For Ritzer. For poorer.

The open road. The big sky.

It is a bright blue sky dotted with puffs of cloud. It’s about 90 degsF. We’re zooming east across Washington state through a gently undulating landscape.Out the window are golden acres of hay, hillsides of blue-green saltbush-like shrubs and lots of phone towers.

We need coffee.

At last, a truck strop.

Good grief, it is also a flyspeck town called Ritzville.

Look, and there is The Ritz, right there on the dusty roadside.

In we go.

Oh Ritz, poor Ritz. You have seen better days.

The Ritz has a neon sign in the window blinking “Open” but no sign of customers. There are some roadside fast food outlets. They look quiet, too.

We follow signs to the Historic District.

The houses are mixed, some abandoned and some tended. There’s a sleek golf course and a playground with kids hurtling down a water slide and into a pool.

Down the road it’s all very quiet. Almost deserted.

Beside a railway line stand massive yellow green silos.

There’s an utterly derelict building which proclaims itself as a Festival centre. Its use by date must have been half a century ago, so sway-backed and peeling it is.

I doubt it is worth restoring. A sight of grand days of the arts, once upon a time. One could weep. What happened?

The main street of this historic district has a quaint olde worlde charm. But it is all very, very quiet. Where are the people?

But, look at the grocery store. What a wonderful name for a shop. The last word in cheerful hope. Please come in. Someone?

We cruise around a little more. Ritzville is somewhere between a going concern and a ghost town.

Broad streets. Empty buildings. A Ritz Theatre? It is brightly painted.

It is definitely an agricultural rail town and it is out of season. Everyone, obviously, is at the little pool. There the little town sits beside the truck-rushing highway, its strident “Ritz” sign begging for attention from atop its giant pole.

If anyone stops, they will be able to buy fireworks. There’s a sort-of tent displaying July 4 fireworks with very patriotic names.

Artillery Combo Pack. First Strike. Undefeated. Heroes. Seal Team - Day Parachute. A lot of signs just say TNT. There’s a truck and a trailer beside the tent. The merchant must be having a snooze.

And, oh, yes. They certainly can get a coffee.

It turns out to be an excellent stop for coffee.

Incongruously, A tiny espresso stand sits there in the wilds of a deserted carpark. Inside, a vivacious young girl makes an excellent coffee in a neatly cluttered little world of muffins and cookies and coffee flavourings.

All alone in there, she is the hidden soul of unRitzy Ritzville.

From Seattle to Mars

And thus we turn to the east.

Seattle’s morning traffic on the major roads is a hell variously described as a pinch, a gridlock, bottleneck, a stopstart, a wait, a jam… so we head east on the back roads to avoid it..

Good move. How pretty. How enlightening. An intimate view of backwoods life in America.

From the land so densely crowded with towering trees we pass through fertile valleys where people are farming by hand. Yes, hand ploughs in American fields and groups of people at work planting - rice, it turns out..

Duval pops up, a quaint and inviting little touristy town. The road meanders on following what seems to be an old canal almost clogged with waterlilies out into swampy lands and more cultivated fields. It is rich volcanic soil here where the Cascade mountains make such a grand backdrop, their ridges making a horizon serrated with the spikes of pine trees.

Valleys of baby corn, strawberry fields, a town called Carnation, blueberry farms, hay, hay, hay, a flower farm, a Christmas tree farm, horses and a fast-moving river glinting in the sun. Snoquelmine Falls. We don’t stop although it seems a popular spot. We are on the clock today. We have a date..

.

A sweeping new road going by the proud name of “Better Way” reveals the latest thing in rural housing developments, very sophisticated with elaborate rock engineering tiers for houses up the grand old mountain..

.

Suddenly, dense traffic, lumbering trucks, red lights. It is the motorway junction. Route 90 East. We scoot onto it and join the flow. The road is rough and noisy but big and good after the back roads. It cuts through valleys with mountains towering on either side, some still with their rocky peaks capped by snow. Some slopes are almost vertical and feature ski lifts. Ski slopes and chalets come into view amid the mountain coverings of mighty trees..

Oh the trees. So many trees. Beautiful, but they can become claustrophobic.

I’m glad when we start to enter a rain shadow area where the trees are sparser and smaller..

.

Now the Cascades have given over to softer undulating hills which are covered in wind farms, huge mighty turbines..

Then the plains come with hay and cattle - and Trump signs..

