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.

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.

Scenic drive

Cape Arago Lighthouse

Again, we woke up at 6am this morning, rushing to get out of our extremely nasty motel in Florence, OR. We started driving down 101 South, headed towards Cape Arago Lighthouse. We were eventually able to see the lighthouse on its bluff from a nice lookout point. That was as close as we could get.

Following the lighthouse, we headed south to Bandon. Tobia had read the night before that there were some nice rocks out there off Beach Loop Drive, so we decided to check those out. We saw a rock called Face Rock, which really did look like a face looking up at the sky. There were dozens of other beautiful monoliths in the area.

Rock formations

Coquille River Lighthouse

Face Rock

Closer look at Face Rock

Battle Rock

On our drive down to the next lighthouse, we came across Battle Rock at Port Orford. This was a nice big rock with lots of trees sticking out of it, at the end of the little town. People were sitting all along the main street, waiting for what appeared to be a 4th of July parade.

The next stop along 101 South was Cape Blanco Lighthouse. This one was reachable, and we got to take many pictures and see it from many angles. The surroundings to the north and south were very nice, with lots of small islets. Knowing this would be a long day, we continued on south to Samuel H. Boardman scenic park, just north of Brookings, which is just 6 or so miles north of California.

Cape Blanco Lighthouse in the distance

Interesting rock formation near Cape Blanco Lighthouse

Cape Blanco Lighthouse

The Boardman scenic park was spectacular! We got to see Arch Rock as well as unique other rocks that had trees coming out of their tops. Quite a unique set of rocks. Tobia seems to really enjoy these rugged rocks with a single tree sticking out of them, so we went in pursuit of quite a few of those.

Rock formations

Arch Rock

Tree-topped rock formation

Natural Bridges

From the scenic park, we zoomed into California, past Crescent City and all the towns we saw two years ago on our CA coast trip. We pulled into Garberville (unfortunately our favorite restaurant in the area, Mateel’s Cafe was closed due to 4th of July) to eat some pizza in the small main street area at Sicilito’s Pizzeria.

The start of the Lost Coast

Where the Lost Coast and the Mendocino Coast meet

Afterwards, it was on to 271W to cross from Leggett to Westport. Right before Westport, we got to see the actual spot where the Lost Coast ends and the Mendocino Coast begins. The difference in rock structure and slope is really noticeable. We stepped out to take pictures, walk around to loosen up, and continued on about 5 miles south to our Inn at Westport.

Westport

Westport

We had passed by Westport 2 years ago, but never took the time to explore it. Well, we had a chance to do that and thought it quite charming. There is a small headlands area, a grocery store, and a small population of folks. The inn keeper was one of the most easy going people I’d ever met, having stepped out for 4th of July celebrations (presumably) and simply leaving the key inside the room for us, along with a note saying to come in and make ourselves at home (and that we would settle the bill later).

Completely exhausted by 4 days of lots of walking, driving and sight-seeing, we went in and crashed for the night.

The alarm clock went off at 6am this morning. 20 minutes later we were having breakfast downstairs at our hotel. By 6:45am we had already left Portland and were on our way to the coast and Seaside. The plan was to start at the north of the state and work our way down to Florence, Oregon, about halfway down the coast. The idea was to see at least Cape Meares, Yaquina Head and Heceta Head Lighthouses.

Chapman Point at Ecola State Park

Northern view of Ecola State Park

Postcard: Tillamook Rock Lighthouse

Postcard: Tillamook Rock Lighthouse

As we had done the previous days, we drove through acres upon acres of trees and national parks. Around 8:15 we got into Ecola State Park where we saw our first views of the Oregon coast. The views were gorgeous, more spectacular than I had seen in pictures and imagined. We walked around the trails for a while, enjoyed the views, and eventually decided to make the Catslop loop that would take us to the closest lookout onto Tillamook Rock Lighthouse.

Clearing a path for Tobia on the Catslop loop at Ecola State Park

Ultimately, despite walking for close to 2.5 tiring hours, we could not see the lighthouse, because it was unbearably foggy. I think the visibility could not have been more than 15 feet. Tired, we returned to the car in search of haystack rock and some food.

Haystack Rock

We drove a few miles south to Cannon Beach and had to walk as close as we could to the haystack rock, because the beach was unbearably foggy as well. I collected an uncomfortable amount of sand in my shoes on the walk to the rock. After returning to the main street, we stopped by at a nice bagel and coffee shop for some bagels and to hit the road again.

