Southwest Washington Road Trip, 2025-2026

 

In late 2025 and early 2026, I took a couple of road trips to southwest Washington. This is a wooded and mountainous area, a dramatic contrast to the urban sprawl of the Puget lowlands and the Seattle-Tacoma metro mess.  

Let's take a big clockwise route by driving south on I-5 to Kelso/Longview and then heading west along the Columbia River on Washington Route 4, the Ocean Beach Highway. 

I wrote about Kelso in May 2026 (click the link). And I posted a few scenes from Longview in November 2026.

 

Rosburg

Store, 4193 State Road 4 (Zeiss Ikon ZM camera, 35mm ƒ/2 Summicron lens)

Rosburg is quiet, a farming community on State Route 4 in Wahkiakum County. I took the two frames above at dusk, with the camera tripod-mounted.

 

Naselle

Naselle is at the junction of Rte 4 and Rte 401, the Lewis and Clark Trail Highway. I turned off on 401 and proceeded to the Astoria-Megler Bridge, which crosses the Columbia River to the city of Astoria. Let's continue along Rte 4, which turns northwest and merges with US101 south of Nemah.

 

South Bend

South Bend is the county seat of Pacific County. It has a superb court house up on a hill overlooking the city and the Willapa River.

 

Treasures on US 101 west of South Bend (35mm ƒ/2 Summicron lens)

Warehouse (Ilford XP2 film, Pentax MX camera, 28mm ƒ/3.5 Pentax shift lens)

Pacific County Courthouse (Moto G5 digital image)

Rotunda in the Pacific County courthouse

This 1910-1911 courthouse is an architectural gem. It is in immaculate condition. From the national register of Historic Places:

Today, the courthouse remains an exceptionally well-preserved, sophisticated example of public architecture, all the more remarkable for its location in the heart of a rural lumbering and fishing district.

In terms of its massing, its wall articulation, and its arcaded fenestration pattern,
the courthouse may best be described as an example of the Second Renaissance Revival style.

 Raymond

 

Raymond is a lumber town on the Willapa River. I wrote about Raymond earlier in 2026. Here is a 2022 frame from a garage/museum off of Route 6 east of town.

 

Waiting for a ride, 1500 Henkie St. (Rte 6) 

(Kodak Gold 200 film, Kodak Retina IIa camera, 50mm ©/2 Xenon lens) 

Menlo 

 

Menlo is a tiny town about five miles southeast of Raymond on Rte 6. I have stopped at the historic 1924 country store and post office in 2022 and looked inside. If you are passing this way, definitely stop and check the interior.    

Menlo country store (Portra 160 film, Zeiss Ikon ZM camera, 5 cm ƒ/2 Summitar lens)

 Pe Ell

 

I like this little town with its unusual name. The Willapa Hills Trail comes into town, but I have not bicycled this far yet from Chehalis. Maybe on my eBike. 

 

Former hotel, 311 Main Street (5 cm ƒ/2 Summitar lens)

Main Street, Pe Ell (Ilford XP2 film, Pentax MX, 50mm ƒ/2 Ricoh lens)

This ends a circular road trip through southwest Washington. I mixed and matched pictures from several years here. 

Continue of Washington Stare Route 6 and you soon reach Chehalis and the junction with I-5. Time to head out again.

I took these pictures with Kodak Gold 200 and Portra 160 films (color) and Ilford XP2 black and white film. 

Industrial City in Washington: Longview

Longview is an industrial city located on the Columbia River in southwest Washington. It is a deep water port, and ocean-going vessels load wood products, coal, petroleum, and other bulk goods. It is a new city, having been established in 1923 by a timber entrepreneur, Mr. R.A. Long. The Cowlitz River runs along the east border of city and separates Longview from Kelso. 

 

Longview, Washington (from OpenStreetMap)

I took two road trips to southwestern Washington in winter 2025-2026. I did not spend much time in Longview and want to return.

 

Port Area 

 

Most (all?) of the waterfront along the Columbia River has restricted access. It was disappointing, and there was no way to see ships at piers. The Lewis and Clarke Bridge has a fabulous view, but I definitely cannot stop on the bridge.  

