Hendrix

Shirley watching Hendrix on screen in the EMP Center, Seattle

Arguably, Seattle's most famous son is not Bill Gates but guitar legend James Marshall Hendrix. Jimi Hendrix, as he is better known, died in the prime of his life and at the height of is fame when he was just twenty seven years old. Three weeks before his own vomit suffocated him in a London hotel room, I saw him in concert at the Isle of Wight Rock Festival (1970). He owned that stage and lit up the dark summer night with his audacious electric wizardry. It was a special moment in my teenage journey.

Born in the Seattle suburb of Renton in 1942, Jimi is well-represented in Seattle Center's  EMP showcase building which opens your eyes to the power and the history of guitar music and media. Sadly, back in 2009 the city authorities destroyed Jimi's childhood home in Renton - driven by legalistic nonsense rather than imagination and full realisation of what Hendrix meant to the modern world and to Seattle itself. 

His body is interred not too far from the place where his old house once stood in spacious Greenwood Cemetery. Shirley accompanied me there this morning and we paid our respects as an old age Canadian rocker from Toronto strolled across the grass to pay similar homage. We chatted for a while and I thought to myself - is it really forty four years since Hendrix died when I was just short of my seventeenth birthday with most of my life ahead...

Purple haze all in my brain

Lately things just don't seem the same

Actin' funny, but I don't know why

Excuse me while I kiss the sky.

Jimi Hendrix's memorial grave in Renton

More

Old photograph in The Presby Museum - Goldendale WA

More postcards from America. From sleepy little Goldendale high on the prairie north of the Columbia River we made our way to the Yakima Valley - a green and pleasant land surrounded by hills. When the first white settlers arrived here after their arduous journeys through The Rockies they must have thought they had arrived in Canaan - the land of milk and honey. 

We stayed in The Cedars Inn in Ellensburg - home to Central Washington University. But the students had all gone home and the town had an abandoned quality about it. I am normally anti-pizza - discs of half-baked dough with gunge smeared across the surface - but Shirley dragged me into "Brix" in the centre of town and there we consumed one of the best pizzas I have ever eaten - strong tastes of feta, black olives and oregano on a tasty pizza base. It was worth waiting for as we sat in the window watching guys coming out of Arnie's Horseshoe Sports Bar to smoke cigarettes in the street.

And in the morning after breakfast we took Highway 2 through the Cascade Mountains all the way to Seattle. At one point we had to do a U turn because there was a big accident up ahead blocking the road but it didn't matter  we were able to negotiate our way to the Northgate area of northern Seattle where we are hunkered down in a large studio apartment above Amy's garage. It is splendid and has everything we might need. It is nice not to be in a hotel - nobody next door and we can make as much din as we like - singing "On Ilkley Moor Bah Tat" numerous times through the night while consuming vast quanties of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.

Soon after we arrived I undertook a four mile walk through these northern suburbs. What a delightful area! So green and quite hilly with each detached house different from the next. Soon I will complete my obligatory ablutions and then we will set off into the thrusting modern American city that is Seattle. Hope we don't get mugged by the hobos!

Goldendale motel but Hoss and Little Joe were nowhere to be seen

In Toppenish - city of murals

Shirley with the Yakima Valley behind her

Pizza meal at Brix in Ellensburg

The Davidson Building in Ellensburg (1889)

Abandoned barn north of Ellensburg

Through the Cascade Mountains

Inside our Seattle studio

Postcards

"If ye go will ye send back a letter from America?" - The Proclaimers

Well no, but I will send back some more postcards of our travels:-

Neil Diamond hybrid rose in Portland's wonderful rose gardens.

Portland's moving Holocaust Memorial

Wood - the original basis for economic success in both Washington and Oregon

In downtown Hood River - a delightful town where we watched England's
opening World Cup game in the British Bar

By the mighty Columbia River on our way to Goldendale. This is the
border between Washington and Oregon.

Stonehenge replica near Goldendale. It is actually a memorial
to local men who died in World War I

Indivisible

The magnificent  Washington State Legislature Building - seen from our hotel room. The interior of this building is awesome - so much marble and so much skilled craftsmanship. It speaks of this young state's self-belief and of the wealth it achieved through logging, mining and fishing. 

"The Kiss" by Richard Beyer (1990) by the waterfront in Olympia

Asthma relieving cigarettes in Aberdeen Museum

Fish assholes for sale in Kaloma, Washington

We are now in Portland, Oregon. Arriving in Portland's University District was not easy given the plethora of major roads that descend on the city like knotted spaghetti.  I left my camera in the hotel room as we walked out earlier this evening and unsurprisingly I saw many scenes I might have snapped - including modern day tramps or hobos. There are more here than we spotted in Vancouver. They hide in doorways or doze on benches, planning for the night ahead and wondering how they'll get through tomorrow. Like I suggested before, I suppose that each of these shadowy figures has a different story to tell. You wonder how they will ever get back on the conveyor belt of "normality" - job, rent to pay, a clean bed to sleep in. Once you get off the conveyor belt it must be exceedingly difficult to climb back on. Shirley and I ate delicious bowls of Mexican gumbo and I gave a dollar to a thin black man with thin black shoes and a faraway look in his eyes..."one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.".

