One Trip, Multiple Stories: A Travel Writer's Rail Journey in West Coast USA

For the journey detailed below, I paid for my airfares and received on-the-ground assistance from local tourism authorities and hotels. Full disclosures are included with each linked article and blog post.

This is, remarkably, my 500th post at Aerohaveno. I started the blog way back in 2008, during the golden age of blogs, when social media outlets such as Facebook were new and yet to be adopted by the masses.

In that era, a blog was the prime means for an individual to put their views online, whether on a topic of expertise or simply as personal reflection.

Now we have the noise and colour of social media, and perhaps wonder if things are better.

In any case, for post number 500 I'd like to repeat what I did for post 400 - draw back the curtain on how travel writing works, at least for a freelancer like me.

In post 400 I looked at a trip I undertook around the world. This time I'll focus on the west coast of the USA.

In October 2015 I flew into Los Angeles, then caught Amtrak trains up the west coast with visits to San Francisco, Portland and Seattle along the way.

I've chosen this 2015 trip because the period elapsed since then has been long enough for almost everything I wrote about it to be published.

Below I'll outline how each activity led to a specific piece of writing - with a link to the published article or blog post.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin.

Monday 12 October 2015

Activity: Fly Qantas from Melbourne to Los Angeles.

1. Resulting story: A review of Qantas' Premium Economy class for Fairfax Media's Traveller website in Australia.
2. Blog Post: Catching public transport from LAX to Downtown LA.

Activity: Check out the renovated and reopened Clifton's Cafeteria in LA's Downtown.

1. Resulting story: A short item about Clifton's in a round-up of 2015 travel finds for Fairfax Media's Traveller website and print section in Australia. 
2. Second resulting story: An article about Downtown LA highlights for roundtheworldflights.com [story not currently online].

Tuesday 13 October to Wednesday 14 October 2015

Activity: Take the guided studio tours at Warner Brothers, Universal Studios and Paramount Pictures.
Resulting story: An article about LA movie studio tours for Lonely Planet's website.

Wednesday 14 October 2015

Activity: Visit new Australian-owned café, Paramount Coffee Project.
Resulting story: An article about Aussie-owned food and coffee outlets in LA, for Fairfax Media's Good Food website in Australia.

Thursday 15 October 2015

Activity: Explore new contemporary art gallery, The Broad, in LA's Bunker Hill.

1. Resulting story: A short item about The Broad in a round-up of 2015 travel finds for Fairfax Media's Traveller website and print section in Australia.
2. Blog Post: My visit to The Broad.

Activity: Visit the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City.

1. Resulting story: An article listing six quirky attractions of LA, including the Museum of Jurassic Technology, for Lonely Planet's website.
2. Second resulting story: Commissioned for an Australian media outlet, but yet to be published.

Friday 16 October 2015

Activity: Catch the Coast Starlight sleeper train north from LA to Oakland (for San Francisco); then later onward to Portland and Seattle.

1. Resulting story: An article about the entire rail trip for the magazine Get Up & Go in Australia.
2. Second resulting story: An article about the sleeper train experience for Fairfax Media's Traveller website and print section in Australia.

Saturday 17 October 2015

Activity: Join the eccentric Emperor Norton's Fantastic San Francisco Time Machine tour.
Resulting story: An article about the tour's highlights for Fairfax Media's Traveller website in Australia.

Sunday 18 October 2015

Blog Post: Review of the long-running musical revue Beach Blanket Babylon.

Monday 19 October 2015

Activity: Attend the North Beach Underground tour of San Francisco, focusing on the Beat Generation.

1. Resulting story: A 'Postcard from San Francisco' article for the Spectrum (culture) section of The Age newspaper in Melbourne.
2. Blog Post: Profile of six memorable tours of San Francisco.

Blog Post: San Francisco's retro public transport.

Thursday 22 October to Sunday 25 October 2015

 
Activity: Visit Voodoo Doughnuts, Stark's Vacuum Cleaner Museum, Powell's City of Books and other offbeat attractions in Portland, Oregon.
Resulting story: A list of 'Ten attractions keeping Portland weird' for Fairfax Media's Traveller website in Australia.

Blog Post: Memorable street art of Portland.

Saturday 24 October 2015

 
Activity: Join a food walking tour of North Mississippi Avenue, Portland.
Resulting story: An article about highlights of the tour, for Fairfax Media's Good Food website in Australia.

Blog Post: A visit to Stark's Vacuum Cleaner Museum, Portland.

Sunday 25 October 2015

Blog Post: A tour of Portland's coffee culture.

Monday 26 October 2015

 
Activity: Take a coffee walking tour of Seattle, Washington.
Resulting story: An article about the city's coffee highlights for Fairfax Media's Traveller website in Australia.

Wednesday 28 October 2015

Blog Post: Visiting Seattle's Living Computer Museum.

Thursday 29 October 2015

 
Activity: Travel to Snoqualmie and North Bend, to visit locations from the TV series Twin Peaks.

1. Resulting story: A 'Postcard from Twin Peaks' article for the Spectrum (culture) section of The Age newspaper in Melbourne.
2. Second resulting story: An article about Twin Peaks locations for Lonely Planet's website.
3. Blog Post: My visit to Twin Peaks locations.

Sunday 1 November 2015

Blog Post: Taking a tour of Underground Seattle.

