After the park dedication, I decided to head out and explore more of the Lewis & Clark territory on my own. After all, the rental car (although not the gas) was free! Oh by the way, check out the price of gas in Southern Washington State!
And is there any doubt where our lumber comes from? I saw TONS of trains and lumber yards that were shipping out on a Sunday afternoon. Bad economy, according to MSM, remember?
So I headed north on Interstate 5 to see how close I could get to Mt. St. Helens. By the time my trip was over that evening, I would have covered pretty much the entire length of the Lower Columbia shown here on the map. From Mt. St. Helens to Cape Disappointment, nearly 375 miles total drive from Portland. It probably would have taken Lewis & Clark a week. It took me a half-day.
Click here for rest of posting including photos of Mt. St. Helens and the place where Lewis & Clark first saw the Pacific Ocean.
The first Visitors Center is about 45 miles from the base of Mt. St. Helens.
I got just a litttttttle closer. And I have to say that I didn’t see the massive destruction I was expecting. In the valley, you can see a lot of grayish mud. But most of the trees are there, they look healthy and so maybe I wasn’t in the spot where things got blown away. But, I would have thought 30 miles away even on this side of the volcano, there would have been a lot more damage.
Then I started down to make a beeline to the Pacific Ocean and follow the Columbia River just like Lewis & Clark did 200 years ago. Oh, this sign on Interstate 5 helped.
So I had to make it to Cape Disappointment before dusk since I figured the Lewis & Clark National Park would close then.
In 1788, while in search of the Columbia River, English Captain John Meares missed the passage over the river bar and named the nearby headland Cape Disappointment for his failure in finding the river. In 1792, American Captain Robert Gray successfully crossed the river bar and named the river “Columbia” after his ship, the Columbia Rediviva. Only a few years later, in 1805, the Lewis and Clark Expedition arrived at Cape Disappointment.
Aside from this quiet and patient friend, I was the only one at the park…..
I kept saying to myself the entire time, “It is still dusk! They can’t shut the gates!” I made the 2 mile total trip to the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center and the Lighthouse (on another bluff) in less that 20 minutes. Let me assure you it was quite a workout up and down the hills.
I’ll close out this posting with scenes of the Pacific Ocean and Columbia River at sunset and nightfall. Today has been all sessions at Lewis & Clark College. Tomorrow, the Columbia River Gorge…. my first time there.
-Bruce (GayPatriot) – gaypatriot2004@aol.com
Those gas prices aren’t as bad as they are down here in San Diego. I think we have the most expensive gas in the country—above $3 at one place I drove by today. (Granted, I am in the Navy and buy my gas on base at a reduced price of about $2.53.)
Beautiful Pics! Thank you for sharing!
I almost hate to post this yere, but we were having a really good conversation on a previous thread – however, you wiped out all the past comments on this site.
North Dallas 30 was arguing that gay people shouldn’t serve openly in the military…until every homophobe becomes gay-accepting. He argued that gay personnel discharged are at fault for telling their superiors, and that they don’t get kicked out for personal things like telling their family.
Well, he is wrong. Check out this 2-tour Iraq vet who was outed by the military, and then discharged.
Military Outs More Gays PlanetOut
http://planetout.com/news/article.html?2005/08/04/1
Let me get this straight: you saw a few trainloads of logs indicating further depletion of finite natural resources and this suggests to you that our economy is somehow okay? I’m not really seeing the connection. Did you happen to notice while you were out there that Oregon has the highest unemployment rate in the country?
Not true. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, three states have higher unemployment rates than Oregon: Michigan, Missisippi, and DC. Oregon’s June, 2005 unemplyment rate was 6.5%… down from 7.5% in June 2004.
This is despite the fact that Oregon has one of the lowest business tax burdens in the country and Michigan one of the highest. The main reason Oregon’s economy is lagging? Environmental Extremists who oppose responsible logging. It’s not likely to improve soon because the current economy is being sustained by residential construction, especially Californians building second homes.
Yeah, yeah, DC’s not a state, but the BLS treats it as one.
Don’t forget the tax burden on DC residents, which is the highest in the country considering residents have no real representation in Congress.
Nobody forces anybody to live in DC either.
No one forces those loggers to stay in Oregon unemployed either.
No one forces anyone to live in DC? No one forces anyone to live anywhere. Maybe you just assume that most people living in DC are white and choose to move here. But the fact remains that the majority of us are black and were born here. This is where are families are, and this is where we’ll raise them.
V the K, how come you know so much about Oregon? Logging and fishing have been severely limited by the tree-hugging fish-kissers. One in five WHITE families live on welfare here. Yes, they could (and probably should move) but meanwhile it’s easy to get welfare and take meth and molest your own children (the two highest crimes in my county.
This comment was printed on recycled Spotted Owl.
V the K’s right. No one…and I mean NO ONE, is forcing anybody to live anywhere in the USA, especially DC. If they want voting rights so bad, they can pick their hippie asses up and move 3 miles north into Maryland. God help them if they move 3 miles south to VA, ’cause we don’t tolerate that whiny “I’m just a victim of the system” bullshit down here.
