The Traveler’s Boundless Road: Seattle, Portland, and Beyond

I’ve been in the United States for a little over half a year. Although I took the family on a trip to Southern California at the end of March, for me it was a return to familiar ground, not a new journey, so I had been longing for the next leg. As it happened, many people on my team took vacation around the week of the Independence Day long weekend, so I simply took four days off and put together a nine-day itinerary, preparing to head north to Seattle.

(I)

Originally our plan was to fly from San Jose to Seattle and then rent a car and drive all the way back. One-way tickets for the three of us came to just under $500, and my wife bought them early. I hadn’t paid much attention to the rental car and only started arranging it two weeks before departure. The price shocked me: nearly $1,000 for nine days, most of it related to the one-way drop-off. On previous trips to Europe, we had rented in Paris and returned in Nice, rented in Frankfurt and returned in Munich—both fairly long spans—but the one-way fees hadn’t seemed especially high, so this time I took it for granted that $400 or $500 would secure a compact SUV.

With rental prices that high, the original plan of flying one way and driving back felt like chicken ribs—not worth chewing on; driving our own small car the whole way would save the steep rental fee, but the $500 in airfare would basically go down the drain. After weighing it back and forth, we painfully chose the latter.

The advantage of driving our own car was freedom to come and go; the disadvantage was that the distance from Silicon Valley to Seattle is simply too far. Crossing two states—Oregon and Washington—it totaled 850 miles and would take nearly 13 hours, so we could only drive it in segments, wasting time on the road. Our plan was to first spend a day at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon, then charge toward Seattle, playing all the way back.

Crater Lake is exactly what its name says: a volcanic lake. About seven thousand years ago, the mountain god of Mount Mazama could no longer restrain the earth demon; enormous lava erupted, hollowed out the mountain body, and the whole crater fractured and collapsed into a basin. Over thousands of years of rain and snow, the original crater became a huge bowl-shaped lake, nearly 600 m deep at its deepest point.

To properly appreciate this deepest and clearest lake in the United States, we deliberately set aside a full day for it. The result was a slight disappointment: not that the lake and mountain scenery weren’t beautiful and spectacular, but that such a fine lake had no decent development at all. At the top there was only one trail—a dirt path—leading down to the shore, to the stretch of shoreline where you could touch the water. If you don’t swim and don’t take a boat to Phantom Ship, you are quite likely to miss this trail and therefore miss the beauty along the shore. There is nowhere to rest by the lake, not even a bench—the crowds streaming endlessly from behind will push you back up the mountain. I can understand the national park’s good intentions: overdevelopment would harm the ecology. On this point, Americans could learn a thing or two from the Germans. Königssee in Berchtesgaden protects its ecology with great care while still not sending travelers who have come from afar home disappointed.

(II)

After bidding farewell to Crater Lake, we stayed one night in a small town near Eugene, then sped all the way to Seattle the next day.

Mention Seattle, and the first things that pop out of people’s social feeds are “Finding Mr. Right” and “Sleepless in Seattle.” My own longing for Seattle came from a story I heard as a boy about Bill Gates ascending the Space Needle. It is said that as a child he recited the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew verbatim, and was therefore invited to dinner at this Seattle landmark. Whether the story is true or not, the Needle, Gates, and the Microsoft empire Gates built gave me an early affection for Seattle.

In the Internet age, when people who admire each other online finally meet in person, it always feels like meeting falls short of reputation. I imagine readers who have met me have all felt a pang—or perhaps a smile—of recognition: so Programmer Jun is nothing special after all, just an unremarkable dark-skinned fat guy. The Space Needle is the same. When we parked in the hotel garage on Fifth Street and pushed the stroller toward the Needle, from a distance it looked short and weathered among the towering skyscrapers around it. Decades ago, at the World’s Fair, it looked down on the world with a “who else but me” air; now it must yield that honor to the ever-sprouting younger brothers that rise far taller than it.

Still, the Space Needle retains a unique charm. The tourists gathered beneath it from all over the world are the best explanation. Most tourists don’t care much about a city’s present or future; they move through one sight after another, wanting to form some connection with the city’s past, and the Space Needle is this city’s Pensieve. If there is one place in Seattle with a line from morning to night, it must be the Space Needle.

