Seattle has jobs. It has always had plenty of middle class jobs: first in fishing, shipping, lumber and coal mining. Later railroad building, gold miner transportation to the Yukon, longshoremen, and shipbuilding. Then airplane building. Finally, software and software contracts. Immigrants from Europe and Asia, skilled and unskilled, flocked to Seattle, which was well-known for tolerance and coexistence. Seattle’s suburbs gave rise to Boeing, Microsoft, Starbucks, Costco. And now Seattle is dominated by the King Kong of Monkey Island: Amazon. On Seattle.gov I read that one in fourteen adults between the ages of 22 and 34 was employed by Amazon in 2015. Now it’s probably even more. The many years of middle class jobs, the mild climate and the beautiful scenery have sparked two entwined trends: population growth and liberal values. Sadly, these trends are now at odds with each other. While the Seattle city council was busy forging sister city relationships and outlawing circus animals in the 1990’s, the city attracted more residents than its streets could carry. Public transit here lags 25 years behind. And housing prices, like in any boom town, have been skyrocketing. In our niece and nephew’s neighborhood, a modest hundred year old Craftsman sells for a million bucks. Flipping houses is evident: a listing sold in March for $400K, then pops back up on the market, maybe with a a new coat of paint, in July for $800K. Their neighborhood has been gentrified into the unaffordable. But one can practice mixed martial arts in the same studio as aerial yoga. Going native for the day, we bought $13 egg and bacon sandwiches and $5 coffee from a fedora-wearing barista. We passed on the ketocoffee, that’s coffee with butter and coconut oil, and the turmeric-beet latté. Since we’d seen the downtown sights on previous visits, and since traveling with motor home and housepet limits one’s urban adventures, we visited Lake Sammamish in the suburbs.

 When the lumber mill outside Leavenworth, WA closed in 1972, the town elders decided to court tourists with theme events and architecture. They Bavarianized the town. Every building is styled as if Opa and Oma had lavished care on the ancestral mountain home. I saw painted Baroque trompe–l’oeil window sashes like in this photo, window boxes planted with geraniums, folk art wall paintings of couples in traditional dress: the Herr in Lederhosen and the Fräulein in Dirndl. It was prosperous Bavaria without the xenophobia, welcoming tourists with beer and cheer. I noted a few houses that looked half-timbered, the traditional way of building, but were actually modern stucco with a half-timbered facade.  Potemkin half-timbering!  The German term for half- timbering, in which the wooden support structure shows in a contrasting dark color, is Fachwerk. That translates to “skilled craft work.”  The motivation behind half-timbered houses was to show off the skill of the builder and the wealth of the owner with beautiful dovetail joints, built for the snow as well as for the ages.  One aspect of German culture I love is this pride in handiwork.

I spotted a bakery under the sign of the pretzel, the traditional sign of the bakers’ guild. Indeed, an Austrian ex-pat sold me delicious apple strudel and almond crescents.  It was the first good bakery I’d come across since Sonoma County.  Following in my father’s footsteps, I investigate bakeries in each new town. Never have I seen so many pallid, overmixed scones as in central Oregon.   Doneness in baking means an even golden-brown, also called “just this side of burnt.” Hear that, Sisters Bakery? Dragonfly bakery?  Mix less, bake longer. That’s my pride in handiwork talking.

One delightful surprise in Leavenworth came from this 8th Grade orchestra from Tacoma Middle School several hours’ bus ride away. Each year both the band and the orchestra offer public performances in several Washington cities on their grand tour.  I was amazed by the funds and consent required for such an endeavor. Most California public middle schools have all but given up field trips: too hard to coordinate, too expensive, too much liability.  In Tacoma, the other teachers, the parents, and the school administration all support the music program in a way unheard of in Santa Clara County.  Instrument lending and music lessons, a bus trip, lodging in hostels, food for the youth, 30 minute concerts in each city on the tour: it adds up. The parents and the school pay.  It happens in Washington, a state with no personal income tax.  And to add a grace note: the kids sounded good!

 Veratrum? Corn Lily? At Little Crater Lake, Mt. Hood National Forest

Lupine at Little Crater Lake, Mt. Hood National Forest

Solomon Seal, Timothy Lake, Mt. Hood National Forest

Bunchberry, Elevation 3500 Feet, on the trail to Tamanawas Falls

Penstemon at a talus fall by Tamanawas Falls, Mt. Hood National Forest

Rock supporting all kinds of plant life: cedar, fern, clover, and moss. In Polallie Creek, Mt. Hood National Forest, OR

Rhododendrons thrive in the moist shade. Volcanic plug in background. Bonneville Dam, OR

Four-headed water fountains invite group drinks, but really Portland is a beer town. Well, a beer, coffee, doughnut, and ice cream town.

