Good Morning everyone, or at least it's morning as I type this out from our hotel room in Santa Rosa, California!
What fun these past few days have been since I last wrote! But I'm getting ahead of myself, and shall start from where I left off in the last post.
We got back to our campsite around 9:30 Tuesday night and had a pretty good nights sleep, other than getting unpleasantly awakened a few times in the night by our tent neighbor yelling at his poor dog for barking,.... That was an experience to say the least. But anyway... Morning came soon enough and we got the car packed up and hit the road, heading towards Portland, OR.
On the way we saw lots of cool things along the Columbia River, it was neat knowing that one our side we were in Oregon, and on the other side we were looking at Washington.
Pretty much our whole drive along this road, we were getting differing views of Mt. Hood in the distance. Which was super cool!
After a couple hours we got off the interstate and drove along the scenic E Historic Columbia Hwy, and stopped at 5 different waterfalls along the way, that all flow in to the Columbia River. It was such a gorgeous drive! So much green foliage and beautiful scenery!
 |
| Nathan took this lovely shot ;) |
Towards the end of the scenic road we got to Vista House, which had quite the spectacular view of the whole Columbia River and surrounding area.
After all that stopping and site seeing, we had to buckle down and get back to driving! :p We made it through 5pm traffic in Portland, and the road construction following it... and still managed to enjoy the beautiful city views.
Nathan was such a champ and drove all evening, while I dozed on and off over the next couple hours. We finally reached the California boarder around 11pm that night, and to the campground not long afterwards.
Even though we got to bed kind of late, we still awoke feeling pretty refreshed and well rested, and got going by 8:30ish the next morning. Our first goal for the day was to find the ocean! We were only about 15 minutes away from Crescent City so decided to stop there first.
On our way to the coastal view we got side tracked by this huge cheese factory! So of course just had to go take a peek for our selves haha. It was impossible to walk out of there without buying any cheese...it was a tough choice but we settled on a block of sharp cheddar and some Munster. Which was literally the best cheese I have ever eaten... Yum!
After that quick detour of our attention, we got back to business and got down to the coast...
This was the first time to see the ocean for both of us, and lets just say it did not disappoint! The salty scent hit us first, then the fresh crisp wind, it started to sink in that we were in fact standing on the edge of the Pacific! It was a pretty surreal feeling that's for sure!
We drove along the coast for a little while before hitting the entrance of the land of the Redwoods!
Definitely the biggest trees I have ever seen! It makes you realize how tiny people actually are ;p
On our way out of the park we ran into a little heard of elk mother's and their babies... They were so cute!
We kept driving for quite a while, and both started to get awfully drowsy, right as we were coming up to this little town which had this adorable little One Log House. So we pulled over to check it out, and grabbed a Frozen Frappuccino from the gift shop next door to wake us up some.
A little while later we made our way back out to the coast, and drove along it for about an hour. Such a gorgeous piece of earth!
We finally found a little stretch of beach that we could make our way down to, and actually touch the water! And believe me when I say, it was glorious!!
After a while though we realized we still had several hours left of driving to do before reaching our hotel in Santa Rosa, and so decided to get back on the interstate and say farewell to the beach for the time being. It like broke my heart... well almost ;p
But we got to drive through some pretty awesome countryside, including a stretch of road with these super cool trees! We also passed over a dozen huge Winery's and miles of vineyards. It was pretty cool to see all those huge houses and things that you see all the rich California residents have in movies! It was getting dark by then so didn't get very many good pictures sadly.
We made it to our hotel at 9:00pm last night and had a great night of cozy sleep in a normal/real bed, which was nice ;) Got up this morning, showered, ate, wrote most of this blog, and as I type we are driving towards San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge, and I really want to take pictures. So I shall bid you farewell until a later date!