America. The great open road at last..

Ironically, the landscape is a bit like that around Port Augusta. It looks like saltbush plains - until we come upon the great inland reclamation project with mile upon mile of giant circular crops irrigated by vast, slow-moving sprinkler arms. I’ve seen these crop circles from the air and wondered about them. Now my wonderment is that I am actually driving across that landscape between them. Corn, corn, corn - miles of corn, that great American staple..

.

Finally we reach Moses Lake which is a charming resort town set around a mighty inland lake. Here, my Brainstorms friend M R “Mars” McDonald is waiting for us with his art teacher friend, Geoff. We have never met but know each other over many years from life shared in that great online community founded by Howard Rheingold. Mars is an artist and his work is on show at the Moses Lake Museum and Art Centre.

I’ve loved it for years as he has shared it on Brainstorms and Facebook. But, in reality, his photo art somehow miraculously impregnated into perspex sheets, is so vivid it is almost 3-D. Thrilling.

Mars is an urban archeologist. His study is the land of posters, be they noticeboards, telegraph poles or dumpsters. He depicts the details of the layering of posters, the years of replacements, overlays, tear offs, staples… One happening eclipsing another over the years, Circuses, meetings, plays, concerts, politics… Marvellous colours and shapes, messages, images, textures…

The result it a semi-abstract of strange melancholia, a commentary on transience … The depth of field and the high focus of the images gives them new and different perspectives. It’s all pretty wonderful.

Mars walks me through the show.

It is extensive and the gallery, there in the civic building of Moses Lake, is sleek and versatile. The other art on show was of complementary high standard, a section of it wood sculptures some of which reiterates elements of Mars’s idiom.

Thereafter, Mars takes us all to lunch in a charming gourmet market and restaurant. We have rich, juicy, immense burgers, mine a reuben in burger form - naughty American food. Messy and delicious.

It has been a very special and rewarding meetup..

A tale of two cities

Canada.

Only a 10-minute wait at the border. My electronic visa seems to be invisibly there when the guard scans my passport. She asks why we’re visiting, where we’re staying and for how long and then waves us through.

Immediate differences:

The speed limit is in kilometres.

There is an absence of flags on the buildings.

HEDGES.

Houses have hedges.

Big time.

Oh, my. As we drive into Vancouver, it is just a symphony of hedges. Lovely, lush, coniferous hedges. Tight ones of lots of little perpendicular conifers. Fat ones of old, spreading conifers. Immensely tall ones, impeccably trimmed. This is the most hedge-proud city I have ever seen.

The suburban roads are leafy and salubrious.

There is a sense of an old and very comfortable community.

Into the CBD and, oh, that is a bit odd. Lots and lots of high-rise buildings which look the same.

A forest of greenish apartment buildings. Inner-city living. How odd that they look so similar.

Chinese immigrants are here in droves, says Bruce, especially from Hong Kong.

Attention drawn to the foot traffic and, yes, there is a large percentage of Chinese pedestrians.

Indians, too.

No African skin tones to be seen, though.

But the city streets are bustling. Neat, colourful, prosperous.

There are trams and buses and dense Friday afternoon traffic.

It’s an immediately likeable city.

But uh-oh. It has traffic issues, too. We find the traffic radio station and keep informed.

We are heading straight through the city to the north shore where we are booked into the Pinnacle on the Pier, a hotel set right beside the glorious, busy harbour with its cruise ships and cargo boats, tugs and fishing boats and even rafts of timber being chugged across the place. Did I mention seaplanes coming and going all day long? There is a harbour ferry service - so we can whisk in and out of Vancouver proper without having to fret about city parking.

This thing we do the next morning.

It is fabulously convenient. The ferries are capacious and run every 15 minutes. Our plan is to explore the city a bit, ending up in Chinatown for a visit to the Chinese Garden and lunch.

The streets of Vancouver are deserted.

Saturday morning. Everything is shut in this district called Gas Town.

It is weird.

Yesterday this had been the most bustling, prosperous and happening city in the world.

Today it is a wasteland.

And it is a scary wasteland.

The people who are out and about are derelicts, homeless, drug addicts.

There are men sleeping under rugs on the pavements. Lots of sleepers.

Some are hunched up with signs begging for money.

There are groups seeming quite busy with each other. We keep a distance.

There are some noisy ones. Some filthy ones. Some seem completely batshit mad.

