Summer Vacation, Chapter 1

If that doesn't just scream vacation, I don't know what does. A jacuzzi tub and a summer ale? Perfect. Also perfect is that the view from that tub looked out to this:

Yes, that's my beloved Pacific City, OR. But I'm getting ahead of myself. In squeezing out the last drops of summer, we took our vacation to the California Redwoods and Oregon Coast. It was some of the most spectacular scenery I've ever seen.  This post is just the first day. I need to do this in stages because there was not a single uninteresting part of this trip.

We started off by driving to Redding, CA. We took I-5 from Seattle all the way. You would think it might be a little boring, but, uh, no. Oregon is the prettiest state in the Union as far as I've seen, and once we got south of Eugene, the farmlands gave way to desert mountains. I don't have pictures of it for the blog because I was driving during that leg. We were hitting elevations of around 5,000 feet, but the temperature was a dry 97 degrees. It was wild, windy and lovely.

Northern California was the same as Southern Oregon in all its splendor and heat. We drove along Mount Shasta for quite a bit. I'll post some of those pictures in the next blog when I get them from Shawn. The wildfires had just run through Northern CA about a week or so before, so we could see the barren parts. It is nothing short of amazing. It's so interesting to see mountains with no or very little snow at the tops. Even the Olympics (which are lower elevation than the Cascades) here in Washington retain quite a bit of snow during the summer. Though this year it was warmer, and I read recently that the snow right now is at 7,000 feet. For those of you who have been out here, Hurricane Ridge is 6,000 feet or so, and we've seen snow every time we've gone there.... Things definitely warmed up this Summer.

Our first stop on vacation was dinner in Redding. Redding is just a regular town, nothing special, really. Uh, except it is the northernmost location of In-n-Out Burger! Heck yeah! This is the only reason we stopped in Redding - so we could have dinner at In-n-Out. It was awesome.

From Redding, we left I-5 and headed west to Eureka, CA, which is on the coast and also situated right in the middle of the Redwoods. A word about the drive from Redding to Eureka on state route 299: TERRIFYING. 299 winds through mountains and forest, equipped with sheer drop-offs into the rapids and no shoulder/guardrail. To top it off, they were doing construction on the road. Seriously. They were doing something called "highway realignment." WHAT THE HELL IS HIGHWAY REALIGNMENT?? It turns out, it's just what it sounds like. They are blasting away part of the mountain to realign the road. In order to traverse these sections of construction, we had to have a pilot car. A PILOT CAR. I'm glad Shawn was driving. I never needed bourbon so desperately.

Of course, with crazy drives like that, you know the scenery is going to be gorgeous. And truly, it was.

It was one of the scariest drives, but one of the most beautiful for sure. We arrived in Eureka in time to check in and go to bed. It was a long day of driving, but we knew on day 2 there would be less driving and lots and lots of trees. For me, the best part of vacation is the road trip. I love driving, and I love seeing things and having a destination to look forward to, even if the destination isn't half as fun as the journey (which is usually the case). One thing I appreciate about living in the Pacific NW is that we never run out of road trips to take. We haven't even started heading east or north out of Seattle yet. I'm a little obsessed with the Pacific Ocean and points south (i.e., the entire state of Oregon), so we keep exploring that way. But we'll get around to heading east. I mean, mountains and wine country! We could do worse!

I'll end this post here - but I'll pick it up again with the Redwoods, maybe later today or tomorrow. Until then, Go Bucks!