Breakfast in Tokyo, Lunch in Cape Town & Dinner in Medellín

Redwood Park, California.

Big trees.  Really big trees.  The biggest are 300+ feet tall, and up to 22 feet across (though most in the forest are more like up to 15 feet across and 200 feet tall) and there’s forests of these things!  You don’t realize how big the trees are until you get out of the vehicle and stand next to one, then turn around and look at the truck parked next to another one and then feel like an ant.  

The first night here we camped at one of the network of state parks in a campsite that had two redwood trees in it, (one of which was 10-12 across) with just enough space between them to back the truck into.  A very unique campsite.

Next morning we hiked a couple short trails to old groves of redwoods, the first one was awesome, the second was better.  When you’re walking on one of these trails, you notice that the trees are really big, but after a while walking through them you also notice that everything else is larger than normal.  eg: the ferns, the clovers, both at least twice the size you would normally expect.  The ferns routinely reached 5-6 feet tall!  

In the afternoon we drove from the Northern park where we’d been so far, to the Southern park and hiked a trail there.  This trail was even better than the earlier two, with more huge trees along it.  Then, near the end of the trail we encountered a bull elk with a really big rack, by my count it was at least 12 points, maybe more.  It was just off the trail eating blackberries, about 30 feet from us.  Really cool seeing it that close, and the first large animal I’ve seen on this trip.

I have taken a bunch of pictures of the redwoods, but they don’t really show the size of them.  You have to stand next to them and look up, which is disorienting, to actually appreciate how massive they are.  

The Oregon coast is great.

 
There’s a highway that runs along the ocean, sometimes directly adjacent to, and sometimes a mile inland.  It’s nice.  Every mile or two there’s some kind of state of county park with camping and/or beach access.  There’s overlooks every few hundred feet on some parts of the highway, and the coastline is as varied as it is great.  Some just sand beaches, some huge sand dunes, some rocky scraggy areas with off shore rocks.  There’s even some parts with the rocky cliffs, flat sandy beaches, sand dunes farther in on the beach and off shore rocks making it just about picture perfect.

 
We camped along the coast two nights, in two, randomly chosen campsites.  One in the woods 1/2 a mile from the beach and the second 1/4 mile from the beach near a lighthouse next to a whole bunch of sand dunes.  The day spent getting from the first campground to the second we drove a grand total of 50 miles, stopping at many overlooks & beaches and a semi lengthy detour to eat some seafood in Florence, OR.  

Next it was on through the rest of the Oregon coast to California.  Still stunning scenery, and beautiful weather for this.  Got to California after exploring just a few more beaches and dunes in Oregon and headed straight for Redwood Nat’l Park where the trees are freakin huge, next entry…

We spent Labor day in Portland, checked out some of the local micro breweries with good results.  Beautiful weather all day, it doesn’t just rain constantly up here!  Portland is cool, friendly people, some of the best pubs I’ve been to, fresh seafood and plenty of stuff happening in the town.  I even found the elk burger I’d been looking for and had the best gelato I’ve had on this side if the atlantic.

The next day, we left Portland and drove to Newport, OR.  A small town on the coast, home to Rogue Brewery, one of the biggest craft breweries in the US.  Spent the afternoon and early evening there taking a tour and sampling their products.  Then down South on the highway that follows the coastline, perfectly clear skies and saw the sunset on the ocean.  The coastline here is awesome, every turn on the highway and you’re overlooking a little (or not so little) bay or inlet.  Rocky cliffs surrounding sandy beaches and the colours just after sunset were great.  Once the light faded, we found a campsite less than half a mile from the ocean, in the forest.  Now I’ve got a couple more days of this coastline into California and the Redwoods… 
   

On the way to Portland we camped for the night in the Mt Hood Nat’l forest, nice area but the next morning when we were going to explore the Mt Hood area the clouds rolled in very low and it was raining so we drove on to Portland.  

First impressions of Portland were good, very good.  First we stopped at a recommended Pub that was the best, most authentic English pub I have been in outside of England.  Then, the building next door had a sign on it for some beer & English food store had moved up the street.  We decided to check it out, it just happened to be the best beer store I have ever set foot in.  After making the best make-your-own-6pack ever, I discovered that they also had English chocolate etc that I had never before seen outside of England.  I am finding the Washington & Oregon have many English style places, more than the so called British Columbia.

Downtown Portland was somewhat strange, it being Labor Day weekend.  Many things were closed and some areas of town had hardly any people in them.  We did finally find a busy area with stuff open, several good looking restaurants and the one we ended up eating at had 100 taps of beer.  I had fresh shellfish and one of the best beer selections I’ve ever seen.  Apparently people in Portland like drinking good beer, this is no miller or bud town there are tons of beers brewed in the area and readily available on tap in Portland.

I also visited the biggest bookstore I have ever been in.  Half a dozen floors with every kind of book you can imagine, and it’s so big that they have another store down the street with their “technical” books.  I just got my Taiwan guidebook and something to read for my flight to Japan.

