushed me to get to her seat earning a very English " excuse me"! People would also holler for free stuff and almost fight each other to get it as it was thrown into the audience. I also went to the art auctions, which I really enjoyed, as there was also a lot of info given about the art. We also got free champagne. The lovely waiter slipped and knocked a small amount of champagne over a woman sitting waiting for the auction. She jumped up shrieking, (excuse the language) " this is fucking shit" and ran out of the room! She returned a short while later and threw her clothes at one of the staff, demanding that they launder them for her! The other thing we struggled to understand was how much food people would order. We sat with different people every night for dinner and were perplexed when some people would order 2 main meals and 2 starters.  People would also tell us that we must send our food back if we did not like it and get something else or order 2 of something if we wanted to. There was a lot of excess and this did not feel right to us, even though we are both very fond of our food!

We did meet 2 wonderful sets of people. Jurgen and Sharon from Florida, and Jurgen told us wonderful stories from when he back packed around the world for a couple of years in his 20s (he is now in his mid 70s with the same sense of fun and adventure as ever!). Also a great family from Oregon, Stacey, Ryun and their 2 great boys-Heath and Payton. We had dinner with them a few times as they were such good company and they were also great dancers-all of them dancing every night in the nightclub!

We visited Icy strait point, where I went on my best wildlife watching trip in Alaska. I went on a grizzly bear watching tour, with a small group and guide. We drove to all of the areas where the grizzlies were known to frequent, in particular the rivers which were full of salmon, prime bear food. We saw a total of 8 grizzly bears and it was brilliant to see them in their natural habitat. We saw a mother with her 2 cubs ambling after her, and a number of other bears in the river hunting for salmon, whilst we observed from a bridge. One bear came under the bridge we were standing on and was only about 40 feet away at one stage.

Other highlights were Anchorage, where we visited the nearby glacier of Portage aboard a small boat and then went to the Alaska wildlife conservation centre, which provided spacious enclosures and care for its injured and orphaned animals including black and brown bears, wolves, moose, elks, etc. In Homer we spotted a wild moose feeding on the wetlands and a pair of bald eagles nesting. In Sitka, we visited a wonderful place for orphaned bears called the Fortress of the Bear. The 8 bears were housed in 2 acres of space and it was possible to view them close up. They were clearly happy, well looked after and stimulated-2 of them were swimming and playing in a large lake in the middle of their enclosure. The mission at the Fortress of the bear is to rescue orphaned bear cubs, bring them back to full health and provide them with a long enriched life. Other than here, Alaska has no bear rehabilitation programme in place so orphaned cubs are routinely shot for lack of an alternative. They would eventually like to see the law in Alaska change, so that the bear cubs can be released back into the wild, where they belong. We also visited the rapture recue centre which cares for injured eagles and other birds, releasing those which have been rehabilitated back into the wild.

Sitka was also interesting for its Russian style buildings-as Alaska was owned by the Russians until 1867 when the USA purchased it for just over 7 million dollars, the transfer taking place in Sitka.

We spent an afternoon scenic cruising on our ship to the Hubbard glacier, which was spectacular. Although we stopped within a mile of it-it felt really close and we could see and hear chunks of ice carving into the sea.
The last day of the cruise was spent in Victoria, on Vancouver island, a place we were familiar with from our 5 weeks on the island. We walked the harbour path and rejoiced that we would be free again the following day! "Get me off this sodding boat" said Jen much to Gav`s amusement!

We were delighted to disembark in Seattle and found a camp site on Bainbridge island, a ferry ride from the city centre. We caught the ferry for 2 days into the centre of town whilst we saw the sights. On day 1, we were hijacked by a couple of young lads who were trying to get people to attend a timeshare presentation. They were offering all sorts of incentives and we managed to get them to offer free tickets to all of the sights we had planned to see over the next few days! For this, we were whisked off by taxi to a posh hotel and introduced to our personal timeshare agent, Matt. Poor Matt. We were both very polite and listened intently to everything he had to say. We also answered his questions very honestly, so when he asked us both what our dream vacation would be, I answered honestly ,that I would love to travel to outer space. Well, he went a shade of grey, as I am not sure they are doing timeshares in space....yet! After 2 hours, the poor lad was sweating and bought in the big gun. He spent abut 2 minutes with us and realised we were not going to buy a time share in their luxury hotel chin, and sent us off with our free tickets!

We visited the Space needle and its superb viewing platform with views across Seattle and beyond, the amazing Chiully glass and gardens and did an underground tour of Seattle. My favourite place was free to enter: the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation which displayed in an interactive and entertaining way, the monumental good work they do around the world. One of their goals is to inspire others to make a difference and it this place really facilitated that. Armed with loads of leaflets, Jen marched off ready to try and change the world again!

We loved Seattle and now plan to head to the national parks of Mount Rainier and St Helens. We are so glad to be back in  Ruby!