Welcome back aboard Trippers! Halfway through November and the spots where it isn’t cold at night are starting to dwindle. We are currently in the great state of Texas! We’ve had a Texas time too, big guns and big cows! But I’m ahead of myself.
We last left off as we were leaving Seattle and headed south. We had obviously reached the furthest North-West we could go (For now…) and had a very long coastal drive to look forward to. Southbound on I-5 out of Seattle takes you directly to Portland. I decided to skip Portland this pass through, with a fair amount of regret. Most of the things to be seen in Portland were mostly inside affairs, and we had some mail and people waiting on us at our next couple destinations. Just south of Portland we cut over to US-101, which is THE coastal highway, until US-1 takes up that job just north of San Francisco.
We wound our way through the mountains of Oregon with stunning views of the Pacific as it crashed into the rocky coastline and made our way to Coos Bay. We spent a few days hanging out with family and seeing some unique spots including a literal hole-in-the-wall….
Leaving Coos Bay we crossed east over the Cascade Mountains and descended into Bend to spend a day or two with a cousin before we wound our way south along the ‘Volcanic Legacy Scenic Byway’. A long highway in Oregon that follows along the Cascade Mountains and numerous Volcanos, the ‘Byway’ took us to a couple of really intriguing destinations. We took a couple of days to check out Obsidian Flow, a mountain littered with thousands of obsidian boulders and shards from a large explosion and what would quickly become a favorite spot of ours, Crater Lake National Park.
Crater Lake caught us totally off guard. What used to be the large Volcano known as Mount Mazama, the lake partly fills a nearly 2,148-foot-deep caldera with sparkling blue water. No rivers flow in and out of the high cliffs, so it is an isolated ecosystem. Also, what was of notable interest to me, was it seemingly emitted its own local weather patterns. Deep rolling fog moved about in thick patches along the drive up the rim. Where the rest of the surrounding region was temperate and calm, the top of the caldera was incredibly windy and cold (An occurrence we would later experience at Meteor Crater in Arizona) and had spots of snow.
We fell in love with the park and spent the entire day seeing all the different views of the quite magical looking and aptly named Wizard’s Island. Which is actually a smaller Volcano made of leaking magma that came up through the deep lake and created what is called a ‘cinder cone.’ With another rock formation called ‘Phantom Ship’ which is, as it sounds to look like. It truly was a mysterious and breathtaking place.
We zigged back west over the Cascade Mountains… again… and over our 10,000th mile milestone since leaving our house in Tampa! We arrived back at the coast and to Coos Bay, to snag our Jackery which we got exchanged due to a damaged USB port, and continued south along the coastal highway. Lots of neat little shops and themed places dotted the highway.
Apparently Bigfoot is a big deal in the area and also Oregon is a pretty big rock collecting state. Which makes sense due to the amount of volcanic activity and apparently numerous amounts of dinosaur fossils that have been recovered. Autumn was particularly fond of all the dinosaurs we kept seeing along the road, literally everywhere, and we made a fun game of yelling “DIINNNNOOOOooosss!!!” every time we would see one. Which then resulted in the difficult decision of whether we needed to investigate the shop. They have been an invaluable source of resources for her wire wrapped artwork. (Found at www.etsy.com/shop/castlekeepofdreams )
Speaking of Dino’s! We have been actively chasing Sinclair gas stations by this point. Which are dinosaur themed and usually feature a green brontosaurus on the sign and sizeable green figure somewhere on the property. With the app giving us an extra .20 off of each gallon, it was a bit of an incentive to single them out specifically making it worth our time. I’m not one to hype a brand but Sinclair at least allows me to ironically pump $50 worth of dead dino’s into my tank.
The dino became much welcome sight for the rest of our time in California due to gas being north of $3.50 a gallon ($4.20 near the west entrance of Yosemite, congrats to Lee Vining, California! The highest price of gas on the trip.) It was obvious, through some simple math, we would like to keep our driving in CA to a minimum and with an active pandemic, we would just skip the large cities. No San-Fran, LA, Sacramento, or San Diego! Major bummer… but! There were cool things to be found still in The Golden State.
Redwood National Forest was first on our Menu. Trees with bases the size of a house! Big enough to drive through!… Well, we tried but was told that the van was too big, so we had to skip that experience. Regardless! We had a wonderful time seeing all the different elder trees, some towering over 360 ft tall! We cruised the Avenue of the Giants and learned about the sheer amount of biomass that exists in the redwood forest and also about Flying Squirrels!
Basing ourselves in Eureka for a couple of days, in a Winco parking lot, we took in what the giant trees had to offer. We then continued our journey south along the coast into another change of terrain. The large trees and cool dampness of the Northwest, dried up and gave way to the wine region of central California. A stunning patchwork of vineyards dominated a lot of the drive leading up to the Golden Gate Bridge. “But you just said no San-Fran!” Well… We were headed through anyway to Vacaville to visit my Mother. Might as well get those Golden Gate Selfies in!
Settling into Vacaville for a weekend was a nice break from the road. Autumn took some much-needed time to be productive and made a beautiful pendant, while I kept it quiet and got some rest before our trip back east. We had an appointment to meet with a friend in Salt Lake City that weekend, so our time in California was kept pretty trim.
The drive east from the San Francisco Bay Area over the Sierra Nevada’s was charming and scenic, and we took a detour for a pleasant afternoon stop at Lake Tahoe. Surrounded by a series of resort communities, Lake Tahoe is the west coast lake resort of choice. It was peppered with activities of all sorts and sports crystal clear water with a slick Sierra Nevada back-drop. Mark Twain was avid about Lake Tahoe and wrote about it often:
“…the Lake burst upon us—a noble sheet of blue water lifted six thousand three hundred feet above the level of the sea and walled in by a rim of snow-clad mountain peaks that towered aloft full three thousand feet higher still!”
“As it lay there with the shadows of the mountains brilliantly photographed upon its still surface, I thought it must surely be the fairest picture the whole earth affords.”
Our trail along the north shore of Lake Tahoe in The Golden State turned into The Silver State, and we climbed out of the lake basin, and over the last bit of mountain range before being quickly dumped into the desert on the I-80 corridor. Reno shimmered in the evening twilight and gave us a hint of what to possibly expect in Vegas although we didn’t stay long, we had a lot of ground to cover to Utah.
I think it was worth looking at a map here and noting the distance of Lake Tahoe to Yosemite National Park. An error in haste that has us backtracking to the area several weeks later! But for now Yosemite waits…
Join us next time as we travel across The Great Basin, wander off into the Salt Flats and press further into The Beehive State with all the grandeur, adventure and allure the great state of Utah had to offer.