Of course, the first Starbucks at Pike Place Market is indispensable too. Without experiencing it yourself, you can never imagine how wildly popular this Starbucks is. The coffee recipe is nothing special, the interior is unbearably cramped, and whether or not any of Howard Schultz’s original taste remains, amid a crowd of sweaty, jostling tourists, taste has long since become a distant memory. What tourists care about is “Veni, vidi, vici”—I came, I saw, I conquered. We couldn’t avoid the vulgarity either: pushing the stroller, we queued behind an enormous line hundreds of feet away, all just to enter the store and buy a Frappuccino available everywhere at the same price anywhere, doing our duty as tourists while recalling Howard’s values of holding fast to a dream, pressing forward, and pouring your heart into it.

We spent two days in Seattle basically on foot. My wife bought a CityPASS, so we gave every stop on the pass the “been here” treatment. It happened that around that week, Paul Graham’s “Cities and Ambition”—which had swept Yeeyan years earlier—became popular in social feeds again, so friends asked me to talk about Seattle. But I couldn’t. Asking a tourist like me, who only skimmed the surface and spent less than twenty hours in contact with Seattle, to comment on the city is like asking a trend-following auntie in a stock trading hall to discuss the index’s movements—very unreliable.

At the University of Washington, one of America’s best public universities, I ate dinner but didn’t wander into the library.

I visited the Museum of Flight but, because of my child’s age, couldn’t book a tour of the Boeing factory.

I stepped along the edge of Redmond but didn’t visit Microsoft headquarters, that holy site that had once haunted my dreams.

I didn’t even catch a single minute of rain—and remember, Seattle is the place people joke gets rain two hundred days a year.

So the Seattle in my eyes is no different from the Seattle in other tourists’ eyes—perhaps even less.

What I felt was crowds like weaving shuttles and Chinese-style jaywalking. The city is cleaner than San Francisco and has fewer homeless people, but many Black people. Perhaps there was some special event those two days; the streets were full of outlandish outfits and all sorts of Shamate-style young people. In the blocks near the Space Needle, quite a few female Shamates wore nothing on top but pasties. Since their looks really didn’t match my aesthetic, it felt like watching the American TV series “Marco Polo.”

To talk about a city, you must have an unforgettable experience. I hope that one day I can live here for half a year or even longer, savor the city properly, and then offer a few reflections somewhat like Paul Graham’s.

(III)

We stayed only two days in Seattle; what crowded out the time left for Seattle were Olympic National Park and Mt. Rainier.

After leaving Seattle, we headed west and stopped at Port Angeles, the gateway town to Olympic National Park. This port town in America’s northwest corner, gazing toward Canada, has a unique charm—you only need to go around nine o’clock, as the sun sets, to the observation tower at the old-town harbor and look around, and you will feel it: to the west, where sea and sky meet, are a red sunset and gorgeous afterglow clouds; to the east, above the layered mountain skyline, hangs a bright, round moon. One night on our way to the harbor, a graceful couple in their forties suddenly stopped us and pointed at the huge round moon rising from the horizon behind us, telling us to look. After passing us, the couple turned toward the bright moon and shared a romantic French kiss. We were stunned; the scene was simply too beautiful and too romantic.

(IV)

Olympic National Park has unique temperate rainforests, all kinds of breathtaking lakes and waterfalls, and the famous Hurricane Ridge. Hiking atop Hurricane Ridge, looking up at the majesty of distant snowy Mt. Rainier on one side and down at the lush, layered valleys on the other, I couldn’t help feeling heroic spirit fill me through and through. As we were advancing toward the summit, a large family of tourists hurried down from above and said the goats had come down, make way quickly, they had killed people before. At first I thought I had misheard and asked back: “Do you mean a mountain lion?” Later I saw several white figures and realized they really were goats. Holding Xiaobao, we hurried downhill while chatting with the family, and only then learned that a few years earlier a hiker had strayed into the goats’ territory and been gored through the chest by an enraged goat’s sharp horns, dying despite treatment. When herbivores defend their homes and territory, they can be fierce enough that even bloodthirsty beasts must give them a wide berth.

After dodging the goats, on another trail we saw several black-tailed deer grazing in the grass. We had already seen deer several times along the way; once they crossed the road and forced us to stop, so seeing a herd again wasn’t much of a surprise. The black-tailed deer are used to tourists too; they let cameras click away while they kept grazing and casually struck a pose.