Left Seattle and drove to Mt Rainier Nat’l Park and found a campground, it was a misty day so no real views of the mountains, so we hiked up along a glacier fed stream to some waterfalls.  The Forests here are so many different shades of green, with all the ferns and mosses growing everywhere.  I’ve never seen so much moss before.  We attempted to get a fire going at the campsite after dinner but the wood was damp and even several rounds of liquid persuasion and burning every paper product we could find wouldn’t get it going.

The next morning we drove up to the main visitor center in the park with the intention of hiking up to some glacier overlooks and some views of Mt Rainier, only for there to be dense fog covering the entire area.  Hiked a short trail with a bunch of wildflower meadows and then continued driving through the park.  The weather improved as the day went on and by mid-day the sun was out and we got some views of Mt Rainier peaking through the clouds, slightly more distance than from in the park but at least I actually got to see it before we left.

I wish we would’ve had more time in the park, there’s hikes to glaciers and the mountains here are stunning.  I think I took more pictures in the last 24 hours than I had the previous 2 weeks. However we had a Dave Matthews Band concert at The Gorge to go to so we had to move on.

Last day in Seattle, we went to the Museum of Flight with their Concorde, SR71 Blackbird and the Air Force One that was used by JFK up through Reagan.  The museum was right next to one of the Boeing facilities up here and also very close to the airport so the whole time you are walking around there are planes taking off and landing all around you which creates a pretty cool atmosphere for a flight museum!

Went back downtown for the evening, walked around the pike street market while eating a crab sandwich and I managed to get my rail pass for Japan from the Seattle JALPAK office so that’s one less thing to do before I fly.  I decided to keep up with the fresh seafood trend for dinner with shrimp & pesto pasta, not bad at all.  I like Seattle, nice feel to it, the downtown has some nice buildings in it and there’s fresh seafood all over the place.

Monday was a day to forget, getting back in the US.  We drive to the main border crossing South of Vancouver and after sitting in a really long line and not moving forward at all in 15 minutes we decided to leave that one and drive to a smaller border crossing East of there.  Basically the same problem there, line of more than half a mile.  We sat there for nearly 2 hours before we got through the border, and still had no clue why it was so backed up.  Once we finally did get though the crossing we drove to Redmond, WA and it started raining (naturally).  The only bright spot for the day was having some sorely needed pints at a great neighborhood English pub in Redmond where I also could not resist getting out and using my (Apple) notebook for all to see.

Can you see me Bill?

Tuesday was spent in Seattle, walked around the center of town to the space needle and rode the monorail.  A couple pints at a pub and some fresh fish for dinner, a fine day.  Then it was the Oasis concert, which was fantastic, sold out theater and the crowd was really into it.  They played several songs of their new still-to-be released album and plenty of their greats, even throwing in a Noel solo b-side which was great!  Then comes the dumbest thing I’ve done in a while, it had been a really nice day when we caught the bus downtown so I decided to leave my jacket in the truck, but apparently it likes to rain in Seattle, who knew?  When the concert was done there was a pretty good amount of rain coming down so I ended up walking through town in a t-shirt getting drenched and no way to avoid this.  (it’s a good thing I’m from England…)

Spent the last few days driving through Montana.  Billings to Missoula on Monday, Missoula up to Troy on Tuesday which was very scenic.  Yesterday we crossed the US/ Canada boarder into British Columbia yesterday and spent the night in Kelowna, BC.  The drive from Creston, BC to Kelowna is right through the mountains with fantastic views the whole way, which even the on and off rain couldn’t spoil.  Yesterday was the first day of rain since the day I left, but some of that was neat with the low clouds hanging onto the mountains.

We still haven’t paid for a campsite yet, due to a combination of staying with relatives and parking in walmart parking lots where they allow free overnight parking.  Classy I know, but it’s free and we haven’t been staying overnight in areas with great parks with camping for the most part, that will change soon though.  

One wonderful (read: woeful) US dollar now buys me $1.06 Canadian, which quite frankly sucks but at least it’s 5% better than when I was in Canada last year..  Wireless internet access has been hit and miss, mainly available in the decent sized towns but nowhere else but I’ve been able to connect at least once a day.  I haven’t put much on here yet because pretty much everything until yesterday was places I’d been before, from here on out it’s all new.

Next up, Vancouver…

My home for the next month:

Well I’m finally on the road, left on Thursday afternoon.

My bag weight ended up being 32 pounds, not including whatever I was wearing. I haven’t discovered anything I’ve forgotten yet… We drove 1000 miles West in 30 hours including an overnight stop in South Dakota and now we’re in Billings, Montana at my Uncles place. The weather is great here, 88 and not a cloud in the sky!

Taking it easy for a couple days after the marathon driving days and then moving West again. Right now I’m off to the local brewpub for the evening…