EPIC ROAD TRIP

For as long as I can remember, the question: “What’s your Dream Vacation?” has been a frequent topic of idle conversations. People would always throw out all sorts of far away and exotic locations: Taiwan, Japan, Australia, Florence and, of course, Paris. Those places would all be great, of course.. but, for me, I've always thought a big Road Trip here in the continental US would be the way to go.

Partially, it’s a symptom of my being too lazy to bother getting a passport... but mostly, North America is just such a beautiful place! The range of differences in climate and wildlife and native foliage from one end to the other is astounding! And these sorts of things are best enjoyed at close range, and at speeds less than 600mph.

I’ve long harbored a dream to drive down the Pacific Coast, from Washington to California and this is the year that it became a reality.

Not too long ago, my Hubby and I took this EPIC ROAD TRIP and I added Washington and Oregon to the States I’ve visited as we drove from Seattle, WA to Berkeley, CA along coastal Highway 1. It was a trip of a lifetime.

Here are a few snippets of some of the places we visited:

Boulder, CO
As we wandered around campus, I made sure to take my Hubby over to the Engineering building 'cuz I knew he'd get a kick out of the contraption there.

Crater Lake National Park, OR
We'd heard rumors of how beautiful this lake was. It's a crazy deep lake (in the crater of an old volcano) that's up so high that nothing drains into it, and so the water comes from pure, melted snow that's supposed to be the most amazing blue you've ever seen.... So we drove up to the 7,000ft summit and this is what we saw:

Redwoods National Park, CA
Video hardly does it justice.. the trees are just so amazing and HUGE! We took a very scenic drive through the forests in northern California. This particular segment was originally the stage coach route, so they didn't chop any trees down, just went in between them. In several places it was so exceptionally narrow that only one car could squeeze between the trees at a time. Happily, there were very few others taking that road in the opposite direction and it wasn't much of a problem.

Fort Bragg, CA
The highlight of this stop was riding horses along the beach. However, as I am not an expert rider and horses require your full attention (else they decide they're in charge), there's no video of that. However, we did spend a little time at the beach:

Point Arena, CA
Beyond that white fence is the ocean; majestic waves crashing against the craggy shore. I loved watching the rolling waves and hearing them break against the rocks. And the lighthouse was pretty cool too. At the museum we learned that the gazebo was built for the movie Forever Young. The more you know...:

Oakland, CA
We spent our last weekend of the trip in Berkeley, CA. That Sunday, we drove into Oakland and visited the temple there. Just for giggles, I took some video and (because my Hubby has a great reading voice) included the inscription from the sculpture on the rear of the temple: