Mr. Virges gathered up a lot of robes and raincoats and overcoats and told his chauffeur to doll up the Lazier and take us to the mountain; the mountain is 65 miles from Tacoma. Just as we got outside of the city it started to rain and we stopped in a garage to wait till it stopped raining.

We saw signs all along the road that read "Stop at Ohop Bob's" but we could not understand what it meant. The road is asphalt for miles and you can see almost as far as it extends if it were not for the hills hut the hills are gentle slopes; it is woods almost all the way except the farms along the road where they raise hops. The trees are big fir trees some of them nearly 10 feet in diameter but they get larger as you go towards the mountain.

About a mile from Ohop Bob's there is a sign sticking up so we turned to the left finally we got to a sort of a hotel where they serve meals. The back of the place had a veranda where the people could eat if not too cold; thed [sic] had a victrola and we played until the woman got dinner ready; it was chicken dinner and cost $2. We registered just after Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt and they charged us just the same price as they did them.

We asked the lady who Ohop Bob was and if we could meet him and she said there wasn't any such animal but it meant a high place. She took us out onto the back porch and showed us that we could fall about a thousand feet straight down into the valley. So this is why they call it Ohop Bob.

It was wet and cloudy and we could not see the mountain but on bright days it is in plain view from here and wonderful with changeable colors.

On leaving Ohop we wound down a very steep grade and across the valley into the rough country where it is steep and the road runs along cliffs but they are working on the roads and it will soon be paved all the way to the mountain. There were lumbering mills along here. They use the steam engins [sic] to pull out the trees before they are cut up into logs; they cut the tops off of two big trees and stretch a wire rope from one to the other with a pulley on it. Then they hitch a long cable to the tree back in the woods that they want to pull out and start up the engine and drap [sic] it up and over stumps and logs until they get it where they want it and then saw it up into logs and load them on the train of log cars and take them to the mill.

As we were going along we saw some people in the road and when we got up to them we found it was a wreck. There was only one man in the car and he hit a stump and tore up the track and smashed the car but he was not hurt much.

At the Park entrance they have an arch of big logs and a log house for the officers to stay in; you have to get a license at the gate for the car and you have to have a good car and a good driver or they won't let you go in for it is very dangerous driving. Just before we get to the gate they have a mill and are cutting down all the big trees. I don't see why the Government lets them cut these forests so close to the park.

The grade is pretty steep for about six miles and then it gets steeper when you get to Longmire Hotel. This six miles is through the big trees and it is wonderful to see them. The trees are so high you can't see the tops of them and the bark is about eight inches thick; it is dark in the middle of the day it is so dense, and the ferns are so thick and so high that you can't crawl into the woods off the road. If you got 100 feet from the road you would get lost; there is moss on the trees that hang from the limbs. It would make fibre for ropes. They call the biggest tree Columbus and it sure is a giant.

There is a curio store and a lot of tents at the Longmire which is at the foot of the mountain and there is a fine view of it from there.

We should have stopped at Longmire and stayed all night but it was not very late and we decided to go on up the mountain as we had reservations at Paradise Valley Hotel so we went on up. The road is claimed to be the best engineering ever built; it is one curve after another and so steep you can hardly go up on second until you get to the Nisqually Glacier. From there on it is so crooked and so steep that you can go in low gear about all the time and it is no fun believe me.

At the glacier there is a bridge over the river just below the mouth of the glacier and from then up to the hotel it is a one way drive with gates at both ends and guards. You have to wait here until all the cars are down before you can go up. While we had to wait for the gate to open Dad and I walked up to the glacier; it is a desolate place, a solid wall of ice about 200 feet high. It did not look like ice but was dirty and covered with stones and it had a mouth like a huge coal mine or cave where the water came out like buttermilk. The water is very swift and boils over stones almost like a falls all the way and does not get clear but is milky when it reaches the ocean where I saw it about 100 miles farther west.

It was getting late when the guard let us through the gate to go on the one way drive. As we got farther up it got colder and we were among the clouds. Every little while we came to a short curve that was so sharp that we had to back the big car a few feet so we could make it around and if we would back a little too much we would go down over the cliffs. It was no fun.

