The personal and professional website of Douglas Van Bossuyt
I stopped in the little town of Cathlamet, Washington after staying the night in Kelso. The previous day I participated in the NW UPCOAST RAMROD ride. It is a true river town on the lower Columbia.
The old River Rat Trap tavern building doesn’t look so good. The upper floor of the building is leaning quite a bit to the right. I wonder if the bar still is operational.
The old dock. I suspect that the ferry to Puget Island might have departed from this dock. Now a bridge connects the island from the Washington side while a ferry still runs to the Oregon side.
How much longer will the tavern stand before it succumbs to time and the river?
A business of barges, tugs, and river boats.
The little county museum was closed but there were a few interesting things to see outside. This boat, the Totem, fished the river and bought fish from other boats for many years before it was brought ashore as a museum ship.
An old geared logging steam engine sitting on display.
It was named the Six Spot.
On the main drag through town. Not much happening in the morning on a Sunday.
Another view of the river operation.
Due to a flood on the Carbon River in the mid 2000s, the road now ends at the Mount Rainier National Park ranger station. The flock of PC800s and friends pulled up for a quick bathroom break and a chance to look at the river.
The glacial till flowing downriver reminded me of the Jökulsá á Fjöllum in Iceland.
By the looks of the trees, a forest fire ran up the hillside of the opposing bank a few years ago.
The plant life was lush along the river. It reminded me of some of the jungles of plants I saw in Alaska.
This nifty addition to Mick-O-Pegs was brought to us from Canada by one of our PC800 friends from the north. He machined a new end cap insert and slipped on a roller bearing. The bearing takes the brunt of the impact and marring when the pegs are dragged on the pavement. This is a brilliant idea. I will be looking into doing this for my Mick-O-Pegs in the future. Perhaps the folks at http://www.ridingiswonderful.com/ can see about making this an option on new pegs.
On the way down the road back to the main highway, I took some video using my GoPro mounted to the front crash bar plastic on my PC800. After several minutes of successful riding, my GoPro decided to unmount itself and meet the pavement. The camera was fine but it did make me have to stop, retrieve it from the road, and play catch-up to get back with the rest of the RAMROD riders.