Rail yard, Industrial Way (Ilford XP1 film, Pentax MX, 50mm ƒ/2 Ricoh lens)

Conveyor belts (135mm ƒ/3.5 Pentax-M lens, yellow filter)

Silo and Canada geese (135mm ƒ/3.5 Pentax-M lens, yellow filter)

Rails and mud, Fibre Way (50mm ƒ/1.4 Pentax-M lens, yellow filter)

 In the City

 

Skeleton man on patrol, 303 32nd Avenue (50mm ƒ/2 Summicon lens)

Town Chalet Motel, Washington Way (50mm ƒ/2 Summicron lens)

Apartment, 1819 Washington Way (50mm ƒ/2 Summicron lens)

This ends our short preview of Longview. 

I took these pictures with Ilford XP-2 film (black and white) and Kodak Ektar 100 film with Zeiss Ikon ZM and Pentax MX cameras. Glazer's Camera in Seattle developed the films in C-41 chemistry. I am still trying to decide if I like the appearance of the XP-2 film. It is certainly convenient in that the scanner's infrared ICE function eliminates most scratches and blemishes during scanning. 

From the Archives: Όχι Day in Athens, October 1951

Background 

October 28, 2026, occurred in the middle of last week. Here in USA, it was just another Wednesday (other than our standard political turmoil and high-level fraud in Washington). 

But in Greece, October 28 is a profoundly important national holiday, Όχι Day. Oxi means No in Greek. It commemorates the beginning of World War II for Greece when General Metaxas told Mussolini's envoy, "Όχι." It marked Greece;'s entry into World War II and the remarkable first defeat of the Axis powers.

From Wikipedia:

Shortly after 03:00 on 28 October 1940, the Italian ambassador in Athens, Emanuele Grazzi, delivered an ultimatum from the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, to Greece's leader, Ioannis Metaxas, at his residence in Kifissia. The ultimatum demanded that Greece allow Axis forces to cross the Greek-Albanian border and occupy certain "strategic positions" within Greek territory, or else face the prospect of war. Metaxas refused, replying in French, then the language of diplomacy: "Alors, c'est la guerre" ("Then, it is war").

Italian forces stationed in Albania, then under Italian rule, attacked the Greek frontier in Epirus at 05:30, half an hour before the ultimatum expired. The Greek army halted the invasion by mid-November 1940 and then counter-attacked into southern Albania.

  

30 October 1940 newspaper with editorial about Oxi (from Wikipedia, in the common domain)

My stepdad was a newly-graduated surgeon and was drafted into the Greek Army. The army marched to the Albanian frontier. The Greek forces pushed back and devastated the Italian troops, pushing them  into the mountains of Albania.  

As the winter of 1940-1941 progressed (one of the most severe of the century), the Italian troops were woefully unprepared. They had not been equipped with winter clothing or cold weather equipment, and they suffered horribly. My stepdad told me that he frequently amputated toes and fingers of Italian men who had suffered frostbite and developed gangrene. Note this is a Greek surgeon saving Italian soldiers in a Greek field hospital.  

Adolf Hitler reluctantly decided that he needed to rescue his Italian ally, Benito Mussolino, whose army was bogged down in the mountains of Albania. Another consideration was if Greece remained in Allied hands, British bombers might be able to bomb the oil fields in Romania, whose oil was crucial for Germany's economy and Hitler's planned invasion of the Soviet Union. 

The German army invaded Greece on April 6, 1941. The German forces rapidly overran Greek, British, Australian, and New Zealand defenders and ended the battle decisively by April 30. 

My stepdad said after the surrender, the Greek army was disbanded. He and other officers used mules and long marches to return to Athens. (Note, it is a long trek across the Pindus mountains from Albania to Athens).   

The incredible battles in the mountains of Albania may have ultimately led to the failure of the German invasion of the Soviet Union. After conquering Greece, the German troops and equipment had to return to Germany for reequipping and reorganization. They invaded the Soviet Union on June 22. Had they started a month or six weeks earlier, they might have been able to reach Moscow before the onset of the terrible Winter of 1941-1942. Adolf Hitler himself blamed the failure of his invasion of the Soviet Union on Mussolini's inability to conquer Greece. Historians will debate this indefinitely. But for the sake of this blog, let's conclude that the Greeks saved the western world.   

Here are some of my dad's Kodachrome slides from Όχι Day in 1951. 

Syntagma

Hellenic Parliament building (formerly the Royal Palace)

A cowgirl and a Scotswoman?