No one actually approaches us but we keep our distance. I feel extremely unsettled.

Are these dark streets of lost souls all there is to Vancouver?

We find a little coffee shop and have a stunningly good macchiato while looking at the deros out the window. Apprehensively, we plot our path to Chinatown.

There are more and more street people out there as we walk.

I am comforted to see quite a few police out there, too.

Nonetheless, I notice a lot of zooming, loony, wild-eyed druggies among the busy groups of assorted vagrants. And I actually see drug deals going on, right there, in front of me.

There goes a poor, skinny, lank-haired prostitute in long black boots and little leather skirt, emerging from a grungy bin-filled back alley. She looks as if she is hurrying off with her takings to buy herself a hit.

Even as we reach Chinatown, just crossing the road, beside us arrives a ranting nutter with long bleached hair, yellow sneakers and yellow-striped rain jacket. He is gesticulating constantly and cursing. I shrink close to Bruce and scuttle across the road when the signal changes.

And we step into the Classical Chinese Garden of Dr Sun Yat-Sen.

Serenity. Timeless beauty. Sage philosophy. Aesthetic of ultimate finesse.

It’s as extreme as a contrast can get.

Ancient koi drift among water lilies in luscious green ponds. Maple trees and gingkoes, moss and bamboo…

We join the tour which is just staring. Kaz, a tiny Chinese man of indeterminate antiquity, heavily accented

and with his thick, glossy hair cut into a dramatic bob, regales us with the history and minutiae of the house and garden. We are in the China Maple Hall with its Nan wood pillars, the most precious and endangered wood in the world. A pair of shoes made of Nan would sell for a million dollars. True story, he says.

The courtyard’s wonderful pebble patterns are yin and yang. One of the Koi is called Madonna and she is 150 years old but the record longevity for Koi is 275. These fish are huge but you can’t tell their age by their size. It takes experts microscopically examining their scales for many months.

And thus, amid the absolute beauty of this haven of oriental civilization were our nerves unjangled and our minds nourished.

And, our appetites stimulated.

Out in Chinatown itself, we found a place where the queues told us it must be good. We were given a table and, as mountains of bamboo steamers went by, we had a simple and healthy lunch of beancurd and fish - fuel for returning through dero city to the safety of our hotel.

And it is like dropping into hell. The streets are worse. The loons, junkies, drunks and homeless seem to have multiplied. They ARE the city.

We scurry down a block or two to a street in which tramcars were running and we can see flower baskets on the light poles.

Turn the corner and, what?

Restaurants swarming with people. Tourist buses. Flocks of shoppers and visitors. Bustle and jostle. Smiling affluence. Souvenir shops with inflated prices. Art galleries.

Even the famous Vancouver steam clock being photographed en masse.

We dawdle in a guilty happiness of solvent people.

And then, sidestepping a few more sleeping bodies on the footpaths, take the ferry back to our bright, clean, salubrious “other” Vancouver on the north shore, feeling so sobered by the sad contrasts in status quo in this fine city that we need a drink.

Road Rage

Driving out of lovely Seattle. We’re stocked up with good driving music, Rad Trads and all. Yet I have this masochistic compulsion to be ear-bashed by American conservative radio jocks.

What’s my problem?

I guess I just love being gobsmacked.

So, we’re hissing along the multi-lane highway in the grey rain amid towering trucks and shonky lane-weavers. Everyone’s going too fast for the wet conditions. It’s tense driving.

Even the landscape is glum. Just endless dreary commercial outlets, retail which seems to go on for ever.

So I add insult to the misery.

The local AM radio.

The radio ads are for KeepAndBearArms.com

Today’s redneck seems to be Lars Larsen. But they all sound the same. Gravel-voiced and angry.

“The little left-wing boy Jews are the most brainwashed crazy people,” crackles the wireless.

“President Obama is President Oblivious.

“You know he uses weirdos from Harvard. Their days are numbered.”

“Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump…”

“Hillary supports Jihadis…”

“The CIA is our enemy. They’re traitors. They have sold out to radical Islam. They are trying to shut up the conservatives…"

Didn’t I hear this all before?

Oh, that must have been the last time I turned the radio on.

More ads:

ABH, the clothing brand for Christian warriors.

The last word in fashionable survivalist outfits from KatieArmor.com.

Special deal on steel products for your church.

Sometimes America can be overwhelmingly extreme.

