Meeting the USA - June/July 2000
By Frans Dijkstra
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In June 2000 Lineke and I for the first time visited the USA. On this site you find a quick impression of this marvellous trip. Return to Frans
Dijkstra's homepage |
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Thanks
to our hosts in Seattle, John and Jan Kleyn! Statistics
of this site: |
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Monday 19
June. Our flight was exactly on
schedule when we arrived in Seattle. Another DC10 arrived at the same time,
and that was too much for the good immigration authorities. Long lines of
passengers were waiting to be admitted to the United States of America. 'Just like
Moscow!' was our first comment. Half an hour later we knew that it was not
that bad and we had passed the passport control (Moscow needed 90 minutes). The next
disappointment concerned our luggage. Our big case with 24 kg of clothes and
presents for our hosts was still in Amsterdam. This was the start of a
confusing process of looking for the office of the airline, claiming our lost
case, and answering difficult questions. Our rented car
was eagerly waiting for us. This took me into a new confusing process:
teaching myself to drive in a car with automatic transmission, which I never did
before. With my biological clock at 3 AM, but the local clocks showing 6 PM,
I gained a preliminary success, although I learned not to use my left foot
only the next day. With my left
foot on the brake and the other on the accelerator pedal I managed to get the
car from its parking position and to the highway. Next confusion was how to
find the way to the hotel where we wanted to recover from our jet-lag.
Looking for exit number 163 I took an exit to street number 163. One hour and
40 miles later we absolutely did not know where we were. We had only one
desire: 'sleep!' In panic I almost started to weep. We stopped, studied the
maps once more, and found out what we did wrong. Half an hour later we
arrived at the hotel. We almost immediately went sleeping, at 8 PM local
time, 5 AM on our biological clock. Tuesday 20
June. We woke up at 1 AM. Our
biological clock told us that it was coffee time, so we brew some fresh
coffee. We tried to sleep again, but without success. At 5 AM we went for a
walk, and at 6.30 the restaurants opened for breakfast. At 8.30 AM John
Kleyn, my old friend from the Delft Laboratory of Microbiology, picked us up
and guided us to his house. His wife Jan very warmly greeted us. 'You are the
same as last year. I grew ten years older in one year!' she said, referring
to the side effects of her chemotherapy. Nevertheless she made a very dynamic
impression. With a good cup
of American coffee we discussed our plans for the next days. Later on John
showed us Lake Washington, the Japanese gardens, the Washington University
and the locks at Baylay. We visited the Space Needle, bought a fresh shirt
for Lineke (we were still missing our case with cloths), and met Jan and her
friend Ginny Rorabeck in an old style American restaurant where they had
invited us. We enjoyed the Yankee-size foods and were impressed by the
typical American manner to take the food that you cannot eat with you in a
plastic bag. After dinner we
visited the Trinity Church where I had the opportunity to play the organ. I
had prepared a 30 minutes programme with music composed by Willem Vogel and
Johan Sebastian Bach. I played it without any rehearsal on this organ, so the
performance was not an example of perfection, but we all enjoyed it. Later
that evening our missing luggage was delivered, so that we could again dress
as we liked. Wednesday we went downtown Seattle and enjoyed the specific
atmosphere of the markets and boulevards. There was much in these markets
that reminded us to Moscow, Petersburg, Vilnius and Tallin, with one
exception: everything is very clean and nothing smells badly. Wednesday
night we visited with John and Jane
the new Seattle Concert Hall. The Seattle Mans Chorus made a great
performance, with much gay and spirit. It is said, that Seattle has the
second largest gay community in the US, and that 80 % of the members of the
chorus are gay. Their show was romantic, the lesbian solo singer was
challenging and the conspicuous transvestites were surprising. Unfortunately
our limited English vocabulary did not enable us to follow the jokes. On Thursday
morning we left Seattle after a warm goodbye with our great hosts John and
Jan. We hope to see them again in the future! Thanks to John's perfect
instructions we had no trouble in finding the way to Interstate Highway 5 and
navigating to Mount Saint Helens. About halfway we
passed Elbe, a village founded in 1882 by German settlers. They built an
Evangelical Lutheran Church that still exists, and now is said to be one of
the smallest churches in the USA. The Mount Saint
Helens National Park was very impressing. Thousands of acres of forest have
destroyed in the 1981 eruption of the volcano. Millions of trees still lie as
they were shattered down almost 20 years ago. On the 30 miles long highway at
the east side of the park there are several wonderful scenic points with
views on the volcano, the lakes and the slopes on the mountains. Splendid though
the views are, it is clear, that it must have been a huge inferno, when the
mountain exploded. The words of a radio reporter who saw the explosion remind
on the disaster. A few moments after his broadcasting the reporter was
covered by huge streams of dust, mud and rocks. His body has never been
found, but his last words are written on the wall of the visitor centre. After these
infernal reminiscences we drove to Mount Rainier. We had been lucky to
reserve a room in Paradise Inn, a historic hotel at the foot of Mount Rainier
at 5500 feet altitude. Mount Rainier has an altitude of 14.400 feet. From
Paradise Inn there are hiking trails to campsites very high on the mountain.