Corner of Panepistimiou and Kriezotou Streets

 

This was the view from a balcony on the Hotel Grande Bretagne. The hotel is one of the most fashionable accommodations in the heart of the city. 

Odos Panepistemiou

 

Schliemann mansion, now the Numismatic Museum of Athens

Fortunately, Heinrich Schliemann's (the controversial excavator of Troy) magnificent neoclassical building has been preserved and houses the Numismatic Museum of Athens. 

Papudov Mansion (no longer extent)

This building may be the former Papudov Mansion, at the corner of Vasilissis Sofias Avenue and Panepistimiou. It was built in the late 1890s for a Russian banker, Aristeidis Papudov. In 1970, a developer demolished the grand mansion and replaced it with a revolting glass box hotel, which failed soon after. 

The frantic building boom of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s destroyed much of Athens' neoclassical and Art Nouveau architecture. Today, much of the city is a concrete jungle of uninteresting and tired square buildings of no architectural merit, far too little green space, and congested streets.

 

 

An American in Paris Athens

My dad took these slides with Kodachrome film with his Leica IIIC rangefinder camera and a 5cm ƒ/2 Summitar lens. This Kodachrome had a film speed of Weston 8 or ASA 10. He measured light with a GE PR-1 light meter. I scanned the slides with a Nikon Coolscan 5000ED film scanner running under Nikon Scan 4.03 software. 

Decades from now, will we have our own Oxi Day here in USA to celebrate how we escaped from political disintegration, when the people said, "Oxi!"?

More Big Skies, Silos, and Geology - Eastern Washington 2026 (Part 2)

We continue our June 2026 road trip into central eastern Washington. 

Heading north into the north central part of the state, the terrain becomes more hilly. Occasional coulees (water-scored gullies) downcut into the underlying basalt. It is fascinating geology.

Odessa is a city in wheat country. We saw some German influence. Here in central Washington? I read later that some 80 percent of the immigrants in the late 1800s were Germans from Russia. 

Farm house near Odessa

Grand Coulee (the city) is located next to Lake Roosevelt, which is the Columbia River upstream of the huge Grand Coulee dam. Basalt walls loom above the city - it has a nice physical situation. The town itself is not too exciting. But it has an excellent coffee shop, the appropriately named Voltage Coffee House on Spokane Way. After driving through central Washington, it was time to stop for some volts. An old shed was next door.   

 

Head southwest along the spectacular Coulee Boulevard. It. runs along the west edge of the coulee (canyon), with basalt cliffs looming above you to the east. Banks Lake glistens blue to the west. But where to stay? Ah, ha, the Ala Cozy Motel in Coulee City. (The names are confusing; this is a different city than Grand Coulee.) Dinner at Couleegan's Bar & Grill was this incredible broasted chicken. Wow, enough chicken for a week of road trip!

 

 Coulee City is pretty quiet. But it had some interesting silos on the west edge of town.

 

 

Continue southwest to the Sun Lakes-Dry Falls State Park. Here, rock outcrops and lakes are more examples of the scouring and downcutting from the immense floods that coursed across this land when glacial Lake Missoula burst through its ice dam.

 

Fractured basalt boulder near Umatilla Rock, Sun Lakes-Dry Falls State Park

After hiking in Dry Falls, continue southwest to Quincy for a visit to the Ancient Lakes. There are several easy hikes, and you can camp here (but beware, the water in the lakes is farm runoff, so not drinkable).

Ancient Lakes from Upper Trailhead (Samsung phone digital file)

Hexagonal basalt and waterfall below the Upper Trailhead

Fractured basalt boulder near Lower Trailhead (Kodak T400CN film, 50mm ƒ/1.8 Canon lens) 

We reluctantly headed west towards Ellensburg. This is a nice college town. After hundreds of miles in eastern Washington, we were hungry. Dear readers, you know where this is going. We went to Smokey's on Pearl Street. Ahhhh....

Carnivore's delight - Smokey's on Pearl Street

This ends out June 2026 road trip in eastern Washington. There is more to explore. Time to return with a 4×5" camera.

I took the square pictures with a Rolleiflex 3.5E twin-lens camera with 75mm ƒ/3.5 Xenotar lens (5-element version) on Kodak Ektar 100 film. Glazer's Camera in Seattle, Washington, developed the film and scanned it with a Noritsu system. 

 

Rolleiflex 3.5E with 75mm ƒ/3.5 Schneider Xenotar taking lens