(V)

Olympic National Park has many routes; we did the four main ones: Hurricane Ridge, Lake Crescent, Sol Duc, and Quinault. Along the way we passed through Forks, a town you can cross in three to five minutes and a filming location for “Twilight.” In more than half a year in America, we had traveled through quite a few places large and small, but what struck me most was this country’s and its residents’ attitude toward knowledge. No matter how small the town, there is always a prominent library sign; in Forks, for example, the most conspicuous buildings are the library and the school. In Sunnyvale, the Silicon Valley town where I work, a free library card lets you borrow almost unlimited books. There are many books and they are very new. As I write this, on my desk sit the 2014 “Elasticsearch: The Definitive Guide,” the April 2015 “Living Clojure,” and others. The number and newness of the new books are almost unimaginable for libraries in China. The National Library of China is the national library that gathers the best of the country, and its collection probably ranks in the world, but the books available for borrowing don’t match the holdings of Silicon Valley towns like Sunnyvale or Cupertino; most borrowable books are quite old, and each person is limited to three at a time. Here, many parents borrow books for their children by pulling rolling suitcases and hauling them home box by box. Apart from the living environment, my good impression of America comes from this society-wide love of books.

Back to the point.

On the hike from Sol Duc toward the waterfall, while trying to photograph a small bridge, my hand slipped and my 6 Plus fell screen-down onto the gravel-strewn path, shattering the screen. The phone had slipped from my hand many times before and survived every time; this was the one time it couldn’t escape. Breaking the phone ruined my mood for half the day; facing the rushing waterfall, I wore a bitter melon face. Fortunately, when I signed up for service at the beginning of the year, AT&T talked me into insurance, so with only a $199 deductible I could get a new phone. After getting home I hurriedly filed the claim online, and by the time I was writing this article I finally received a brand-new phone—but that is a later story.

(VI)

From Olympic National Park to Mt. Rainier is about a four-hour drive, and nearly an hour of that is spent inside Rainier park itself. When we arrived at Rainier, although it was still a weekday, it was already the eve of the long weekend. When we drove to the parking lot at the summit visitor center, we actually couldn’t find a spot and had to park in a lot slightly lower down.

Mt. Rainier is very spectacular, but spectacle alone doesn’t bring so many tourists. I believe most visitors, like us, come for the wildflowers covering the mountainsides along the Skyline Trail. When we walked the half mile or so from the parking lot to the trailhead, we were immediately struck by the unique charm of mountains setting off flowers and flowers setting off mountains. Neither an iPhone nor a DSLR can capture the beauty the eye sees: blue sky, green mountains, white snow, and pink, yellow, red, and purple wildflowers of every kind, all competing in splendor, bringing nature’s pure beauty to its extreme.

On the Skyline Trail we walked seven or eight kilometers round trip, about four hours. If Xiaobao hadn’t gotten tired, perhaps we would have continued toward the summit. On the way back, Xiaobao cried and fussed for me to carry her; not long after I picked her up, she slumped against me and fell asleep. A little one not yet three, hopping and skipping along on her own for three or four kilometers of mountain trail, mostly uphill, with astonishing stamina—and of course we also have to thank the beautiful scenery that drew her along.

If I had to name the most beautiful place on this trip, Mt. Rainier would win without contest.

(VII)

Reluctantly leaving Mt. Rainier, we headed south all the way to Portland.

I’ll be running the Portland Marathon in October; this visit was purely to get a feel for the city. Unlike Seattle, where we stayed downtown, in Portland we stayed in the suburbs and drove into the city. Our two days in Portland coincided with the Independence Day long weekend, and it was truly “people mountain people sea.” During the day we visited the Columbia River Gorge and managed to get stuck for two hours before Multnomah Falls, billed as the second-highest waterfall in the United States; when we finally reached the destination there was nowhere to park, so we could only tearfully drive past the falls. American long weekends are a match for our Chinese ones—famous sights are packed to overflowing. We felt very lucky that Olympic National Park and Mt. Rainier had just missed the peak.

After a hurried tour of the Columbia River Gorge, we abandoned the famous sights that were bound to be jammed and headed straight for Lavender Valley at the edge of the gorge. Lavender Valley—the name is rather grand, but it is actually just a farm that grows a large patch of lavender, with no valley about it at all. That name-doesn’t-match-reality feeling reminded me of a motel I stayed in near LA about ten years ago. It was at most Super 8 level, but its name was extravagantly grand: Lincoln Imperial Grand Hotel.

