Road trip day 20 - The Redwoods (Sat 29 Nov)

The aim today was to check out the beautiful coastal scenery en route to the majestic Redwood trees in the Redwood National and State Parks in northern California.

The town of Florence has a lovely little waterfront on the river, where we stayed in a charming motel, right on the bank where the Siuslaw River mouths out into the Pacific:

The bridge on 101 over the Siuslaw River

Some quaint shops on the town's riverfront

Previous night's dinner

I suppose given this country's size, it should be expected that a lot of towns will have the same name, but of course in different states:

From Florence (Oregon :-)) we head straight down the coast, remaining on the famous coastal Highway 101, which we first encountered when we entered the US from Canada at Port Angeles a few days ago. This route runs all along the coast from Washington to Los Angeles in California.

Although the route is considered to be a 'coastal highway', the geographical composition of this rugged coast forced the roadbuilders to venture inland every now and again and also to build a lot of bridges to cross the many rivers:

The photo does not do any justice to the natural beauty

Can't remember where this bridge was or which river it conquered

I guess its still the same bridge as in the previous picture? I just like the perspective

Yep - we also have beans . . .

It must be related to Peets Coffee??

 Coos Bay, still in Oregon, was another super delightful little town, with a host of restaurants and cute shops where you can spend your money on useless souvenirs.

Sea horse sculpture, Coos Bay.

The 101 took us to Port Orford, which also had some pretty stunning views of the Oregon coastline hugging the town.

The 101 through Port Orford

Since we started driving south on our trip, we realized that from a photographic point of view it is actually not the best decision to drive due south during winter here in the northern Hemisphere. The sun remains rather low on the horizon and is therefor mostly from the front during the day. This makes for very difficult light to take pictures into, and as a result one rarely gets a good perspective with the best lighting conditions. Of course, you can simply turn around, look north, and then take the picture with the light from behind, but that is not always practical when you drive.

This predicament is nicely illustrated with the photos below. The first two pictures are taken in a southerly direction. The shot of the coastline in the second picture is the same coastline visible on the left in the first picture.

Looking north from Port Orford. 

The picture below was probably taken half an hour after the first one above (i.e. in the same conditions), and is of the same rocks visible in the distance in the sea in the first picture.

 The next picture was again taken a bit further south on the road, but also in a northerly direction, and again of the same stretch of coastline as in the earlier pictures.

Its just easier to capture nicer colours when the light is right

 Some more pictures of the truly beautiful southern Oregon / northern California coastline. At some spots it reminded me a bit of Wilderness in the Southern Cape.

 

California is know for its sunshine. And lo and behold, literally when we passed over the stateline from Oregon into California, for the first time during the day the sun came out properly!

Whoop whoop! California will always hold a special place in my heart for various reasons.
Almost like the Eastern Freestate way way far from here in SA. . .

Hello sunshine!

Thank you too Oregon! You were amazing

The Redwoods are mostly found around the town of Cedar City, where we popped into the local tourism office and had to deal with THE most obnoxious Tourist Info official imaginable. I was irritated with the smugness of the woman within 3 seconds and as a result the visit was almost fruitless - fortunately Brenda suffered through her "talking down to stupid tourist" presentation and managed to obtain a map or two of where we should go.

Our first stop was at

I visited the area way back in 1993 with my friend Lan Wyl, so sort of know what to expect. It was nice though to see the amazement on Brenda's face when she encountered these majestic trees for the first time.

It is hard to fathom the size of these trees, and although they are not as large in terms of diameter as their family members found in the Sequoia National Park further south, they are the worlds tallest trees, and can grow to be in excess of 100m tall!

They don't appear so big

But they are!

Fortunately Brenda prevented this one from falling over further!

Who's that girl?

Tree panoramic

Root structure

Walking around among these trees, I think this is probably what the fable writers had in mind when they described a magic forest:

We left the enchanted Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park, and then stopped off at a few typical tourist traps. The first being the Trees of Mystery, with its ridiculously big statue of the lumberjack Paul Bunyan and his blue ox:

Spot the people under his left boot

Next stop was the Tour Thru Tree at Klamath. It was here in 1993 where mister Lan Wyl and I managed to fit a 1972 Buick Estate Wagon through the tree. This is an example of that monster of yesteryear that he and I toured the States with:

Ours however was just  beautiful light blue

According to the interweb this car is 2032mm wide (that is 2,032m!).

This time I barely managed to fit a little Sandton Shopping Trolley through the same tree:

The Rav is only a mere 1844mm wide - I think either my driving skills has decreased dramatically since then or, what is perhaps a more probable explanation, is that Lan Wyl was the one who drove that Buick wagon through the tree . . .

The obnoxious Tourist Info lady in Crescent City also advised Brenda to visit a scenic overlook of the mouth of the Klamath river. This proved to be good advice given the vistas from up there:

Klamath River mouth

After feasting with our eyes  on the scenery, we got something to feast our tummy's on

before we enjoyed a northern Cali sunset and then rested our heads in Eureka, CA.

Road Trip Day 19 - Black Friday! (28 Nov 2014)

According to Wikipedia, Black Friday is "the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the United States (the fourth Thursday of November). Since the early 2000s, it has been regarded as the beginning of the Christmas shopping season in the US, and most major retailers open very early and offer promotional sales."

For us non-Americans this basically means that most retail businesses offer ridiculous discounts / sales on a lot of their stock. From what I gathered, one could get good deals not only on the "normal" items like clothing and electronics, but this tradition even held true for large items such as household appliances and even cars!

Anyhow, while planning our trip, I wanted to visit Crater Lake National Park in Oregon, a stunning freshwater lake inside a volcano, which I was fortunate to visit in 1993. Doing this would however mean we will not have time to also drive down the Oregon coast, which is also spectacular. Furthermore, available info pointed towards heavy snowfall in the Park's region, which could result in the park being closed temporarily. So after consultation with Don, we decided to take the coastal route towards the Redwoods in northern California, but before doing so, also experience some of the Black Friday madness. 

After saying goodbye to Don & Nancy and Don very kindly showing us the way out of the city, we stopped off at an outlet mall just outside Portland. 

Where we blew the trip budget. 

Black Friday: Been there, done that and got ALL the t-shirts . . . 

We spend almost four hours shopping. (With "we" being a slight misnomer . . .). Anyhow, our route on this day took us from Portland, past the outlet malls, to a small coastal town called Florence:

Relative short drive after a marathon shopping excursion!

This is where we are in the bigger scheme of things

We did not take a lot of photos during the drive as it was a very overcast and dark day, but did manage to find a glimpse of the sun setting over the dramatic Oregon coast:

Very typical rocks just off a beach on the Oregon coast

Its a wild coast

So wild we even found crabs in our hotel room!