West coast road trip, a beginning
Time to leave Truckee, time to get used to our new car and to find a good set-up in it for the bags and most importantly, our bed. First, some mileages.. The car is super easy to drive and we bought 2 audio books to get us through our too many hours of driving we have ahead of us. We bought the Night Circus (really good) and The Help (haven't started it yet). And no Francis (I hope he will recognize himself), the car isn't a fuel s*cker, we got to an average of 19 MPG (12.7 L/100km) at some point, which is not too bad for a V6 motor and heavy car. The roads are wide and without much traffic. We also enjoy the satellite radio ;-)
Where did we first headed? Avenue of the Giants, south of Redwood, in California. First we were supposed to meet up with Ciara but it didn't work, sadly. We went on our own to see those first big trees. Wide and tall!! I didn't try to estimate the number of matches you can get out of such a tree... maybe billions! Some of them are big enough to hold you inside them. Others can get through a car, not our's of course...
Then we had to find a spot for another night and we cruised to find something close to the Ocean. Of course in the morning we went to check out how cold the Ocean was... Brrrrr it's cold! And it's cloudy, so it doesn't make it warmer...
Then we went to see Redwood National Park. Again, some gigantic trees, even taller than in Phillipsville. We look very very small.
The nights in the car were starting to be kind of painful. We would woke up in the morning partly with a broken back. We started to sleep on our inflatable mattress but they were pretty noisy. Nevertheless we were still very happy to be free and able to camp where ever we wanted. Anything has to have it down sides...
Next Park on the list was Crater Lake. I still think that Lake Tahoe is an amazing lake. But this one, is incredible. Its color is a perfect deep blue. Best of all, is the way you get there. Having in its name the word "crater", you get there by climbing an easy road, and all the sudden you see this beautiful lake out of nowhere. I couldn't resist to get down on its cliffs to get some better shots even though Lory wasn't so happy reading signs everywhere about dangerous cliffs and falls. But it was worth it :) We spent a couple of hours enjoying its scenery from different point of views. I'll let you anjoy a few photos.
Next stop on the road trip, Portland! There, we were welcome by Megan and Charly. We headed straight to the pub for some happy hours beers & food. Thanks to them and their friends, we got some good tips for future parts of our road trips in the US. One very good we got the day after before leaving from Mega was the location of a fabric store where we bought foam blocks to create a nice bed in the trunk of the car. That was some well spent US dollars! We spent actually the day going around shops to buy stuff we wanted for our big trip as in Oregon state there is no sale taxe. In the evening we left Portland, in the direction of Olympic National Park.
We stopped along the road on a fresh "man built" village, in the middle of nowhere, Seabrook. It feels really strange to see such a thing. It's like being in a movie where they just created a small town for an horror movie... Everything looks new, everyone is smiling. If you go around the corner, you see that there's nothing more, just the forest. People are getting a speech (I guess) about how wonderful it will be to live here and that they should buy a property. And looking closer to the houses, they all look empty...
Then I thought it woud be fun to get some unpaved road done, so let's go and cut a stretch we have to do to reach the coast... It got very tight, even too tight at the end and we took another road to escape this forest. We drove on very tiny bridges, which we hoped would hold the weight of the car...
Next morning, we took the ferry to get to Victoria, on Vancouver Island. Canada! Time for the maple sirup, moose and cooler temperature. First let's go to Tofino, where my cousin Samy is waiting on us to go surfing... Surfing?? Really? In this cold water?
But now, place to the photos what can speak better than words sometime to describe our trip:
-
It's cold! -
Klamath coast, CA -
Hopworks Urban Brewery, Portland, OR -
Redwood NP - Find Lory! -
Olympic NP -
Spooky Seabrook -
Having fun! -
Off roads... -
Crater Lake, OR