If, after returning from the Five Great Mountains, one no longer cares about other mountains, then after returning from Provence, all other lavender fields in the world are mere clouds. Lavender Valley was disappointing—in Provence, the air is filled with the fragrance of lavender as soon as you arrive, but here, even with your nose pressed into the lavender field, there is only a faint scent. My wife wasn’t willing to give up; she spent $10 on two bunches to take home, and after only three days the fragrance had already faded. I remembered bringing a bunch of lavender back from Provence years ago; afterward we traveled to Nice, Rome, and other places, and the fragrance accompanied us the whole way. Even more than a month after returning home, the house was still full of the smell of Provence.

In the evening, avoiding the daytime traffic, we entered downtown Portland and parked near Powell’s Books—Powell’s City of Books. Powell’s claims to be the largest independent bookstore in the world, and we very much wanted to see what it was like. Once inside, we got lost in the sea of books. After about half an hour, my wife and I decided to split up and look at books that interested each of us, then meet again half an hour later. The layout was thoughtful: sections were divided by major category into different colors, and in front of the bestselling books on each shelf were handwritten recommendations or reading notes from bookstore staff. Just reading those handwritten words was intoxicating.

Once we started looking, there was no stopping us; it was almost eight o’clock before we hurriedly met up to leave. We still needed to go shopping at the nearby Apple Store. A quick check on Google Maps gave us a fright: the Apple Store here closed at eight! So we pushed the stroller and ran all the way, finally grabbing the door in the instant before the staff were about to close up, and persuading them to let us in.

Oregon is a tax-free state, but it seems only Portland has an Apple Store. I had long admired the 5K Retina iMac, the $1,999 base model. With California tax, I would have to pay nearly $180 in tax; I was going to buy it sooner or later anyway, so why not save the tax by taking a trip? After checkout, when the clerk placed the big thing in front of me, I was stunned: this was on the verge of not fitting in the trunk!

Sure enough, after putting this big thing in the little X1’s trunk, there was nowhere to hide the stroller. After shuffling things around for ages, there was no choice but to put the stroller in the front passenger seat.

(VIII)

On the second-to-last day of the trip, Independence Day itself, we toured Woodburn. Tax-free status plus one of summer’s most important long weekends had whipped the discounts at this Premium Outlets into a frenzy. At Levi’s, my wife and I bought four pairs of denim shorts and two T-shirts; the bizarre discounts meant we paid only $80 in the end—it felt like robbery. Coach was 70 percent off across the store; looking around, the place was packed with fellow Chinese. The bags on the shelves emptied in moments, and the staff hurried to restock. The only Chinese female employee in the store was busier than a candidate touring everywhere for a presidential campaign, shuttling through the crowd like a bee. Ralph Lauren was another favorite of the Chinese; prices at 50 percent off or less, dirt-cheap, made everyone scramble with red eyes, wishing the store provided Walmart shopping carts. As a rube, besides Levi’s, I also picked up several $10-plus polos at Tommy, and left satisfied.

(IX)

The final day’s itinerary was extremely challenging: 650 miles, a 10-hour drive. The worst part was that the afternoon of the last day of a long weekend is inevitably jammed, and that afternoon we were supposed to be back in California on the way to San Francisco or San Jose—a terrifying stretch of road made of a sea of cars. We would have to compete for scarce right-of-way with shopaholics returning from Oregon, families with children returning from Lake Tahoe, and gamblers returning from Reno.

So we set off at 7:30 in the morning, constantly overtaking at 80–85 mph. Even so, after several rest stops and lunch, by the time we turned from I-5 onto I-80, we still witnessed an unparalleled traffic jam. Fortunately, the little X1’s GPS had real-time traffic information and immediately directed us off the highway. We took back roads for ten-plus miles, then returned to the highway, avoiding the turtle crawl on the freeway.

In the afternoon the speed never came back up, hovering between 40 and 60. We drove like that until 6:30 in the evening, people and car both exhausted, and finally made it back to Cupertino, ending this eleven-hour purgatory. I don’t know whether it was the endurance running marathons have given me, or the tempering from months of almost daily 90-mile battles commuting between San Francisco and Cupertino, but I didn’t find this drive especially torturous.

(X)

Back home, lying in bed, as the excitement and fatigue of the journey gradually smoothed away, my mind was filled with the dried-up riverbeds caused by the severe drought along the way. Yes, over the past year or two, not only has California suffered severe drought; Oregon and Washington have also been repeatedly hit by dry conditions. Along the trip, the bare riverbeds by the roadside, the streams that no longer existed, the severely shrunken lakes—all were shocking. I don’t know whether this is a phenomenon peculiar to the dry season—summer—or whether it is like this all year round, but the world’s freshwater resources are currently under strain. Some things you truly appreciate only after you have lost them.