We’re home!!
We checked out of our hotel at the last minute again, checked our bags, and went to the French bakery down the street for a satisfying breakfast. Our plan for the day was vague, but I had a knitting store that I was interested in checking out and Kevin professed not to mind, so we reclaimed the car and headed for the suburbs (following the directions from Microsoft on Kevin’s phone). It was a complete failure. The directions were pretty over the river and through the woods, including turns down unpaved back alleys, and then the address that we were directed to didn’t seem to exist, and we were left on a residential street in the middle of south-east portland. Not meant to be. The neighbourhood was pretty, at least, and we drove by Reed College, which was interesting.
We’d contemplated stopping to see Mount St. Helens on the ride home (I still haven’t visited it), but the skies were low and deeply gray, so we decided to save it for a day with views. We cruised up I-5. The only real slow point was a mental one, where we drove past the junction with 101 just before Olympia. Call into work and tell them that we’d see them in a week because we decided to do the loop a second time?? How tempting…
According to my car’s trip counter, we went 1951.6 miles in eight days. Three states, a mix of old and new. I love car trips and this one was even better for the amount of time we spent on tiny roads where the speed limit dropped to 35 when we went through towns. This was a trip of little tastes of places – each morning when we got back in the car we wished we could stay at least another night. Wouldn’t it be neat to do a week-long vacation on the ocean in Oregon? Or a full weekend in Napa? Or a longer stay at the Tu Tu Tun Lodge…? Kevin wanted to bike lots of portions on our route – I’m not sure that a fully loaded bike on those hills sounds appealing, but I bet he could find biking partners and maybe I’d be the car support crew? In any case, the goal this time was to learn more about this coast, to see it in person, and I feel like that was well accomplished. We live in a beautiful place, and it’s amazing to see the variation down the coast and then back up inland.
Here’s the full album of trip photos. Yay. 🙂 Feel free to contact me if you want recommendations for places to stay or eat along the route – we found several great spots.