BTW, there isn’t ONE person in DC who owns a home who isn’t automatically a millionaire, regardless of how crappy and crime-ridden their neighborhood might be. So don’t preach about disenfranchisment in Washington if you don’t know the situation first hand. ANY of these lazy welfare whores could surrender their wealth for a vote in Congress if they wanted to. But if they did they wouldn’t be able to bitch about it anymore. And isn’t bitching what being a Democrat is all about nowadays anyway? Seriously, isn’t it???
Yes, I believe bitching is mostly what Democrats are all about today. They’re like a broken record, always complaining about some problem they could change if they just got off their butts and did something for themselves. No wonder they can’t win elections. No one wants to support self declared losers.
No one forces those loggers to stay in Oregon unemployed either.
True enough, in a Marie Antoinette sort of way. The issue should be intelligent forest management. It may come as a surprise to left-wingers, but trees grow back. To say that harvesting trees depletes a natural resource is as ridiculous as saying that harvesting corn depletes our strategic corn reserves. They gave a Nobel Prize to a woman who planted 30 million trees in Africa. Big whoop. Lumber companies plant more than ten times that many trees every year.
Another benefit of managed forestry is fewer forest fires. Major forest fires occur only on public lands, never on privately managed forest. Why? Because timber companies harvest trees before they rot. The floors of public forests are filled with rotting wood and debris that catches fire and burns easily, destroying thousands of acres of wildlife habitat as well as homes.
V the K, how come you know so much about Oregon?
Well, first I went to the Bureau of Labor Statistics website because I was skeptical of the assertion of Oregon having the worst unemployment rate. But, I also went to law school in Oregon and one of my adoptarinos is from there.
Dang, forgot to close my tag.
No one forces those loggers to stay in Oregon unemployed either.
True enough, in a Marie Antoinette sort of way. The issue should be intelligent forest management. It may come as a surprise to left-wingers, but trees grow back. To say that harvesting trees depletes a natural resource is as ridiculous as saying that harvesting corn depletes our strategic corn reserves. They gave a Nobel Prize to a woman who planted 30 million trees in Africa. Big whoop. Lumber companies plant more than ten times that many trees every year.
Another benefit of managed forestry is fewer forest fires. Major forest fires occur only on public lands, never on privately managed forest. Why? Because timber companies harvest trees before they rot. The floors of public forests are filled with rotting wood and debris that catches fire and burns easily, destroying thousands of acres of wildlife habitat as well as homes.
V the K, how come you know so much about Oregon?
Well, first I went to the Bureau of Labor Statistics website because I was skeptical of the assertion of Oregon having the worst unemployment rate. But, I also went to law school in Oregon and one of my adoptarinos is from there.
Glisteny,
I suppose socioeconomic status equates to the right to vote? Since when does the fact anyone who lives in DC must have a lot of money have anything to do with whether or not they should have the right to representation in Congress? As far as socioeconomics go, the majority of the people who live in DC are certainly not millionaires. There are far more of those living in McLean, Great Falls and Potomac outside of DC. But yet, they still get representation. The fact remains that DC has no voting power because DC is filled with African Americans who undeniably vote Democratic. Most of whom are far too low on the socioeconomic scale to be able to simply move out as you put it. I don’t know if you’re familiar with DC, but Northern Virginia or Suburban Maryland aren’t particularly cheap areas to live. I live in DC and I am no millionaire. I should certainly have the right to live anywhere in this country, be taxed by my government and have a voice in how that tax dollar is spent. Period. I don’t care if I am white, black, rich, poor, Democrat or Republican. I think it says a lot about you and your ilk to even suggest DC residents don’t deserve the right to Congressional representation.
No, there is a reason residents of a Federal District have limited representation, and that reason is that the majority of them depend on the government for their livelihood, which means their interests are inherently opposed to the interests of the rest of the country.
I don’t hear DC residents complaining about the billions in tax dollars that support the Metro, their schools and the educratic unions that skim off them, the cultural institutions, or provide the do-nothing bureaucratic sinecure jobs for them. Actually, wait, I do hear them complaining. They say there’s not enough.
North Dallas 30 was arguing that gay people shouldn’t serve openly in the military…until every homophobe becomes gay-accepting. He argued that gay personnel discharged are at fault for telling their superiors, and that they don’t get kicked out for personal things like telling their family.
You know, Megan, the temptation is extraordinary, since the comments aren’t there, to twist what YOU said like you did to what I said.
I did not say that we have to wait until every homophobe becomes gay-accepting. What I said was that we were going to have to change laws and practices, especially related to sexual harassment and the prevention thereof, if we were going to open the military to openly-gay individuals prior to that.
Well, he is wrong. Check out this 2-tour Iraq vet who was outed by the military, and then discharged.
This person was not outed because he told his family. He was outed because he placed a personal ad on a public website.
