This Oregon trip was as exciting for me as the Northern California Coast trip was exactly 2 years ago. Technically, this trip was 6 days, starting Tuesday, June 30th, ending Sunday, July 5th.

I think the travel bug has bit me. I love road trips across this country. I’m thinking of Arizona and possibly Utah for next year’s 4th of July trip.

Some random thoughts below:

• We saw a glider port with tons of gliders (for Beast) in North Plains, Oregon, just west of Portland.
• I recommend seeing Twin Rocks at Rockaway Beach. In my opinion, the best viewing spot is the end of S. Minnehaha St. Drive as far as the small road will let you, and walk the tiny bit that’s left to get a great glimpse.
• There are so many national forests and probably billions of trees in Oregon. And not just inland, but also right around the coast too. Tobia and I joke that one of the most sadistic jobs in the world would be a tree counter in Oregon.
• The fog in the Oregon coast is not so pleasant. Most people don’t like coastal fog, but I actually like it. I just don’t like the Oregon coast fog. Visibility is extremely poor and different than that of California’s. I like the gentle gray skies kind of fog, not the one where you can touch something and still not see it. The fog almost ruined our first day at the Oregon coast. It also prevented us from seeing Tillamook Rock Lighthouse. Instead, I had to settle for a postcard of it, purchased at the Cape Meares Lighthouse store.
• Oregon has horrendously unhelpful road signs. Often times they didn’t have road signs at all! There’s something to be said for exploration, adventurousness, and getting lost on vacation, but this was just bad. I simply don’t understand why they can’t just put a simple sign that says Hwy 101 right turn (or something as simple as that).
• Related to above, finding Arch Rock information online was extremely difficult. I’m not even sure how I ultimately found out that it is in Southern Oregon, in Samuel H Boardman park. It is beautiful and would have been a shame to miss. Natural Bridges, also part of the park, is a must see. Oregon needs to do a better job of outlining where beautiful spots are, and how to get there.
• The Oregon coast is beautiful. It is different from California’s. I thought there were more beaches (compared to length of coastline), many more monoliths (massive ocean rocks) but less rugged a terrain. My favorite area of the Oregon coast is the Cape Perpetua area in the Central Oregon coast. I think Mendocino County in California still has the most beautiful coast anywhere, but Oregon has more beautiful places.
• We bought an Oregon Pacific Coast Passport which gave us access to just about all the National and State parks along the Oregon coast. It was $10 and definitely worth it. Just about every coastal destination in Oregon is either a State park or National park, which I think is a great idea, and there is a small fee (which would otherwise ultimately add up to more than $20 if stopping often as we did) to enter or park. Unfortunately, I didn’t read up on this anywhere, and there was no advertising (or even mention of) for it. I just happened to talk to a volunteer park ranger at Yaquina Head Lighthouse, and he told me all about it. I highly recommend it. Can be purchased at the park itself in most cases, if I’m not mistaken.
• Oregonians seem to obey the speed limit, which is already a good 5-15 MPH lower at every highway when compared to California. Every time someone whizzed by me on the roads, it seemed they had a CA license plate.
• We drove roughly 415 miles of Oregon coast, and it took us about 9:30 hours of driving. I don’t include our stops in this calculation. There were many, many stops.
• We drove roughly 440 miles of California coast immediately following the Oregon coast, for a total of more than 850 miles of consecutive coast (in 3 days). Of course, you can’t always see the coast from the road, which often turns inland for significant segments of time. But for all practical purposes, all of those miles were coastal miles.
• We drove through Eureka again (we drove there two years ago and I remarked how unremarkable it was), and I still really don’t like it. I was consciously determined to find something I liked about it while driving through it, but couldn’t come up with anything.
• In Oregon, you may not fuel your own car. The instant we pulled into any gas station, the attendant would run out to greet us, I’d give him or her my credit card, they’d run it through the machine, open the gas cap, pump for us, and put everything away, always making sure to give me a receipt. Apparently they should not be tipped either. This is done for safety, but it struck me as bizarre.
• Our green car is amazing! I pulled off to fuel in Salem, Oregon just as the car hit 210,000 miles. When the gentleman finished fueling the car, I calculated 55 miles per gallon! Yes, most of it was highway mileage, but we still got stopped and slown down a bunch of times enough where this is really impressive. The car is 13 years old.
• My initial trip plan did not include the Westport stop. Knowing that from Florence Oregon to Northern California was already a really long stretch, I had us stopping in Willits for the night of Saturday, July 4th. I had even booked a hotel there. It was in Portland that Tobia suggested that it’d be a lot nicer if we would instead just continue along the coastline and enjoy that for as long as we could.
• We drove on Highway 1 (it takes on different numbers in different stretches, but it’s still Hwy 1) all the way from Westport to Half Moon Bay before finally cutting inland.
• Our days were very long and, by day’s end, very tiring. We typically woke up around 6am and would go to bed around 10:30pm. I still insist though, that waking up early on vacation is the best thing. Not only are the roads empty, parks less bustling, but it is beautiful and serene outside. Part of a vacation is to do and see new things, and ultimately to get out of one’s routine and comfort zone, I believe. By sleeping in late in the mornings, so much of the day gets wasted and by the time you reach anywhere, it’s full of people. I felt this odd rush of getting an early jump start on every day by starting early.
• The Crater Lake bug bites passed really quickly. By the next day, there were virtually no signs of bug bites.
• We carried a small, light, travel-sized Samsung laptop on our trip. Most of our motels had a WiFi connection and I was able to take advantage to do some last second research on the next day’s stops. It also allowed me to keep a daily log of events. The stop at Bandon to see Face Rock was made possible by the previous night’s google maps. Also, finding all the information about Westport Inn while in Portland two days earlier, allowed us to change our travel plans on the go.

