Rachel’s Brother George lives in Portland Oregon and he’s getting married in July (the 11th to be exact). Since we’ll be trekking all the way across the country for the big event we’re planning on making a vacation of it. We’ll be staying in the Pacific Northwest for 3 weeks. The rough itinerary is Portland for about a week, Glacier National Park for about a week, Seattle for a few days and then back to Portland to fly home. Beyond that we have no idea.
We’re trying to plan as little as possible and just wing it but we’ve put together a tentative map of the route we might take and the places we want to see.
View Larger MapWe don’t want to plan our trip but we do want ideas. We’ve never been to the west coast or the pacific northwest and we need to know the cool stuff to do or see. If you have been to this part of the country, please let us know what places you enjoyed (and those you didn’t) so we can add it to our list!
Randy Aldrich 
Great part of the country for a trip. A week in Glacier is definitely worth it. Our family spent a week there and stayed in some cabins on the southwest side of the park (I forget the name of them). We did an easier hike there to Avalanche Lake that was really nice, though it’s best to get there in the morning as it fills up. Lots of photo opportunities on the way. There are also opportunities for longer overnight hikes there but be prepared as even in July it could easily get down below freezing at night. At that time of year the “Going to the Sun” road in Glacier _should_ be open, and the weather should be just about perfect. We also went rafting there and that was fun, though by July the snow melt will be pretty much finished.
My favorite part of my trip in 2004 out there was the drive from Glacier to Seattle, passing through Paradise, MT. There’s a road there that follows a river and it’s just beautiful with the hills all around you. So definitely head that route.
In Washington I’d recommend Olympic National Park. Olympic has some of the clearest water I’ve ever seen and some neat rainforesty areas along with some nice falls. The Oregon and Washington coasts are also beautiful with some great rock formations off parts of them. You’d have to do a little research to see which beaches would be the best. My brother enjoyed Crater Lake when he was out there so that’s a good choice. He mentioned the water being an unbelievable color (and also unbelievably cold if I remember correctly).
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You should stop and do the geocache “Cache Mission 9: Tunnel of Light” http://coord.info/GC1169 . This is a Project APE geocache and there are only two of these types of caches left in the world. The other is in Sao Paolo, Brazil. This was originally a promotion for the Planet of the Apes movie in 2001. There have been over 1,200 people that have found this one and it is one of the “holy grail” caches. I hope to be able to get out there sometime.
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Something important in hells canyon that you wanted to see?
Honestly, I’d skip it for other things
Coeur d’Alene is a really nice place. We left Spokane and drove over to Grand Coulee Dam then North Cascades National Park. Very interesting country to see. then took a ferry across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Port Angeles and toured Olympic National Park. Very unique park. Has high mountains, a rain forest, and amazing ocean beaches.
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Mt Rainer is impressive too…
I think Mt st Helens is a can’t miss.
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