Twin Rock

On the drive down to see Cape Meares Lighthouse, we made dozens of stops along view points and the coast in general to take pictures and see the Oregon Coast. It was quite beautiful, but I thought it was most so around Central Oregon.

Cape Meares Lighthouse

Cape Meares Lighthouse

After what seemed like at least a few hours, we finally made it to our first lighthouse- Cape Meares. It was a nice lighthouse and I loved the surroundings, which included some monoliths and rugged rocks to the north and south. About 1/4 mile up the hill from the lighthouse is the Octopus Tree- a weird looking, multi-branched tree that is unlike any I’ve ever seen. We took some pictures, hung around and ultimately hit the road for Yaquina Head Lighthouse.

View of the cliffs around Cape Meares Lighthouse

Rock formations at Cape Meares Lighthouse

Giant rock near Cape Meares Lighthouse

Octopus Tree

Some 2.5 hours later, we reached Yaquina Head Lighthouse. Again, in the process, we stopped repeatedly to look at the coast at just about every possible stop. The lighthouse is located in a National Park, and at the end of the large Yaquina Head rock. The lighthouse itself was very well preserved, tall, and quite nice. Its surroundings were also nice, less attractive than Cape Meares’ though.

Cape Foulweather with Yaquina Lighthouse in the distance

Yaquina Lighthouse in the distance

Yaquina Lighthouse

The Spouting Horn at Cook’s Chasm

On our final long drive of the day, we headed to Heceta Head Lighthouse. That drive seemed to take forever, because I believe the most beautiful part of the Oregon coast (at least to this point) is between these two lighthouses. I think Cape Perpetua is magnificent. In particular Cooks Chasm was one of the nicest coastal destinations I’ve ever seen!

Shortly after Cape Perpetua, we reached Heceta Head Lighthouse. I was so excited, I climbed some dangerous rocks to get unique views of the lighthouse. Heceta Head Lighthouse is truly unbelievably beautiful. The only other lighthouse in its league is Point Conception, I believe. It is perched on an awesome, rugged rock, with some monoliths in the area and at the north end of a tiny cove. I couldn’t get enough of it.

Scaling the rocks around Heceta Head Lighthouse

Heceta Head Lighthouse

Heceta Head Lighthouse

Heceta Head Lighthouse

Heceta Head Lighthouse in the distance

We had a subpar meal at this casino

When we finally got our fill of the lighthouse, we went to check into our (nasty) motel, went to have buffet dinner at a casino, fueled and headed back to the motel to crash after a tremendously fulfilling, exciting, but exhausting day.

I woke up naturally at 6am this morning. Before 6:45am we were already on the road, having decided to skip formal breakfast and just eat granola bars and bananas in the car. We started out on Hwy 97N, followed by 58W. From there, it was back up to 5N, and finally to 214E to get to the Silver Falls.

Odell Lake

Along the drive up to Silver Falls State Park, we came across a very nice lake called Odell Lake. The interesting part about this lake is that there used to be a computer game when I was in elementary school, used for educational purposes, called Odell Lake. I used to enjoy playing it in class a good deal- controlling a fish in the lake, trying to determine when to eat other fish, when to run away, or when to ignore other underwater life. I found a link for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odell_Lake_(computer_game).

About 30 minutes north of this lake, on the right side of Hwy 58, we saw a vulture eating a dead carcass, no more than 6 feet away from our car. It was really raw and somewhat horrific. Still, the image stuck with me enough to remember writing about it.

At 11am we pulled into Silver Falls State Park. It was amazing! There were many waterfalls, ranging from roughly 30 foot drops to close to 200. What was further amazing was that one could walk behind and around a couple of these waterfalls. We probably hiked a total of 6-7 miles, climbing and descending to and from waterfalls. Around 2pm we stopped by the lodge at the park and voraciously ate lunch… we were starving!

North Falls	Winter Falls	Middle North Falls	Drake’s Falls	Lower North Falls
Double Falls	Twin Falls	South Falls	South Falls

Powell Book Store in Portland

Following the park, we headed to Portland along Hwy 214. From there, it was on to Hwy 213E and ultimately 205N. We pulled into our hotel, figured out some places to visit, and headed out. Our first stop was Powell’s Book Store- the largest independent bookstore in the world. It had everything I could think of; an enormous 3 story bookstore with a diverse collection of books. Following the bookstore we went to get some dinner at a place called Wild Wood, a really excellent restaurant a couple miles away from the bookstore. I had researched for good places to eat prior to coming to Portland and I’m glad we found that place.

