Olympic rings and flying bicycles

Back in the US but not before the comic ineptitude of US customs. We were last off the boat from Victoria and they stopped us and asked for our documents for the car. Not only that but for some reason I had to take all my cash out of my wallet and put it back in again. The baffled customs officials couldn't understand how we'd managed to buy and run a car legally. After me explaining the same thing four times they let us through. I think they just gave up trying to understand.
The weather has turned toward the snow once again. It's fairly deep but manageable.
We are now on the Olympic Peninsula. It's a large forested area with large mountains and lakes. It's also a National Park. In America, like everything, you have to pay to enter most National Parks. It ranges from $10-20 so we buy an $80 annual pass which covers us for all parks across the country including places like Grand Canyon and Death Valley.
We make the slow ascent up to Hurricane Ridge along a snow covered treacherous road. Up at the top it's a snow covered playground. People are snowboarding down steep hills and thumbing lifts back up to the top, walking around in snowshoes or pushing along on cross-country skis. We have nothing, as usual. But this doesn't perturb us from going for a walk in thick snow. People come past us on skis and on fancy snow shoes and look at us like we've just crash landed from Mars. Excellent views even though it's hard work getting there.
After heading up past Seattle to collect the rest of our insurance and car documents we head to the capital of Washington State, Olympia.
A large white domed building is the centre of government and can be seen from the freeway. Olympia itself is only a few streets large and has a small amount of arty/trendy shops and bars.
We drive on towards the coast and through the hometown of Kurt Cobain, Aberdeen. It's a fairly gritty logging town that consists of lots of logs floating in water and cap and chequered shirt wearing guys driving large pick-up trucks. The grey skies and continuous rain add to the scene.
The coast is a decent drive and we plough on south hoping the weather will improve and we end up crossing the long steel bridge, one of many great looking bridges on the way, over the Columbia river into the state of Oregon. The town in which we enter is Astoria. We pass through not taking much notice. We find out late that not only was this town the setting for the 80's classics The Goonies and E.T. but also many other films have used it's pretty streets as a backdrop. Ah well. It's not really too surprising when you drive down the coast here as it's stunning. Bloody freezing, but stunning. We couldn't miss out on Oregon's capital Portland so we headed inland through a scarily icy and snow covered forest pass. An intense drive as the night looms in.
Portland is a decent looking city and has a decent Jazz music reputation. It also breaks all tramp-speed records for being asked for money. It was under ten seconds of setting my feet on the pavement to being asked by a nutjob for cash. Great start. Surprisingly though that was pretty much it as far as crazies went, apart from a bedraggled guy dragging a large sleeping bag along the wet tarmac. I can't help liking the place and it's mini-New York looks. There's also a great square and a block of food vendors in vans selling excellently cheap and yummy food. It beats the usual fast food chain crap by a mile.
We buy a tent on the edge of town taking advantage of Oregon being a state that has no sales tax. Lovely. Unfortunately after a drive back to the coast and putting the tent up that night we discover that this ex-display model has rips and holes in it. Bollocks. We'll have to take it back.
We take in more of the wind battered and rain sodden coast first and all of a sudden we're driving besides huge sand dunes. Guys are motorbiking over them and down towards the water. I've never seen anything like it. Smooth desert like dunes right on a rainy coast.
We drive back inland after some great fish and chips at a nautical themed old petrol station across the road from a diner with classic American cars chopped in half and stuck outside the building. Thankfully the road back inland is far more negotiable this time round.
We take the tent back and for some reason the sight of all this snow and Oregon's lack of sales tax and a sale on in the sports store gives me a brief loss of all my normal penny pinching ways and we buy a load of snowboarding gear. There's no doubt it's over half the price it would be in England but still it could seem slightly mental for a round the world trip. 'Sod it', I thought and then realised we'll have to have all this stuff in the car for the next 4 months! Crikey.
The plan now involves no snow, typically, as we head back to the coast and down south and into California, the state which some how keeps the rain away and the skies blue. Well that's my distorted memory of it.