Avoiding the Interstate at All Costs

I don’t know about you, but I like to play it safe. I already went through a good 7 or 8 of my 9 lives in my younger days, so I’d rather stay on the down low, taking it easy. Which is why my wife, my two dogs and myself drive through Central Washington to get from Bellingham to Portland. The straight line between these two cities would take us down the I-5 in approximately 5 hours, depending on the horrendous traffic, which starts just north of Everett and doesn’t end for another 90 miles until Olympia. 

A normal person would take this boring route down the bland Interstate. But we’d rather take the 12 hours or so and drive over the Cascade Pass on the 20, truly one of the more beautiful drives on this planet, then skirt down the 97 through Blewett Pass, eventually making it to the 14, which follows the Columbia Gorge on the north side to Vancouver and then a quick jaunt on the dreaded Interstate to Portland. This route takes longer and requires camping somewhere in the mountains outside Wenatchee, but it’s so much better for the soul (and the heart, easily adding 5 years of life). 

And safer. I’d take camping with black bears and cougars and driving really windy roads any day over driving with the lunatics on the Interstate. People are insane! And far more dangerous than bears. Together with mosquitoes, we humans have killed more people than any other animal that has ever roamed the earth. So, the Adventure Buddies avoid the Interstate where most of these nasty beasts roam. 

On our most recent trip to Portland, we enjoyed splendid views and beautiful walks through forests because, for the most part, we avoided the Interstate. We also picked a number of wonderful morel mushrooms. 

The pictures that follow depict our adventures on a path less traveled.

Crater Lake, Oregon

Clark's Nutcracker. Crater Lake, Oregon

Among the Ponderosa pines of the Ochoco National Forest, Eastern Oregon

I love Ponderosas. The pleasant airiness stands of Ponderosas provide are the epitome of the West. We found this stand on a random logging road leading off a highway headed to the Painted Hills and John Day Fossil Beds in Eastern Oregon. It was warm and inviting; easy to walk through and enjoy. The little jigsaw bark is incredible the closer you get to it.

There we found an idyllic meadow. A hawk screeched above us, hunting for prey below. We found an immense log of an ancient tree that somebody had chopped down and probably used to carve something. Marcos rolled in the sawdust left behind in a bliss of pine odors that enveloped him for the rest of the day.

The Camp. 30 miles south of Lagrande, Oregon

Our fearless tent guard.

Reading with some wine before bedtime.

Moonrise Kingdom

In quest of the perfect burger

I spent weeks scouring Mexico for the perfect taco, the ideal carnitas, and the inimitable mole. In Spain, it was a quest for a jamón de pata negra so delicate that it would send me to heaven. In Ireland, it was a search for legendary fish n’ chips (Leo Burdock's in Dublin was the winner there!). I’ve now turned my sights to burgers. Not as exquisite or refined as the jamón but possibly as satisfying, just in a different way, the burger is what has defined “American cuisine,” which might be considered an oxymoron by food snobs. Sometimes maligned as fast food, it must be remembered that other special foods, like tacos and fish n’ chips and even jamón, served in taverns as a tapa accompanying a drink, are also “fast,” and the burger  represents the Americans well. I've heard stories of French tourists coming to this country just in search of that perfect burger, so I will make sure to make this review quest-like in style.

I’m not going to rush this, but will slowly review all of the burger joints that cross my path. 

First one:

Rusty’s Drive-In: Cashmere, Washington

Burger=3.5/5. Rusty Burger with soft bun, special sauce, fried on a frier. Great burger. Nothing particularly special, but very worthy as the American standard fried burger. 

Onion Rings=4/5 lightly fried, easy to enjoy

Blackberry Malt= 5/5. No other words to describe this other than ridiculously thick/real fruit. Which is to say: Excellent!

Cashmere is the home of Aplets and Cotlets and we have also enjoyed a wonderful barbecue in town at  Country Boys BBQ. I'd probably hit the BBQ over Rusty's, but if you need a burger, Rusty's is great! 

Seeking out food that tastes like where it came from: Morel hunting in the forests of Central Washington

Eating a good oyster is like taking a bite out of the ocean. A Taiwanese High Mountain Oolong tea tastes like a walk through a high mountain tea forest; you can almost picture the tall spiky mountains when you drink it. Eating morel mushrooms is like the experience of being in the woods.

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On our drive down from Bellingham to Portland, taking the long route through the Cascades to avoid the Interstate, we went through Blewett Pass, an area that was burned in a forest fire last fall. Knowing that morels sprout up the spring after a burn, we wanted to stop and let the dogs run and have a look for mushrooms. Having camped in the area many times before, we knew that there were many logging roads that scour the area. We turned on a random one off the 97, not knowing what it would lead to. We found many cars on the road in a place where we rarely run into other people and instantly knew what others were doing at the spot: Searching for morels. 

We picked a pound of yellow and black morels, lingering in the duff surrounding nondescript pine trees. Under logs, not far from charred stumps, and deep in holes that were frightening to dig through with our hands, with centipedes crawling through pine needles, we got lucky. 

It takes a while for the eyes to get adjusted to what a morel looks like camouflaged in the forest detritus, but once we locked in on the honeycomb treats, we became like primitive hunters. Our senses were heightened; perceptions were highly intensified by the hunt for mushrooms.

We dropped the morels off with my friend Brad. An accomplished chef, we knew he'd know what to do with them.  On our return trip back from Oregon, we scored some mushrooms for ourselves. 

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Morels are a significant species in helping fire-damaged ecosystems recover. In spring, they are some of the first organisms to pop up from the barren ashy landscape left behind after a late summer forest fire. Their aroma attracts insects and mammals who bring seeds and life-breeding microbes from adjacent lands. Therefore, morels work as natural restorers of habitat. 

Morels help their hosts--larch, pine and Douglas fir seedlings--by penetrating into their feeder roots. It's possible morel mycelium infiltrates the root zones of most conifer forests in western North America and  then appears in the ashy remains to help restore life to the forest. 

These microrrhizal treats are living networks that connect life forms and forests, essentially regenerating life on this planet. Like a matrix, a biomolecular superhighway, mycelium is in constant dialogue with its environment, governing the flow of essential nutrients through the food chain. 

A forest ecosystem cannot be defined without its fungi because they govern the transition between life and death and the building of soils, all the while fueling numerous life cycles. 

For more info on how mushrooms can save us, see Paul Stamets's Mycelium Running.