Archive for June, 2009

Northwest News and Links for June 25, 2009

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

Northwest News and Links for June 18, 2009

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

Northwest News and Links for June 17, 2009

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

Northwest News and Links for June 13, 2009

Saturday, June 13th, 2009

Northwest News and Links for June 12, 2009

Friday, June 12th, 2009

Oh, Please Mind the Mess

Thursday, June 11th, 2009

It’s been a busy, busy week (or at least since Monday night when I stayed up till 3:30am) here at NW Explorer. I’ve had the idea for this blog since February, but some layoff scares put it into hibernation where it effectively stayed dormant ever since.

But an absolutely breathtaking trip into south-central Washington and back into the Columbia River Gorge via the spectacular Kilickitat River changed my mind in a hurry about the Explorer.

So, since then I’ve been in a mad dash installing WordPress, setting up the basic plugins and the like, trying to organize the site’s categories, plan for future pages and blog posts, setting up and organizing a massive Google Reader feed of websites from across the four states (and one Canadian province!), and much, much more.

There’s a lot to be done still, including putting the finishing touches on my custom designed user interface in Photoshop and then turning it into a functional WordPress theme. Past that, there’s a lot of content writing to be done – at least twelve articles and a couple pages (ala that About page you see).

I’m hoping this weekend will be fuitful. Not many folks know about the Explorer yet, and that’s for the best. But if you’re just dropping by, here’s the reason things look to be in utter dissaray – because they are.

Northwest News and Links for June 10, 2009

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

The Wild and Scenic Klickitat River

Monday, June 8th, 2009

This past Sunday, I left my house intending to go on an hour jaunt around town, get out of the apartment for a while, and eventually make my way back to Safeway for a stock me up of groceries.

Too bad things didn’t end up that way.

A few hours later, I emerged from the beautiful grey cloud cover west of the Cascades andwas greated by the sun and sparesely beautiful high desert and farmland near Goldendale, WA . Not wanting to put in the extreme amount of time to head up to Yakima and through the White Pass – or wanting to explore further into southeast Washington – I decided to turn back onto State Route 142 and ended up being pretty much amazed at what I saw.

St. Route 142 meanders for several miles west of Goldendale through farm and  ranch land, but you get about a mile or two past Blockhouse Butte and find the road descending sharply into a decently deep but rather narrow canyon or gorge carved out by the Klickitat River.

The next 15-20 miles are spent with me slackjawed at the sheer beauty of what I’m seeing.

About the Klickitat River

The Klickitat River feeds off of collossal Mt. Adams in southern Washington.

I’m Will, and I Love the Pacific Northwest

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

Every blog has got to start out with that daunting initial post, right? Well, it’s no different around here. So how’s this?

Hello, I’m Will, and I  am falling in love with the Pacific Northwest (now say it, everybody: hi, Will).

I moved to Portland, Oregon about three years ago from Oklahoma and now have a hard time thinking I’ll ever leave. It’s not enough that Portland is awesome , but just the entire region continues to blow me away. I suppose the fact that I spend  about half my free time racking up the miles driving around the region is only making me more and more enamoured with every weekend drive.

So far, my longest trips have been circumnavigating the Olympic Penninsula and a drive to Yakima via the Dalles and back West via the Cascades (two seperate trips, I swear!). And that’s not even taking into account a sixteen mile hike in flip-flops I took in the high desert wasteland between Burns and Ontario in August 2008 (true story I’ll tell you about sometime).

The fact is, I am amazed by the Northwest. The mountains. The super, uber, wonderfully tall pines and firs. The beaches. The wide open high desert. Mountain rivers. The whole shebang.

I’m so amazed that I want to record some of my random trips around Oregon and Washington (such as my discovery of the wild and scenic Klickitat River in Washinton this past weekend) and create some sort of central place on the web for people to discover what makes the Northwest so amazing.

Should be a wild ride!