On the day I visited Portland, the sun was shining, the roses were blooming and the young white adults were waiting in long lines for popular treats. While many of the ladies wore bright or pastel sundresses, nail polish, make up, and jewelry, their swains looked like they rolled out of a tent in the black T-shirt and jeans they slept in. The ladies wore more makeup than you’d find at UCSC, including cat’s eye eyeliner à la Liz Taylor in “Cleopatra.” But instead of the men channeling Richard Burton as Marc Antony, the gents favored close cropped hair and full beards, or at least stubble. They looked like Civil War re-enactors. After the cheery androgyny of the surfer culture, I was surprised at the strong sexual dimorphism. The young folks stood in line for Voo Doo Doughnuts. Here’s the line:

For $4 you can buy doughnuts shaped like genitalia. Call me species-ist, but I will never fellate a doughnut. They also hold weddings in their shop, continuing their theme of quirky love. And, for the record, they sell traditional doughnuts, too.

Another trendy Portland business with long lines is Salt and Straw, a premium ice cream shop. The gimmick at Salt and Straw is odd combination flavors: savory with sweet. Here are actual flavors that I have renamed: Lavender Mascarpone: Grammy’s Bathsoap. Chocolate with pretzel bits: Swiss Pothole Filler. Potato chips with chocolate chips: Couch Potato Grit. Strawberries and balsamic vinegar: Kitchen Shelf Confusion. I remain loyal to our Penny Ice Creamery, which might be featuring Peaches and Cream about now.

Keeping my record in strange cities unblemished, I was asked for directions. Must be my innocuous appearance. Also, I was panhandled, profanely and humorlessly insulted by street people and snubbed by a restaurant hostess, but all that could happen to me in Santa Cruz.

Activities observed around Kah-Nee-Ta Resort in Warm Springs, OR: children scrambling up steep hills, running full tilt on pavement, playing ball in the parking area, and bouncing on air mattresses.  And of course children were also playing more conventionally in the pool, at mini-golf,  and at the playground.  I’m glad there are a few family-friendly spots like this where kids create their own fun (Pool Day Use: $10 per kid, $15 per adult, free when you stay in the resort). There are two water slides, one tame and open, one steep and dark.  The pool has reasonable rules: no food or drink, no float toys in the deep end, no prolonged underwater swimming.  An additional rule states, “Please refrain from overly affectionate behavior, as children and families are present.” At least a couple of the lifeguards watching the pool were covertly occupied with their phones.  Hoody up, shades on, eyes down on the screen hidden behind the rescue float.  It was lovely warm chlorinated mineral water, geothermal heated to 130, then cooled to 90 or 91 degrees.  There were the tan Indian children and the white children, the lavishly tattooed and the opulently wrinkled, the hairless and the hairy, the pregnant and the beach-ball pregnant. I got mugged by an inflatable flamingo piloted by a cackling teen girl but frontier justice prevailed later that evening. The flamingo rider had tried to toss the float toy over the sharp iron railing enclosing the pool.  Of course the pikes impaled the flamingo’s neck and there she hung, hissing air.  That’s the sound of 20 bucks leaving. I know that price because that’s what the mom said when she saw the deflated girl and bird.

Another day, and the lifeguard is paying attention. In fact, I approached the lifeguard and asked him (always a male) to intervene when I saw a situation I didn’t like. A muscled white dad, in his thirties, University of Washington (that’s U-Dub to locals) cap, stubble, was trying to get his six-year old son to go down the 184- foot, enclosed water slide. The little boy was crying and ran away from his dad at the top of the slide. The boy, whose name was Conrad, was not four feet tall, so he was too small by the pool rules to use the slides. The mom and boy were at the top of the slide and  before the lifeguard could blow his whistle, she had put him in the slide. Down he whooshed, where he dad was waiting to shower him with praise for his “bravery.” Snort.  Conrad continued to cry, but he cheered up when the lifeguard told his parents he was too small to use the slide.  “Oh, he’s huge,” said the U-Dub dad when the lifeguard questioned his size.  But they were banned from the slide after that.  Of course, as with many frightening experiences, the first time is the scariest. But these folks forgot that it’s not fun being coerced. I don’t like it when parents hurt their children in the name of toughening them up.

While relaxing in the warm mineral water, a few memories of swimming pools surfaced. The float toys included a shark, a swan, an island, a race car, a doughnut, a raft, “Ducky-momo,” and a few cartoon characters I didn’t recognize. It reminded me that I was the one who popped my sister’s inflatable dolphin, Flipper. The second memory is of an example I learned from school. More drownings occur where ice cream is sold. But correlation is not causation, so ice cream does not cause drowning.