What a contrast is this ranting madness to the erudite and accomplished Americans I know, to the vivid theatre people, writers, craftspeople…

Change the station and it is more hate radio under another name.

They dare to call it news radio but the news reports are peremptory.

Gotta get back to the tirade.

Luckily, the sun has come out.

The landscape has opened up as broad valleys of small working farms with barns. Rugged cinder cone mountains line the horizon. The world is lush and green.

Heavens above, and there is a HOUSE ahead of us on the road.

Two sections of a new wooden home - cut right down the middle - on two huge trailers, with advance and rear cars with flashing lights. All of them going 70 mph, which is about 115kph - and driven by women.

I take snaps out the window.

There are signs to Skagit Valley. Lovely name, I don’t think.

It seems to consist of massive, and I mean massive, outlet malls and tucked in behind them rows of mini storage units.

Good mix.

One can overshop on outlet bargains and then stash the excess in a mini storage unit.

Another lovely name. Chuckanut.

It seems to specialise in RVs. There are breathtaking acres of caravans and mobile homes. And the biggest US flag I ever saw. The height of a two-storey house. Wow. Why?

Then, abruptly, the landscape returns to pretty farmland valleys girded by sumptuous green mountains.

It is all a bit aesthetically schizophrenic, really.

I turn on some music.

Beware the online travel bookings deluge

I have a cautionary traveller's tale to tell - about the pitfalls of online booking and a woman called Pooneh Maghrebian who saved the day.

Once upon a time it would have been a seasoned travel agent who would have found us this fabulous hotel looking across the sparkling harbour waters to the prettiest, prettiest vista of pastel coloured night lights from the city of Vancouver, Canada.

These days, it is DIY travel.

Sitting up late into the night in my Adelaide bedroom, I surfed through the hotels of this city and honed in on this one.

It really captured my imagination and my fancy.

It was away from the centre of the city and had car parking and views. I have not been to Vancouver so I was operating on logic, economy and the online reviews left by other travellers.

I booked a harbour view room.

Or, I thought I did.

Now, there are a lot of travel booking sites vying for one’s attention. They seem to be multiplying.

I’m a long-time Expedia user but I also like booking.com, TripAdvisor and Travelocity.

Sometimes, I use the club membership of hotel chains I particularly like.

As one who wrote that long-running Internet column, Net Adventures, in The Advertiser, I am habituated to comparison shopping and reviewing. I may dare to say I have some expertise in it. So it is not like me to cock up.

Then again, we all can do it.

We must watch warily the pop-ups and challenges of new sites these days. It’s a rapacious market out there. And I, clearly, had taken my eye off the ball.

So, I made my booking for this Pinnacle on the Pier Hotel in Vancouver.

The confirmation pinged into my email. Ta da.

Done deal.

I cleared the screen and began a new search to book for the next city.

We are on a 6-month road trip around north America. There are a lot of places to book.

Months later, on arrival at the hotel, I was assigned a room at the back of the property. A room without a view.

I reeled in shock.

That can’t be right. I had specifically sought a room with a harbour view.

Views are my thing. I am writing a travel blog. I have come to see Vancouver. Why on earth would I choose not to?

This was the preference which came through to the hotel, the receptionist, Poonah, explained.

This is what I had booked.

No, no, no. Impossible. I clearly recall looking through the hotel images, comparing the prices on offer and booking “harbour view”.

I have had that “harbour view” in mind’s eye throughout my travels and had been anticipating it eagerly.

And here I was with a backstreets view.

Well, they call it a “mountain view” and there is a glorious tree-flanked green mountain backdrop out there. Mainly, however, the rear rooms look upon the facade of the neighbouring high rise. Lovely rooms, I hasten to say. Impeccable. Spacious. Beautifully equipped. The Pinnacle on the Pier is a classy hotel.

And its location is even better than my anticipations - on the north shore of the harbour looking back towards Vancouver city across an endlessly changing vista of busy shipping activity.

Why was my booking not the booking I had made?

Well, my booking records which I wanted to show to Reception were, of course, in the computer which was still in the luggage in the car.

Receptionist, Poonah, had a printout, however.

And there it was. “Standard room”.

It had come to the hotel through a UK web agency, she explained.

UK?

Yes, UK, as in England.

We won’t get into Brexit.