Was it fair for that to be done? No. However, as both the article and SLDN note, it is clearly spelled out in the DADT policy that you are not to communicate your sexuality in any way to any one, and that if you do so, you are in violation. Posting a personal ad to a public website that identifies you as gay is a clear violation of that policy.
Put bluntly, Megan, I disagree emphatically with what the military did. However, they were well within their rights to do it, and this person’s ignorance of the DADT policy is not an excuse for violating it.
Furthermore, Megan, the supreme irony on this one to me is that all the leftist gays who have spent countless hours trolling personal ads, profiles, and telephone chat lines in attempts to synthesize wild allegations to smear and tar conservatives and Republicans, public figures or no, are now turning purple and screaming about how “unfair” it was that this individual was outed from a personal profile that clearly identified him and how the military should “respect his privacy”.
I say what goes around, comes around. They were warned, and because they chose to legitimize outing and invasion of privacy, other people are hurt. The blood for this one is on the hands of the gay hatemongers like Rogers and Aravosis.
“Another benefit of managed forestry is fewer forest fires. Major forest fires occur only on public lands, never on privately managed forest. Why? Because timber companies harvest trees before they rot. The floors of public forests are filled with rotting wood and debris that catches fire and burns easily, destroying thousands of acres of wildlife habitat as well as homes. ”
This sounds reasonable but it’s not true. In Washington we spend a lot of public money on fighting fires on private land. Even clearcutting does not strip all combustible material off a tract. Selective cutting goes after the marketable larger logs and leaves all the underbrush and “pecker poles” that burn most easily. Public land tends to get logged with the same methods anyway, so private ownership does not help or hurt one way or another. We are considering changing the laws to start charging private owners for fire control efforts, ie. the caosts of calling out the National Guard, the same way they are finally charging rock climbers for the costs of rescue from their derring-do. Pay as you go government.
Where private ownership really pays off is in reforestation, not fire control. Weyerhaeuser pioneered replanting because they own outright so much of the land they log, and over the years it has paid off for them in stability of supply. So it’s still a good idea.
“If they want voting rights so bad, they can pick their hippie asses up and move 3 miles north into Maryland.” – gliseny
What an asshole. Your post is riddled with racism. 80% of us who live here are Black. The majority of us were born here. This is are home.
What kind of conservative demands that Americans be taxed without representation? A hypocritical asshole conservative.
I’m Black, born in DC and served my country in the Army. I’ve returned home, purchased a home with my meager, but hard-worked salary and am raising my family here like my parents did.
The District of Columbia is my home. It is the home of my parents, and was the home of my parents. It will be the home where I raise my children. That’s four generations. How do you propose uprooting four generations from our community in order to gain rights that every American should have.
Your post smacks of a lack of understanding. No one would demand that you move from Shit Hollar if you weren’t represented in Congress. They would demand that you enjoy the same rights granted to every other American.
And to respond to VTheK…the majority of people in the district do not work for the federal government. The majority of people who depend on the federal governmetn for work live in the suburbs. They have representation, although their interests might be different from yours.
Point taken, I should not have said “never.” I’ll only go so far as to say that more, and more destructive fires occur on public lands versus private because of the difference in forest management practices.
I never said a majority of DC residents worked for the Federal government, and in fact, the figure is 33%. I did say that DC receives billions in Federal dollars, and that is most certainly true. My only point is that DC’s exclusion from congress is not racially based. In fact, DC had far less representation and far less self-rule when it was majority white.
And for the record, I don’t oppose congressional representation for the District. (But not senators, because DC is not a state). If it were up to me, the House of Representatives would be increased to 600 members and DC would get two voting representatives. Additionally, I’d reform Congress to include term limits and a legal end to gerry-mandering. But, hey, that just my opinion.
The federal government creates the problem that they have to fund. The government sits on the best property in the district – including the majority of waterfront property – and does not pay property taxes to a local government (the main source of revenue for local governments).
DC Officials have proposed numerous reform policies that would then cut the federal funding of DC. Congress has never considered them.
I saw that on this day in 1806, Clark was shot in the leg.
http://www.historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?category=oldwest&month=10272960&day=10272976
Also, even if the federal government has to dole out trillions to the DC public schools, residents, etc., that does not mean that the residents should have no voting power in Congress. Period. There are plenty of states that receive far more federal funding than they pay back in taxes (they are called the red states), but they all still have Congressional representation. The metro is funded by the federal government because a vast majority of the people who ride it work for the federal government. Just like all the money that goes into fixing streets and services in DC are paid for by the federal government (although not entirely by the federal government) because every day citizens from VA and MD use those services while playing no taxes to the District for it. Not everyone who uses these services are non-DC residents of course, I won’t deny that. And I have my own issue with WMATA, but that has nothing to do with voting rights for District residents. DC has a larger population than two or three other states and not one representative in Congress with a vote. The city’s residents are always footing the bill for events like the World Bank protests, the Inauguration, etc. etc. and have to beg for federal funding to help subsidize that cost. It’s no doubt a unique relationship between the city and the federal government that you won’t see anywhere else, but that means NOTHING in regards to whether the citizens have the right to say how their tax dollars are spent.
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