8 days, three states, 1200 miles, billions of trees (probably.)
Lots of pics ahead, including a lot of selfies of me with the boys, because they let me.
We arrived Saturday evening, and our friends Chris and Stephanie (who are from Tacoma and have a condo there for when they’re visiting) picked us up and brought us to our hotel.
The next day they gave us a personalized tour of Tacoma, which included Stephanie’s high school, where they filmed 10 Things I Hate About You. I didn’t recreate this scene, but I could have.
It was a lovely day with lots of scenic views (MOUNTAIN), fresh cherries, and sitting on their balcony. And the boys were able to watch World Cup games. We spent much of the time yelping when we got a glimpse of Mt. Rainier, which was often.
The next day revolved around the reason we went on this trip, a World Cup game. We gave the boys tickets to a match (Belgium v Egypt) in Seattle for their graduation present. The grownups hung around Seattle during the game, which only the boys went to. We went to a museum and ate delicious food and walked around and had a lovely time. I think the last time I went to Seattle was 1998, so it was nice to go back for a bit.
Tuesday morning we got up bright and early to hit the road for our drive down to California. Next stop, redwoods! It was a long, long, long drive, but fortunately, the rental place gave us a hybrid minivan so I spent way less on gas than I’d budgeted for. We spent that money on doughnuts, basically.
We stayed in a lovely airbnb off a gravel road with lots of slugs in the yard (affectionately.) We got there pretty late after a very windy road that made me grateful for once to live in a flat place. It was harrowing (to me, the driver.)
But it was all worth it because…redwoods!
We took a lot of pictures of each other to show the scale of the trees. I mean, you know they’re big, but geez!
The town we stayed in was Crescent City, California, which had a moody coastline with a cute little lighthouse.
We were up bright and early the next day to hit the road again to go north, up the coast of Oregon. (We took I-5 down to California to get there as quickly as possible.) The drive took forever, mostly because we kept stopping at scenic places (which was the point.)
Brookings, Oregon (Natural Bridges Viewpoint):
Face Rock State Scenic Viewpoint:
This one was cool because not only could we get down to the beach pretty easily, but there was this cool path in the sand that you could walk on. I have no idea how it was done, but it took me 11 minutes to do the whole thing. (I’ll spare you the video I took of it.)
Heceta Head Lighthouse:
It was getting close to sunset, and I really wanted to see the sunset over the ocean. We stopped just in time.
Arch Cape:
We finally made it to the airbnb in Seaside a little while later. It was the cutest house, very maze like. Bummer that we got there so late because we only had one night there. The next day we wandered around the beach and the little town, and the boys were able to watch some of the WC game that was on.
Our next stop was Portland, but we had to make a stop at Tillamook on the way. Not that it was really on the way, but I wanted ice cream, dangit! It was cute, but v crowded. We did stop at one scenic viewpoint on the way there, but we missed Haystack Rock because Cannon Beach was v v v crowded. Too bad, but at least I caught a glimpse of it while driving.
We stayed in Portland for two nights. We had breakfast with George’s cousin and her daughter, then I dropped the boys off at a movie so I could go fabric shopping. Before the movie, we went for a walk through the same woods that I did when I went to Portland in August.
The next day, we had to check out of the airbnb relatively early, but our flight wasn’t until 10:30pm, so we had a lot of time to kill. I decided on a whim to get reservations for lunch at Timberline Lodge (it was Father’s Day, after all) so we spent most of the day at Mount Hood. It was absolutely gorgeous, and a very good last minute decision on my part (pats self on back.)
MOUNTAIN!
The Timberline is where they filmed some of The Shining (maybe the exteriors?) and it was a really cool building to explore. The food was good, too, and George inexplicably found a dime under his toast. Weird. Lucky?
We made it home Monday morning after exhausting flights (and a 2 hour layover at 4:30am in Chicago.) Back to heat, humidity, and NO MOUNTAINS.
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