The one way drive goes around the edge of cliffs a couple of thousand feet above the river and in some places it is made of logs to cross where an avalanche went down. It is not very pleasant to go over these places with such a big car when it is so narrow you think you will go over every minute.

Then you stop for five minutes at Nevada Falls, which is below the driveway and there is a path you can walk down to a big rock where you can see down into the gulch where the water is all mist. The falls drop about five or six hundred feet. It makes you dizzy and you can't stand to look at it.

It got so foggy we could hardly see and we found we were above the clouds and the road was so narrow and so dangerous that we could go only in second and low gear. As it began to get dark it commenced to snow and when we got to the hotel it was a regular blizzard. We had telephoned for rooms two days before but there was a convention and the hotel was full of people and the clerk would not give us rooms except in tents. They told us we might be snowed up for several days so we decided we would try to go down the mountain that night before the snow got too deep to find the road. The gate man told us there would be no cars down that night; he said it was very dangerous to go down in the dark but we didn't want to get snowed up so we started down. When we got turned around and started the snow covered the windshield so we could not see the road but after we started down we could not turn to go back so we had to keep in low gear to make the turns. It was terrible to drive in the dark on such a dangerous road for 12 miles in the storm but when we got down as far as Longmire Hotel it was rain instead of snow. We were all cold and there was a big log fire and we got supper and rooms and decided to stay all night It was nice and warm down stairs but when we went to our rooms it was like a refrigerator.

There is a curio store next to the hotel and we got some pictures to send home. We were going back up the mountain, if it was clear weather the next day but it rained and they telephoned down that it was still snowing up there so we decided after noon that we might as well go home for it might be a week before it would clear up so we could see the mountain. We tried to take some kodaks of the big trees but it was so dark in among them that they were no good.

There was a young fellow and girl walking across the glacier and they came to a crevice that they did not notice. When he stepped on the snow which covered the crevice it weakened it so that the girl broke through when she stepped behind him and went down. He volunteered to climb down a rope so they let him down with a rope and he found her wedged in the crack just a few feet above the water which they could hear rushing below her, she was erect as if standing. They fastened the rope to her body and pulled her up but she was dead when they got her out. She was a friend of my cousin Wanda Travis.

A girl went out on the edge of Pinnacle Peak to look at the view and she was overcome by the terrible sight that she screamed for someone to save her but before her friends could reach her she fell over. When they got down to where her body was they found her crushed into pulp and had to pick her up with a shovel This sounds like if it was exaggerated but it is true.

Mr. Virges had a big dinner for us at the club when we got back and when we told him about the big storm on the mountain he laughed and said, "It is no place for timid people to go."

Bart and I went to a show that night with Don Burdick. We drove to Camp Lewis at American Lake. It was one of the biggest army camps in the United States in the war but there was only a few thousand soldiers there at that time.

They have a big automobile racing park there and the State Insane Asylum is immense and the grounds are beautiful. They have the dangerous ones fenced in with wire netting. We supposed that nobody went crazy in the west, but I guess there are lots of crazy people every place now. Some of the rich people have their homes out there. Most of the houses in Tacoma are one-story and they have no alleys and they burn wood from slabs from the mills. It looks funny to see the big piles of wood in the front yards.

They took us down to Point Defiance to see the park which is among the big trees at the edge of the sound. The flowers are wonderful and they have a zoo there also with all kinds of wild animals and birds.

There is a big smelter works at the edge of the sound which has a smoke stack 800 feet high. I think this is the biggest in the United States. We went to see the lumber mills which are some of the largest in the world and over the draw bridge and saw the ships go through loaded with lumber then to the ship yards and the new docks they are building.

Governor Cox came to make a speech at the high school stadium but it rained and nobody came to hear it. Mr. Virges used to be a democrat but he was keeping batch till election day so he could vote for Harding, then he was going to California to spend the winter. He sure did give us a good time. We left there for Centralia Sunday on the shore line railroad and saw them fishing for clams and goeducks.

A goeduck is a big clam they dig out of the sand along the shore of the sound, they are six to twelve inches long and they have a snout sometimes two or three feet long like a broom stick, they grow to as much as 15 or 16 pounds and it is great sport to catch them and they are good eating if cooked right.

The next letter will be about Centralia where the American Legion boys were killed by the I. W. W. during Armistice Day parade.