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Echo Peak - Serendipity & Rare Flowers

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Return to Longacres' Ruins in 2024

It seems like only yesterday I wandered around the remains of Longacres. The year was 2016 and I was intrigued by some strange structures under I-405. That sighting started my love affair with documenting The Ruins of Longacres. That desire to document what I found propagated about ten articles on Batgurrl.net. For those who are asking… “What are you talking about Robin?” … here is a brief…

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Mystery stretches from Cedar River ghost town to “Boys in the Boat”

This week I was interviewed by Feliks Banel the historian for KIRO Newsradio. I had contacted him on a story related to the current movie “Boys in the Boat”. In my investigation of Cedar Mountain the ghost town and old coal mine site I became aware of a lost graveyard or grave from the 1890s. It was documented that John Morris was killed at the Franklin Mine Disaster in August of 1894. The…

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Where did you go Road 63?

History research has a way of going off the rails. I will start on a project and then find something that drags me down a new rabbit hole. This article is one of those found stories. The direction I was pulled to, is the story of Road 63 from Renton to Cedar Mountain. This road from 150 years ago was one of the first developed roads east out of Renton. Its route is not the conventional one along…

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Chapter 15 – Almost Home!

Vancouver BC at last! We were just one border crossing from home with our special packages. Not sure how we found out, but we learned quickly there was a bus strike. Now that was a big ass problem because we had to take the bus to Everett and mingle/hide among the other passengers when we hit the border. That went up in flames, and we found ourselves at one of the major hotels in Vancouver.…

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Chapter 14 – Danger on the Train

The Amsterdam Train Station was bustling. We found our train to Frankfurt and boarded with our backpacks in tow. This train was the old fashion European type with multiple compartments that can seat about six people. We purposely picked an empty one after seeing some American G.I.s in a prior one. Paranoia is a terrible feeling and we had it bad even though Meta had given us Methadone tablets to…

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Chapter 13 – Amsterdam Days & Ways

That same day we saw the hostel’s maid for the second time. She was outgoing and we all introduced ourselves. That evening we were invited by a few fellow travelers to smoke hash in their room. We did a small trade with them exchanging some of our pot for hash. That pot turned out to be a hot commodity since it was rare in Europe. The trade even got us some rolling papers and tobacco to roll up…

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Chapter 12 – Parting Ways

Another quiet and quick border crossing got us into France. Soon after we crossed, it became dark and a bit rainy. There was certainly no time for sightseeing. We had to get to Belgium in a hurry. Gliding through the streets of France we glimpsed the country but that was it. There would be no visit to the Eiffel Tower. Not even a drive by. No walk on the Seine nor a day of sightseeing at the…

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Chapter 11 – Angels at the Border

The Austrian border at last. Just one minor problem, we had a wrecked car and wondered if we would encounter problems. The rear window was taped up with plastic, but we also had damage to our tail-lights. More tape held them together and the light bulbs had issues with them working intermittently. It was the usual border crossing we had encountered in the majority of Europe excluding Yugoslavia.…

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Cedar Mountain Bridge Now and Then Photos

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Chapter Ten - On the road again. 

We left Greece by the same route we came.  We took turns driving in Ken’s Volkswagen station wagon.  The border into Yugoslavia was uneventful to the point I don’t remember it. We were making good time team driving the two-lane roads. Even was driving and it was morning after traveling through the night.  We had made it past Belgrade and were back on that two-lane trucking corridor from hell. …

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Chapter Nine – The Oracle Speaks

Staying on the Greek ruins theme, the other place we visited was the Oracle of Delphi.  Several days later we had a full day car trip through the Greek countryside.  It was Ken, Even, a new friend we met at the hostel and me.  We loaded up in the VW station wagon and drove this lovely winding road to visit the Oracle.   My visit to Delphi brought me closer to one of my past lives. A year earlier…

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Chapter Eight – Now These are Ruins!

Greek ruins bring us to a place that I can’t explain.  We realize we have not been the only dominate civilization on the planet.  Today more so than ever, I understand the impact of seeing a building that is thousands of years old. The perspective of time and our current world is disrupted by seeing old places or ruins.  We come from a young place in the Pacific Northwest which was settled around…

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Chapter Seven - Athens, Here we Come!  

Ken found the Athens’ Youth Hostel amid the winding streets and signs in the Greek alphabet.  To this day, I just do not know how he did it.   This became our home away from home for almost a week.  Even and I got space from our Canadian fellow traveler.  We were a little tired of him by the time we got to Greece. The Hostel had several floors of dormitory style bunk beds and locker room type…

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Chapter Six – Dining with the Greeks

The road took us to Greece.  The border there was so uneventful that I have no memory of it.  It was getting dark as we wound our way along the coast.  We couldn’t see the sea, but it was there from the change in the air.  Even slept in the back, and I was in the front with Ken driving along. Not sure how it happened but in the dark and many days of travel I started to give him a blowjob while…

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The Earliest Cedar Mountain Bridges

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Batgurrl's Milestone - 1,000 Articles

Time seems to have flown by since November 21, 2010 when I started a blog on crows. This article will be my 1,000. What better way to celebrate this milestone than to talk about the evolution of Crows of Arroyos. How it has documented my travels in serendipity and my ramblings through nature and history. So much has changed on my blog since that first day back in 2010. For my current readers…