To cut a long story short, somewhere in the depths of the night in Adelaide, I had veered from my usual online booking pattern. I thought the booking confirmations had come via hotel chain.

I did not double check.

I was very lucky. Pooneh, assistant guest services manager, was on the reception desk at the Pinnacle when I responded in dismay. I had, interestingly, made another booking to extend our stay here. I had made it through the hotel chain itself, assuming I was continuing on the same transaction. It was specific - “Harbour View”.

Poonah was here to see these two bookings, to spot the confusions and to make things right.

She saw that we were moved to a room with a view. It is the most wonderful room in the hotel.

She solved the problems and made a very happy customer. She ensured praise and five star reviews for her employer.

And her intelligence, friendliness, willingness to solve a problem and go the extra mile, has enhanced the way this travel blogger sees and depicts the city of Vancouver .

She’s a credit to Canada, as well as to the Pinnacle.

Lessons from this tale:

Do not hurry your online bookings.

Double check the confirmations.

They're seriously caffeinated in Seattle

OK, it is true.

They make good coffee in Seattle.

Actually, they make fabulous coffee - way out the best I have had in the USA.

Ask for a macchiato and it comes just as it should.

Believe me, I am asking. Sucking ‘em down. Well, in a sophisticated macchiato-sipping way, of course. One doesn’t want to offend the sensibilities of hipsters.

Then again, the Seattle coffee culture does strike me as hipster dominated at all.

This is a city of immense diversity. There are lots of sleek and chic people.

It is a fast-moving city. Everyone seems wildly busy.

Then again, it is utterly quirky.

Our day begins in a coffee shop, of course. We are waiting to meet my theater simple friends, Llysa Holland and Andrew Litzky. They are theatre folk of exceptional skill, intelligence and ingenuity. I have seen and reviewed a number of their works at Adelaide Festival Fringes and they are five-star theatre-makers and human beings. We’ve been mates from the word go.

The fact that they are Seattleites was a huge ingredient in my interest in Seattle. Yeah, move over Frasier.

Now this is just one of a zillion coffee shops in downtown Seattle - Bacco on Pine Street. We settle on it when the queues at Biscuit Bitch are too long and we need a coffee and the loo pronto after the traffic jams of the drive in from Bothell where we are staying.

We perch on barstools beside a very intense young woman. She is alone and squeezed into the corner. She is very stand-offish. Indeed, she seems to be having some sort of a crisis. When B pops out to find the loo, I can't help but notice that she is contorting her face almost into a tearful breakdown. Then she calls the waitress. “My coffee,” she murmurs. The waitress promptly pops a large mug of brew in front of her and she seems to recover.

There ya go. The power of Seattle coffee.

Llysa and Andrew arrive and we breeze out to play.

Down along Post Lane where people are in immense queues for chowder. There’s a ginger beer place making flavoured ginger beers. Cucumber and tarragon? Blow me down.

We pause at a Latino store with a wall of chilli sauces. I swoon and buy a new one.

There’s a fish market with a glory of fresh crabs and great swirling clouds of steam from crab cook pots. Llysa’s target is a Filipino food stand called Oriental.

It is swathed in idiosyncratic notes instructing its customers in myriad rules. “If you are sitting here eating ice cream it means you have not read the other side of this notice”, says one dangling over the counter. On the other side it says “You must eat your ice cream over there”.

We order adobo chicken and tuck in, watching the huge brim-full cauldrons of chicken and beef bubbling away with the day’s supply.

Pike’s Market is one of the hotspots of Seattle.

Even without the tourists, it is busy. It is not a busy day, says Andrew. But it is swarming.

We follow Llysa through cheese stores, tea stores, American Indian jewellery stores, out onto a people’s roof garden with vegetables and flowers thriving and which no one may pick because, according to a notice, "it scares the plants".

Back through a labyrinth of quaint specialist stores, past a glorious fishmonger where one man hands us samplers of smoked salmon while another is ringing bells and tossing fish in front of a huge whooping crowd. This is bloody wild.

And there are huge pig sculptures in amongst it all. Rachels, says Llysa. A whimsical city art project. We follow Llysa down the road and into a cheese shop where they are making curd cheeses on the spot behind big glass windows. Stirring vast stainless steel vats of milk and rennet. Slicing set cheeses in another area. We sample the curd. Salty. Nice.

A pirogi store nearby has a queue snaking way down the pavement. The aroma is gorgeous. Another massive queue heralds the original Starbucks coffee shop.