Rose Garden Arena

Pretty exhausted after dinner, we walked one of the bridges that separate Portland into two sides, and had a chance to see the Rose Garden, where the now defunct Portland Lumberjax (NLL lacrosse team) and the Portland TrailBlazers call home court. From there we turned into the hotel to crash really hard following another long, tiring, but exciting day.

We woke up at 6:45 in the morning in Willows. As it was uncomfortably hot all night, we ran the A/C the entire night. There was a Denny’s right across the street and we decided to have breakfast there.

97: my hockey number

By 8am we were well on our way to Crater Lake National Park. It was supposed to take just over 6 hours to get there. Due to kind road conditions on Hwy 5, and a generous speed limit, we made it there in 5 hours, finishing out the final leg on Hwy 97.

Mount Shasta from the road

Mount Shasta from the town of Weed

Along the way we hit the unremarkable Oregon-California state borderline. I expected more than just a worn out sign that was partially faded welcoming us to Oregon. We did, however, get some very nice glimpses of Mt. Shasta, which had quite a bit of snow. The view of Mt. Shasta from the town of Weed was really great. I also thought the Sacramento River was beautiful.

Our first glimpse of Crater Lake

Amazing blueness

We had lunch at a restaurant right at the south entrance to the park around 1pm and then made our way up to Crater Lake. Crater Lake was amazing! The color of the water is a deep, dark blue, unlike any other blue I’ve ever seen.

Wizard Island

Phantom Ship Rock

There was a large island inside the big lake, called Wizard Island. There is also a rugged rock structure called Phantom Ship Rock. I loved the latter rock.

Someone finally took our picture

Initially the plan was to walk a long trail. But ultimately the walking trails didn’t enable us to see enough of the lake. Eventually we decided to drive around the entire lake and walk the short paths at each of the roughly two dozen stops. Each stop gave us a different angle of the lake, and something new to see.

The Pinnacles

Close to the end of the two dozen stops, we pulled off to a place called The Pinnacles. There we saw amazing rock formations made of lava ash that looked like smoke stacks. This reminded me of Cappadoccia, Turkey and the landscape we saw there last May. Right at the tail end of the loop we saw a few small water falls.

The bugs thought I was delicious

Unfortunately along with amazing scenery all throughout the park, there were also tons of bugs that bit us and left us scratching ourselves at many of the stops. Hopefully this will be gone by tomorrow.

We left the park in the evening and headed back south on Hwy 97 to Klamath Falls, where we had dinner and slept the night.

One final observation for the day. Breakfast at Willows, lunch at Crater Lake and dinner in Klamath Falls all reminded me that the Bay Area is so much more tolerant and diverse. At each of our three meals today, folks looked at us like we were out of place and didn’t belong. It certainly didn’t make for a very comfortable set of meals today and it’s unfortunate. I don’t know what the whole country is like in terms of diversity and acceptance, but I expect Portland (being a big city) to make us feel more welcome tomorrow.

After having seen all the California lighthouses I was interested in over the last few years, we decided to take off to Oregon for the 4th of July. There are a number of beautiful lighthouses in Oregon that I looked forward to seeing. I also wanted to finally experience the Oregon coast as well.

Tobia and I both went to work today, but thought that we should get a jump start on the long trip to Oregon. Initially we thought we’d fly out to Oregon, rent a car, and drive all the way back down. But ultimately there were other parks and locations we wanted to see that would be made more difficult by flying up. Not to mention, driving is much more enjoyable for me.

We left the Bay Area just before 6pm and made our way up 880N to 680N. We pulled off at Walnut Creek hoping to catch dinner at Crepes a go-go, a restaurant we like a lot. They had moved their business a few blocks from the old one and have still not opened the new location. So we decided to eat at Hubcap’s Diner, just a few hundred feet away. It was a wonderful dinner.

After dinner we hopped right back on 680N to 80E. Traffic was surprisingly gentle the entire time. Around Vacaville we split north on Hwy 505, which later merged with Hwy 5. We were able to fly through Northern California, with little traffic, a smooth road and a loose speed limit of 70 MPH. Along the final hour or so of Hwy 5, we must have had 100 bugs’ guts on our front wind-shield. It took a fair bit of scrubbing with the squeegee at the gas station to clean up.

We got into Willows surprisingly early, having checked in by 9:30pm already. It was 90 degrees outside that late at night, and we could not cool down despite the A/C running the entire time. Willows seems like a small town, conveniently off Hwy 5- a pleasant place to stop for a night. The plan is to get into South Oregon tomorrow. The quick stop at Willows saves us about 3 hours of driving for tomorrow.