Unfortunately there was a thick layer of snow on the trails, so that we could
not go very far. To be more exact: Lineke walked 2 minutes in the snow and I
tried to so one hour. That was not a great success, and so we concentrated
our attention to the romantic atmosphere of the hotel. It is the only hotel
in the world that has been entirely constructed with wood from one forest.
And we explored the lower parts of the park. The Fork Canyon was very
impressive. After Mount
Rainier the landscape on our way to Yakima changed dramatically. After the
White Pass the forests suddenly ended. During one day we mainly saw dry
hills. We had to buy a new camera in Yakima, because the old one got damaged
when I dropped it. After passing the nights in Ellisburg and Sandpoint we
reached the Glacier National Park on Sunday 25 June. The main route through the
park is called the Going to the Sun Road, and it really deserves that name.
With many curves the road is going higher and higher along steep slopes and
deep ravines. We made a long walk along the alpine meadows at Logan Pass, the
highest point of the road. Most of the meadows were still covered by snow.
But the slopes were not that steep as on Mount Raineer, so we could walk 2
miles in the snow to the Hidden Lake. The snow goats welcomed us. We stayed four
nights in the Swift Current Motor Inn, in a beautiful valley at the foot of
Mount Wilbur. The most popular pastime of the guests was: bear watching.
People equipped with telescopes and telephoto lenses spent the whole day
looking at the opposite mountain slopes to see a glimpse of a grizzly bear. These bears are
wild, and you always have the risk at encountering one, when hiking in the
mountains. You are supposed to make noise, so that you never surprise a bear.
That gives you the best chances to avoid being attacked. Every year one or
two people in the USA are killed by a bear. This risk is not too high. Your
chances to win the jackpot in a lottery are much higher! We saw our first
bear at 3000 feet distance. It was a small grey spot moving around the
mountain. The next one was at only 1800 feet. We could distinguish its tail
and head. I saw my third bear when I was hiking in the mountains. It was an
old grey bear with a younger one, and they were at about 1000 feet. Our
closest encounter came in the Yellowstone Park, where we saw a black bear at
only 20 feet distance. Children sat in front of it, while their father
quietly took pictures. This seemed very reckless to us. The general advice is
not to encounter bears closely. Also scientific bear watchers avoid doing so.