It is foodie heaven all over the place.

We weave through arcades and lanes, climb stairways back up to higher streets where we can get a good view of the backdrop of the bay.

We drive a short distance and park easily outside Olympia Park, a vast outdoor art centre, and go walkabout among the huge sculptures. Oh, my. This is sensational. They have created wonderful wilderness gardens as environments for the works - with paths smooth and rough and Puget Sound’s waters there beside it all. Marvelling at the marvellous.

Alexander Calder’s Eagle is probably the star piece. It arches high and rusty red, color co-ordinated with Bruce’s shirt.

Louise Bourgeois Father and Son fountain is strangely moving, the waters rising to cover the nude father and son alternatively. Then there is her black-granite sculpture of eyes. Several sets with different expressions. They also touch the emotions - so large and dark and somehow yearning. They are actually benches, I later discover.

Richard Serra’s Wake is just huge - great rusty metal waves curving high. One can walk among them but not touch. There is a no-touch policy which seems really odd for open air sculptures.

Jaume Plensa’ Echo is fenced off with wildflowers at its base. Oh, how serene and utterly lovely she is.

White, 46ft tall, facing the sea in the direction of Mt Olympus - an Asian face of meditation born of Greek mythology. I can’t stop gazing at her. I am dragged away.

Oh my god. Of course! It is time for another coffee.

If it’s Seattle, it must be coffee time.

We pile into our friends’ Subaru and drive to their favourite coffee shop, Lighthouse Roasters, where we have very fine coffee and an orange and peach scone.

They want to show us that high art is not all Seattle is about.

Low art stars also.

Well, that is probably cruel of me. But the Troll under the Aurora bridge really is the last word in spectacular whimsy.

He’s massive, crouched under the eves of the bridge, staring out with one big hubcap eye.

He’s very ugly and people apparently like to paint and graffiti him. Others like to clean him up. He is the world’s most beloved troll.

Rain is coming and going as we zip around to see these wonderful things.

Rain is another Seattle specialty.

Fremont is not just a special part of Seattle.

It is the Centre of the Universe.

It is the place where being eccentric is valued.

Hence, it brags a massive statue of Lenin.

West of Lenin is the latest theatre in the area. Llysa and Andrew’s theater simple has performed there. They took us to meet its creator, AJ Epstein.

He’s a lighting supremo by specialty but he decided to turn an old warehouse into a stunning performance space and gallery. A team of techs is preparing it for an anniversary celebration as we visit.

It reminds me a bit of The Bakehouse Theatre in Adelaide. It has that spirit of adventure. It also has the zaniest tiny dressing room and, in the absence of wings, it has a slit through which actors make their entrances.

Oh, and then the naughtiness.

As if it is not enough that Llysa buys snacks from a Mexican roach coach, they steer us down the road to taste chocolates at Theo’s. The ghost chili and salted chocolates are pretty divine but of course I fall for the artisan specialties. I mean, cucumber chocolate?

I have to have it.

Hmm. I am not sure about the cucumber. It is a subtle thing. The chocolate is a wicked buttery fondant.

We need another walk to make up for it. No, we don’t really. But we stroll down to look at the canal and the handsome topiary dinosaur.

Ye gods, is that a space rocket? Yes it is. Of course it is.

It’s a real one, what’s more.

It was erected by a pack of Fremont drunks. Well, they were a group who hung out in an ale house. They decided Fremont needed something significant to elevate its significance as the Centre of the Universe and this 1950s Cold War rocket fuselage was purchased just before it was due to be sold for scrap. Apparently the lads had a bit of trouble erecting it. It took years and needed a real rocket scientist. Or not. One can’t be sure what to believe, but there it is. Proud and priapic. The pride of Fremont.

Oh, and there’s an antiques mall round the corner.

Off we go.

Now I know I’m old - but this mecca of eclectica gives me a feeling of colossal antiquity.

So many things from one’s past. And some of them so odd. Big containers of light globes? When did they become collectibles?

Across the road, past the road signs which tell one how far the rest of the world is from this Centre of the Universe, there is the grand statue of Lenin.

Right now Lenin has blood coming from his mouth, probably from eating babies. And he has blood on his hands.

I stand tippy toe to hold his hand, but can’t quite reach. That is how big he is. Or how small I am. Llysa says that volunteers caretake the statue and restore it to its natural glory as regularly as other people make political or comical statements with it. It is not unusual, for instance, for Lenin to dress as Father Christmas.