Sunday, July 5th, 2009

I ultimately ended up settling the room tab with the owner around 10pm last night. Knowing that we would leave around 6:30am today, I wanted to leave with a clear conscience. I also didn’t want to wake the poor man up that early in the morning. The elderly gentleman was so cool about it when he pulled into his garage and I came up to him with my check.

We left Westport right around 6:30am, fueled in Fort Bragg, and pulled into Mendocino exactly at 7am- perfect time to have a wonderful and fresh breakfast at the Mendocino Cafe and Bakery, which had opened up no more than a couple minutes earlier.

Following breakfast, we continued on Hwy 1 South. We drove all the way down to the junction area with Petaluma (where you can hop on 101), except that this time we decided to drive a new stretch of Hwy 1, one we had never seen before, and which runs just east of Point Reyes National Seashore.

Towards the southern end of Point Reyes is the unincorporated community of Bolinas. Having read up a little bit about it, and knowing that there are no signs marking the directions of how to get there, as well as hearing that the local residents are reclusive and not appreciating visitors, I was really determined to get there this time. We had missed seeing it the last couple times we drove this stretch of road (after seeing Pt Reyes Lighthouse and Chimney Rock on two separate trips) and were actually able to get there this time.

Let me just say that it was extremely unimpressive, I have no idea why people are so protective of it and eager to keep others out. Let the residents enjoy Bolinas by themselves- that dirty lagoon area with poser coastline. Even just driving around, we got unpleasant looks from people who clearly recognized we weren’t Bolinas’ans. They don’t have to worry about me “intruding” on their land ever again.

We returned to Hwy 1, crossed the Golden Gate bridge, and continued on Hwy 1 to Pacifica. Discussing where we should eat lunch, we ultimately decided on Moss Beach Distillery in Moss Beach, just south of Point Montara Lighthouse. We had been there a few times before and we liked the food. Plus we weren’t ready to return to real civilization and the crowded Bay Area just yet. The restaurant ocean views are also pretty nice.

Unbelievably, we ran into our friend Jared, who was having lunch with a friend at the same restaurant! What are the chances?! Jared remarked that we looked exhausted, which we were, given that it was almost 2pm and we had been on the road for probably 7 hours with only a few stops along the way. I ate really hard (like I hadn’t eaten in a few days), and ultimately drove us the rest of the 45 or so minutes to get home. We took 92 East to 280 South to Saratoga’er Avenue.

We got home around 3:30 quite tired but extremely satisfied.