They gather small pieces of hair, nails and skin from the trees in the forest
where the bears move around. The DNA-profiles of all these samples are
monitored. From this information bear scientists know, that there are 420
bears in the Glacier National Park. During our last
evening in the Park we attended a campfire talk by a Blackfoot Indian. He
told the sad story of the original population of these mountains, how they
sold these mountains for one and a half million dollars, how the white people
broke their promises, and how the Indians almost lost their culture and
language. But now there is a new impulse to the national awareness of the
Indians. We came to the
Yellowstone Park via Helena, where we stayed overnight. In this capital of Montana
we visited the historical museum. "History" in this country means
the last one and a half century - very peculiar for Europeans! The Yellowstone
Park is famous for its geysers, the falls, cascades and the Grand Canyon. For
me as a former microbiologist it was very charming because of the extreme
conditions that challenge life in this area. You may find boiling springs
here, with an acidity of pure lemon juice (pH = 1), where you might not
expect to find any living being. Yet there are bacteria that even like such
an environment. These thermo-acidophilic bacteria are abundant in many hot
springs in Yellowstone. They form slimy layers on the dead soil with white,
grey, red and orange colours. One bacterial species, Thermus aquaticus,
has been of huge scientific and economic value. Taq-polymerase, which is
essential in modern DNA-tests, is produced from this bacterium. We spent two and
a half day in the Yellowstone Park, admired the varying colours of the
bacteria growing at different temperatures and different acidity, smelled the
sulphurous odours of the gasses, bubbling from the springs, and waited
patiently for the eruption of The Old Faithful, an enormous geyser that
erupts every 45 to 90 minutes. We stayed in the
Canyon Lodge Inn, in a comfortable cabin in a park close to the 1000 feet
deep Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. We walked around the Canyon and
descended to the brinks of the Upper Fall and the Lower Fall in the
Yellowstone River. Wild life in the
Yellowstone Park is quite abundant. Squirrels at from our hands, bisons and
deer were very frequent, and we even saw black bears. Our trip ended
in Salt Lake City. We came there from the Yellowstone Park after one
overnight stay in Soda Springs in the cheapest motel of our whole trip ($ 35
- the only motel that did not accept payment by credit card). In Salt Lake
City we spent most of our time in and around the Temple Square, where the
very kind members of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints
showed us everything we wanted, answered all our questions, and helped us
with some genealogical research. The Mormons like
music. They have the biggest organ in the world in the Tabernacle (we
listened to two recitals), and they have a famous Tabarnacle Choir. Mormons
also like their ancestors. The believe that families exist eternally, and
that ancestors can be baptised as Mormons although they are dead for a long
time. For that purpose they have the biggest genealogical library in the
world. They have a database with information on 2,000,000,000 individuals
(only the data from former centuries are public). I looked for my ancestors
and found some of them, but there was not more information than I already
knew from Dutch archives. I did not find my great-great-great-uncle Pieter
Dijkstra who immigrated to North America in May 1885. His name was not on the
passengers lists of all Dutch ships arriving in New York in May and June
1885. We enjoyed our
last dinner in Salt Lake City in a Brazilian steakhouse, where the servants
offered a wide variety of wood fire roasted meat. The dinner was accompanied
by Brazilian folk music. On Saturday 8
July we happily returned to Schiphol Airport. Our flight was exactly on
schedule. I wrote this report in the aeroplane. We had to switch our
biological clock again. After three weeks driving in an automatic
transmission car I promptly damaged my own car by misusing the hand-driven
gear. What did we
learn from our first stay in the USA? It is a wonderful country with an enormous
variety of landscapes and ecosystems. The original Americans (the Indians)
almost disappeared, but the modern white Americans do their utmost to
preserve what they inherited from the original nature. Americans are
very friendly people. Even the beggar who does not get anything from me (why
should I feel responsibility for the lack of social care in such a rich
country?) responds with "Have a wonderful day!" Americans are
very clean. They do not litter, nor in the natural parks, nor in their hometowns
or villages. They have much living space and they like that. So far so good. But... Americans
eat too much! In Seattle we read in the newspaper about the World top-100 of
health. Despite the enormous expenses for health care (number 1 in the world)
the average health in the USA is only moderate (number 35 in the world). When
you order one sandwich, you get a plate with three sandwiches and an enormous
amount of fries. A 'small cup' of coffee has the double volume of a normal
European cup. Needless to explain what Americans call a 'big cup!' It seems that
everything must be bigger here. American cars consume more fuel. Our
"compact" Ford Escort drove 25 miles to the gallon. For my European
readers: in Dutch we would say "1 liter op 10 kilometer". Even
American toilets use twice the amount of water as European toilets. Good friends,
gays, mountains, bears, bisons, geysers, falls, Mormons! It was a wonderful
experience.
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