It is seriously raining now.

Rush hour will soon beset the city. Seattle has the same problems as the other American cities. Hideous traffic jams. Travel across cities is slow and frustrating. Everyone says “meditate, meditate”… It is the coping mantra which is sweeping hapless America.

Bruce is not the meditating kind.

He sits there stewing.

As much as I say that this traffic jam is on the road and this is a road trip…he still grumps from the wheel. Don’t say anything, but I actually find the jams a chance to get a close-up look at the urban landscape.

Gee, there are a lot of cannabis stores...

Sounding out Puget

The trees, the trees…

Even that massive old volcano, Mt Hood, struggles to be seen above the trees which line all the roads of Portland.

This is lush and fecund territory. Lots of rain.

And along the tree-lined roads we hum, northwards, towards or destination near Shelton in Washington state.

Oh yes, the pot shops keep going. They are dotted on the highway. They are not a novelty any more.

But, as the landscape opens out, more snow-capped mountains are still just a bit thrilling to behold. Classic eye candy.

It is compulsory when on the road, according to my rules, to tune in at least for a while, to one of the conservative talk shows. Rush Limbaugh is today’s find.

Oooh, he does not like Donald Trump one bit. He has lots of gossip from around Republican circles, he says. Trump’s campaign is chaotic. He is confusing the effusive high of rally rapture with real politics.The rally crowds are rally crowds, he says. They aren’t votes. Other populist candidates had fallen for it in the past. Ross Perot, for instance. And what happened when the election came?

Limbaugh says that the Republican party is closing ranks and expecting defeat.

Wow. That was not what I expected to hear from a famously conservative commentator.

Cherries! Fabulous American cherries are in season and we are in one of the best growing regions. People selling them in roadside stands complete with American flags. Oh yes. We stop and stock up. We drive on, swooning over the biggest, fattest, sweetest white cherries ever. Rainier, they call them here. Maybe they're so good because they grow in volcanic soils.

Suddenly we are in Olympia, the capital of Washington State.

Every road leads to a “Capitol” something.

We take the one to the Capitol Mall because I need a broken necklace fixed. It’s a huge and rather handsome mall inside and there are three jewellers shops - none of which can fix a broken catch in less than a week. They all send things out. The shops are just retail.

We find the quaint little food court instead. No salads? Amazing.

We have some light Asian and plod off, pausing by my cherished Chico’s store where I buy denim bermuda shorts.

We drive around Olympia. We like it. Lovely leafy shopping streets with pretty baskets of lobelia and petunias hanging from street poles. Charming. Inviting.

We check out the suburbs. They are mixed but generally with neat wooden houses and lovingly-tended gardens. Big tick to Olympia.

Now onwards to Shelton. It is much smaller.

A nasty smell greets us as we wind down into its valley. Industrial steam from a chimney. Ah, it is timber mills. Some of this country of wood is being used.

The town itself is small and plain. But I spot a jeweller’s shop and am thrilled to have my necklace repaired - and have a bit of a local chat. The shop assistant knows the people at our day’s destination, Nathan and Emma and their Rites of Passage business which takes troubled young people on wilderness experiences. She used to look after the property to which we were heading.

Google leads us along leafy roads and past shallow waters of Puget Sound.

It is not easy finding our destination. It’s in deepest forest. Narrow tracks peel off the backroad disappearing down tunnels of ferny wilderness. Only letterboxes and numbers indicate habitation. Finally we find the right track. Then it bisects and we are at a house with no one home. I’m ringing Emma and leaving a message. Nate calls. Backtrack and take the other fork. Down more long dirt track and then, there it is - and Nate, waving, with a dog at his side.

What a property it is.

It’s like a farm with lush green fields stretching down to a passage of water. Assorted blue wooden buildings, fences, an area of raised vegetable beds, fruit frees, a lovely barn…

The dog bounds to meet us. It is love at first sight. Spartacus or Sparty, once a pound puppy is now one of the happiest family dogs in the world, despite a quaint predilection for licking rocks.

We’re to stay in The Loft which is part of the accommodation complex they offer to their Rites of Passage workers and now also rent out on Airbnb.

But first, we must meet the alpacas. There is a herd of them in a large enclosure guarding a group of hens and a very large and proud rooster. The alpacas give us their faintly indignant alpaca stares.