Monday 2 November 2015

Activity: Fly from Seattle to Los Angeles via Alaska Airlines.
Resulting story: A review of Alaska Airlines' domestic Economy class for Fairfax Media's Traveller website in Australia.

Activity: Fly Qantas from Los Angeles to Melbourne.

1. Resulting story: A review of facilities at LAX for roundtheworldflights.com [story not currently online]. 
2. Blog Post: Review of the new Qantas International Business Lounge.

And that's that! I arrived back home on Wednesday 4 November, courtesy of the International Dateline.

Writing output, financial income

By my count, the trip produced a total of 18 paid articles for outside publications (with a 19th yet to be published and paid for), and 12 posts on this blog.

I calculate the paid articles earned a total of $8850.72 (all figures here are in Australian dollars) for both words and photos, before adding any applicable sales tax.

About another $500 should come in from the final article. And there was additional research undertaken on the trip which I may yet write about, as well as revisiting its attractions in new ways.

The blog posts don't earn any direct income, but drive traffic to Aerohaveno and thus contribute to the occasional small payments I receive from the Google Ads running on my blog.

Expenses

I had significant expenses on this journey, especially since I was paying my own airfares on this occasion.

Including airfares, I estimate my total expenses on this trip at $3028.26, which leaves a profit of $5822.46 (plus $500 from the unpublished article, and possible income from future stories derived from the same research material).

Some trips have a greater return on outlay, others less so. Quite aside from the profit, however, this west coast USA trek turned out to be one of my favourite journeys ever, and I was very glad I'd taken it.

It's not easy to make a living from travel writing; but if you can derive a published story per day from a particular trip, you're off to a decent start.

After this epic post, it's time for a break! Aerohaveno will be taking a break over the holiday season, and will be back with you in early January. Have a great New Year!

Welcome to Twin Peaks (aka Snoqualmie, USA)

The following post is based on the first draft of my Postcard from Twin Peaks article for The Age newspaper, which ended up being significantly restructured. I stayed in Snoqualmie as a guest of Visit Seattle, and paid for my own airfare to the USA. 

"I'll see you again in 25 years," said Laura Palmer in 1991, in the final episode of the cult TV series Twin Peaks.

Of course, Laura had been murdered before the beginning of the very first episode. The prediction was actually delivered by a spirit vision of her to FBI Agent Dale Cooper, in the strange place known as the Black Lodge.

Still with me? If you haven’t seen this series yet, you need to, if only for your television education. Premiering on mainstream American network ABC in 1990, it upended the then safe world of free-to-air TV.

With its complex, layered plot and beautiful cinematography, it was the harbinger of the quality television dramas we expect today from cable networks such as HBO.

Now, in the words of the prophetic Giant who appears to Cooper in times of stress, "It is happening again." Co-creators David Lynch and Mark Frost have signed on for a third series, and location filming has been taking place in the leafy hills east of Seattle.

"Ronette's Bridge", Snoqualmie, USA.

This is why I'm standing on "Ronette's Bridge" over the Snoqualmie River, the on-screen location where the injured Ronette Pulaski was discovered, leading investigators to the murder site of Laura Palmer.

Since its star turn in 1990, the bridge has become part of a cycling and hiking route.

To my eyes, however, it still exudes the grim menace it possessed at the moment viewers sensed the full evil behind the death of a popular schoolgirl in an apparently idyllic town deep in the forests of the Pacific northwest.

The bridge itself seems to brood.

This is all my own imagination at work, of course – if you’d never watched Twin Peaks, you’d no doubt be admiring a sturdy piece of rail infrastructure in pretty countryside.

Which makes me ponder why Twin Peaks struck such a chord with me, and with so many others. With an enthusiastic international following (fans still regularly trickle to Snoqualmie from around the globe), it seemed to transcend its American setting by being hyper-American.

The location of the 'Welcome to Twin Peaks' sign in the TV series.

Twin Peaks' collision of small town folksiness and creeping horror was, after all, a favoured approach of pioneering suspense series The Twilight Zone.

But when you think about it, every culture tells stories of the collision between modernity and the ancient spirits that linger just beyond our peripheral vision (think of the stock English villages depicted as secretly hewing to pagan traditions a la The Wicker Man, for example).

Our own unease with Australia's uninhabited spaces of desert and gum trees sits well alongside the threat lurking within the mighty stands of Douglas firs that surround Twin Peaks.

In the shadow of the infinite, however, life must go on, as it does in the TV series’ strangely juxtaposed soap opera plotline of business rivalries and dodgy dealings.

Twede's Cafe, the Double R Diner in Twin Peaks.

Lunch at Twede’s in nearby North Bend (the Double R Diner in the series) is a disorientating experience, as location filming has only recently finished and the diner retains its recent refurbishment back to the look of the '90s.

Feeling like an extra in an extended scene, I order - inevitably - "damn fine" coffee and a slice of cherry pie. Neither is as amazing as Agent Cooper found them, but I don’t care; I’m immersed in a fondly remembered component of Lynch and Frost’s fantasy world.

My final Twin Peaks location visit is a night spent at the Salish Lodge (aka the Great Northern), falling to sleep to the sound of the Snoqualmie Falls after drinking a Dale Cooper cocktail (gin, clove and cardamom-infused honey, dry honey cider, lemon) at the hotel bar.

I’ve never before visited a filming location which so resembles its onscreen counterpart. Laura, I’m ready for your return.

As Cooper once said, “I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.”