Now on to the Indian part of Warm Springs. Here’s a look at dressed-up young uns from a photo in the museum.

Kah-Nee-Ta means “Root Digger” in Sahaptin, one of three tribal languages barely surviving on the Warm Springs Reservation. We were guests of the Confederation of Warm Springs Tribes, one of the best established Reservations in the West. Thanks to a morning spent at their museum, I can narrate a bit of their history. In 1853 the Warm Springs Tribal Chiefs signed a Treaty with the USA, relinquishing 10 million acres in exchange for 640,000 acres. They gave up north-central Oregon, from the Hood River to the Deschutes River. They retained the right to fish and harvest in the National Forests where JG and I had been camping and hiking. We had seen signs prohibiting huckleberry picking unless we were tribal members. The other staples of their traditional diet were camas, bitterroot, biscuitroot, acorns, and salmon. Two other tribes, the Wasco and the Northern Paiute, joined the Warm Springs Confederation after a few violent skirmishes in 1879 and 1881 left them without recourse. The US Cavalry captured over 100 Northern Paiute warriors and their Chief Paulina, and threatened to hang them unless they relocated their people to Warm Springs. Several generations later, the Indians started to modernize. They wished to be more independent. They had sold their logging rights before, now they wanted to cut their own trees. They bought themselves a sawmill in 1942. They diversified their industries. In 1948, they built a hydroelectric dam on the Deschutes. They won a $4 Million settlement from the USA in the 1960’s when the USA built a dam upstream from their reservation. In 1972 they got into the tourism and hospitality business with Kah-Nee-Ta. Later they opened a casino on Highway 26 between Bend and Portland. In 2012 they opened a fancy new casino, called the Indian Head Casino, a mile north of the old one. As a federally recognized Indian tribe, the Warm Springs Indians have their own government within the USA, not answerable to the USA in many respects: property tax and ownership, law and judicial process, education, land use. A council of eleven chiefs, three serving life terms, eight serving three year terms, is chosen by popular vote. The council makes all decisions for the tribe at open meetings where any member can speak. The Warm Springs Indians are Northeastern Oregon’s largest employer, with over 1500 employees in 2015, even more than tire magnate Les Schwab. Other aspects of life on the reservation: we saw horses grazing on the unfenced grassland, apparently left to forage. There seems to be lots of communal property, small scale socialism. And thanks to the activism of the Warm Springs band in 2001, the Oregon legislature outlawed the term “Squaw” for any place names. “Squaw” is a perjorative term for a Native woman. This necessitated the renaming of over 89 Squaw Creeks. We camped along one near Sisters, now named Wychus Creek.

My mother liked stories where the working people band together to improve their lot. My spouse likes stories where the engineers are the heroes. I like stories of cooperating with nature.  There’s something for all of us at the Bonneville Dam and Fish Hatchery.  Built in the 1930’s by the Army Corps of Engineers and the Works Progress Administration, the dam harnesses the Columbia River for hydroelectric power.  But first, they had to build the fish ladder, which is a set of baffles with openings cut in them, around the dam for the returning salmon.

And while they built the fish ladder, they added ponds for the fish. Ichthyologists harvest the fish eggs, throw the parent carcasses back into the river for the wildlife to eat, and allow the fertilized eggs to hatch in enclosures topped with netting to keep out predators.  When the fry are big enough and have had a good snootful of the smell of home, they are released back into the Columbia through a pipe, guarded by double sprinklers so the birds don’t just pick them off. Meanwhile, the Columbia churns massive turbines to fuel the power grid.  And, not to be overlooked, there is a set of locks to allow marine traffic up and down the river.  While I watched, a tugboat guiding a barge of fir logs downstream took its turn in the locks. The fish ponds are teeming with fry and large fish. For a quarter you can buy a handful of fish food and throw it in a pond to show your fish love. And there is a local celebrity, beloved by schoolchildren, named Herman the Sturgeon in the sturgeon tank and pond. Eleven foot long Herman was chillin’ with some buds when I took his photo.

Take that, Spongebob. Herman was not evacuated last September during the Eagle Creek fire, although his keepers were worried about him. The Bonneville Dam wildlife specialists also have a program to protect salmon from the predations of the Northern Pike Minnow.

See http://www.pikeminnow.org The Fish and Wildlife Department offers a bounty on every pike minnow 9 inches or longer. It’s $6 each for the first 200, then $8 apiece. Catch a tagged fish and redeem it for $500. Each year there is an on-line leaderboard so the top twenty anglers get bragging rights as well as cash. This is a great example of managing both sport fishing and wildlife.