Emma materialises from the office where interest in the Airbnb has the phone ringing off the hook.

Then Aurora appears, two years old, curly-haired and a free spirit running bare-footed through the fields.

Then there is Jericho, a very blond and earnest little boy toddler, with the strong, smiling nanny, Kitty.

I’m introduced as GrandmaSa, Emma reminding us all that she might have been raised by me as mother of her half-brothers.

I am in an instant besotted with the little ones. Aurora is soon clutching my hand and wanting me to carry her as Emma shows me around the property. Happiness.

“Do you like oysters?” asks Nate.

“Is the Pope a catholic,” I reply.

And he is gone.

Minutes later he is wading in the Puget Sound waters at the edge of their property, picking oysters fresh from the beds.

The oysters are huge, at least years old, says Nate. They are not at all like the Pacific or rock oyster I am used to in Australia.

Their shells are crusted with barnacles.

Nate takes them to the kitchen sink and shucks them.

He gives me the first one to eat fresh and unadorned.

It is quite a meal. It is not like my accustomed oysters and yet it is certainly oyster - big, fat, delicate, intensely succulent…

Nate has knocked up some seasoned flour and as releases each oyster, he dips it in the flour and pops it into sizzling butter on the stove. They like their oysters just cooked.

Oh, my. So do I.

Even Bruce, who is not an oyster fan, finds himself downing them.

What a wonderful welcome.

Nate and Emma own a lovely tract of land - wild, dense woodland and open field. About 14 acres, I think.

There are several houses on the property which tend to be occupied by the professional ranger-counselors who work with them on Rites of Passage, taking troubled teens out into the wilderness.

Interestingly, the property’s boundary extends right out into the intertidal zone of Puget Sound. They own the water in front of their house. The water! Of course that is where the oysters grow.

We take chairs and bloody marys onto the grass outside the house and catch up, watching the children and the dog playing, eating fried oysters and also clams.

Then the bubs are popped into bed without protest and we repair to the dining room with its glorious view of the Sound to devour sauteed chicken and sumptuous white corn. Oh, American white corn! There ain’t nuttin’ like it!

We talk until we are too sleepy to go on.

Just after we repair to our cosy Loft, Nate calls us out to witness a spectacular rainbow in a wild, red sunset sky. A storm is approaching with the most dramatic beauty.

We snap photos but the true complexity of colours is beyond iPhones. And awe is a living thing.

Nate has a hearty breakfast of fresh farm eggs scrambled with corn awaiting us. They have Vegemite! Good coffee. Lovely.

The kids are at day care. Nate and Emma have to work. We have to walk.

Accompanied by Spartacus, with whom we are now utterly in love, we have a good, sturdy walk up the steep forested driveway out onto the road and then down the neighbouring driveway with its dense woodlands of towering trees, ferns and wildflowers and back to the waters of the Sound.

Hugs and kisses, fond waves and we are back on the road.

Bremerton is a town of 39,000 people. L.Ron Hubbard was born and raised there. Bill Gates’s father grew up there. These days it brags a navy base and the ferry across Puget Sound to Seattle.

We pay $15 for the ferry and queue in the Rogue. The ferry leaves on the dot and takes about an hour. We sip coffee and wander around the passenger deck, watching the meandering shorelines until the view opens up to reveal the skyline of Seattle. Glorious.

What a beautiful day. It’s cool and breezy, but sunny. Seattle is famous for rain.

The city sparkles.

Ravenous, we find a car park and go into McCoy’s Firehouse Bar and Grill and have classic diner food - a burger for the B and a Reuben for me, beside a bottomless cup of coffee.

Seattle is leafy and interesting. Bruce navigates it easily.

And we head for our hotel - miles away at Bothell.

Why Bothell?

Free parking. Good hotel with good rates. And, it turns out, it is the counterpart to Redwood Shores in SF. It is the biotech headquarters of Seattle - very salubrious indeed.

Good call, Sa.

Theresa, on the desk of the Country Inn and Suites by Carlson, goes beyond the call of duty when I ask if she could possibly reassign our room. The initial room is nice, but dark and looking onto the carpark. We are here 3 days. With good-nature and professional aplomb, Theresa rings around and somehow juggles to assign us an upstairs room with a view of the swimming pool. I am in heaven - and in a heartbeat, we’re down at that lovely pool.