America

Sailing boat seen from the Coho Ferry between Vancouver Island and Port Angeles

I don't know why but whenever I come to America, there's a big part of me that feels as if I am coming home. And that's how it seems this time. I feel very comfortable here, really alive, forever striking up conversations with complete strangers. Our English accents can be a useful key.

Yesterday we arrived in Port Angeles from Victoria. It was nice to arrive in Washington State by boat and the customs official in the port didn't give a damn about what might be in our suitcases or whether or not we had paid our ESTA visa fees.He was more interested in where we were going. And we were going to Ocean Shores through the woods. Tree after tree after tree after tree after tree. We stopped in Forks - a main location for the "Twilight" series of films that mean absolutely nothing to me.

I bought a "Forks" T-shirt and we talked to a little old lady who was down on her knees in her front garden - trimming the grass with kitchen scissors. She said her husband had "left" her two years back and I presumed this meant he had died - though he could have run away with the mayor's daughter - speeding through the woods to some distant motel in some distant city.

Deer in the dunes at Ocean Shores

Ocean Shores was an odd place - spread out amidst the dunes. So many hotel rooms and yet it felt so quiet - almost melancholy. After breakfast this morning we headed on foot across the dunes to the sea and came upon a female deer grazing. She looked at us nervously as I reached for my rifle camera. The beach is hard and never ending and you can drive your car there. Last night we watched the sun go down as seabirds paddled in the shallows.

Seabird in the sunset at Ocean Shores

On the way to Olympia we stopped at Aberdeen. We had lunch in Anne Marie's Cafe and met Anne Marie herself - a cheerful and redoubtable woman who should lead courses in customer service. Then to the Aberdeen Museum where I chatted with the curator about local history. He told us how to get to Kurt Cobain's childhood home for this demigod hero of the musical world was born and raised in this old logging town. He died just like Jimi Hendrix at twenty seven.

Kurt Cobain's childhood home in Aberdeen WA

Then on to Olympia - Washington's state capital. We are staying in The Governor Hotel and have a magnificent view from our room of the capitol building, the Capitol Lake and out towards Puget Sound. There was a bit of a palaver with the plastic room keys and finally they had to move us up to the seventh floor. Shirley is already in the huge kingsize bed while I tap away at the keyboard. Olympia seems a lovely little town and the walk along the wharf spoke eloquently of civic pride. Everything in its place. Huge locally sourced  timbers forming the solid boardwalk.

Tomorrow after more investigation of Olympia we will be leaving for Portland, Oregon and no doubt there I will once more say to myself - "I wish I could stay here longer". You simply cannot do everything and we are missing so much along the way. I just love America.

Whale watching in Aberdeen WA

My tower of beach stones at Ruby Beach

Island

From Vancouver to Vancouver Island. It was once a separate state and it is like a self-contained world. The island is  12,079 square miles in area making it bigger than both Wales and Belgium. Its capital is Victoria. Around 750,000 people live on Vancouver Island - mostly in and around Victoria. There are far more trees than that but they have never been counted. Sometimes you feel as if the trees will never end but then you see a big logging truck pass by to remind you that  the supply is not infinite.

This morning we visited the world renown Butchart Gardens before driving to Port Renfrew on the Pacific Marine Circle Route. So many trees and we saw a bear by the side of the road, nonchalantly munching on the berries he was foraging. We also watched him poop a big bear poop but sensitive to his personal dignity I refused to photograph this significant evacuation. I wouldn't appreciate a photographer recording my own  bowel movements.Do bears shit in the woods? No - they shit by the side of Route 14 just outside Port Renfrew.

Later we were in a lovely pub-restaurant in James Town - a central district of Victoria. It's called "The Bent Mast" and has an attractive bohemian air about it as well as decent pub grub and a variety of beers and lagers. An accomplished young musician played West Coast songs and a sprinkling of Neil Young classics including "Harvest Moon". We applauded his delivery. Tomorrow to America - land of the free - if we can get in... "Oh say can you see...at the twilight's last gleaming?" "Hey! Where's your passport buddy?"

Land of bears

At night - The Legislature Building in Victoria

Mountains

The Coastal Range from Whistler Mountain

Third day in Vancouver. We picked up a hire car and drove seventy miles or so northwards to the famous ski resort of Whistler. There we paid an extortionate amount of money to experience the Peak2Peak gondola ride - not I hasten to add the kind of gondolas they have in Venice bur capsules that hang precariously from metal cables. These Peak2Peak cable cars link lofty Whistler Mountain with Blackcomb Mountain and the middle span of unsupported cable stretches for a world record 1.88 miles.

Whistler Mountain - 7156 feet above sea level

At the top there was snow, fantastic mountain scenery and views and also this chappie from the squirrel family. It is a hoary marmot. My picture doesn't give you a true sense of its size - bigger than a domestic cat. These creatures live in mountains near the tree line and hibernate for an incredible six to eight months each year:-

Later back in Vancouver we went for a drink in "The Dover Arms" where an ageing rock band were pumping out familiar tunes from yesteryear and walking home we passed a restaurant called The Ukrainian Village which of course made me think of John Gray in North Wales. I wonder if they serve rescue hens?