From Washington to California...

Day 11 - Olympic National Park

We finished day 10 by taking the Edmonds-Kingston car ferry across Puget Sound to get to the Olympic Peninsula. It was a fun, pleasent, and short trip. Kingston was a small seaside town that looks like a lot of fun for the 60+ crowd. We ate and left for Port Angeles where we would spend the night at a KOA. Our early arrival time allowed us to make s'mores for the first time on our trip. The fire felt great with the cool North Pacific air.

Olympic National Park was interesting but we really only had a chance to scratch the surface. It's really 3 parks in one. The Olympic mountains rise up 7 thousand feet into the air just miles from the coast creating a ton of rain right along the coast. So in Olympic NP, you have a mountain environment, one of the world's only temperate rain forests, and the Pacific coast. Unfortunately we began the day kind of late (almost noon), and we had to cut out the mountains (as we've had no shortage of mountains so far on this trip). Our first stop was to the small Indian community of La Push. It was in this small sea side community that we got our first glimpse of the endless beauty of the Pacific Ocean. 70 foot "sea stacks" (large stone hills) shoot out of the Ocean all along the northern Washington coast and provided a fantastic scenery. The walk to the beach was through a small patch of rain forest. What makes a temperate rain forest a rain forest (besides the rain... duh) is the patches of moss, everywhere, on stones, on the branches of the sitka and spruce, on the path; and the ferns that blanket the undergrowth. The beach was kind of crappy, the sand was nice but there was a lot of dead trees lying everywhere and a lot of bugs. The sea stacks were nice but that was about it. From there we headed to the Hoh rain forest. The Hoh rain forest was essentially a bigger version of the rain forest we walked through earlier to get to the beach. The trees were bigger and there was a lot more moss. We got a very good look at a large bull elk wandering in the forest as well.

Day 12 - Oregon

After Olympic, we drove down the Washington coast to Willapa Bay, the site of our next KOA. An interesting phenomenon throughout our trip has been the mystery of waking up in new places. We always arrive at our campgrounds past sunset, so we never know what the scenery looks like around our camp. Thus, every morning is a surprise. It was quite a surprise when we woke up the next morning just a few hundred feet from the ocean. Apparently, clamming is a very popular activity in Willapa Bay. We hate clams and the beach was crappy so we left as soon as possible.

Before passing the Oregon border we stopped in the tiny town of Naselle, WA. We stopped at Edgells Inn Restaurant & Lounge and tried the cheeseburger and macaroni soup. It was delicious and I highly recommend any travelers in the area stop there (if they can find it). We meet a lot of people on the road and it's usually a mixed bag. Some small towns suck, and some are great. Naselle was very friendly, so a thumbs up there.

From Naselle we headed to the Oregon border and into Portland (which is just miles from the border). Portland was surprisingly nice. Everything we had heard led us to believe that Portland would be a complete shit hole, and from the highway it looked like that would be case (see the video in a few days), but once we entered the city, we were very pleasenly surprised. A few notes on Portland: Portland is super liberal. Even in the rich areas of town, it wasn't uncommon to see people with multiple piercings and green peace t-shirts. Portland looks like a nice place to live but only OK to visit. There aren't very many things to do if you enjoy sight-seeing. However, if you're a shopper, Portland is a very nice place to visit. Unfortunately we only got to spend a little bit of time in Portland because we had to be in Sacramento by the evening of Day 13 (and we didn't really budget much time ahead of time to begin with because we thought it would be shitty).

From Portland we headed south to Eugene, OR, home of the Oregon Ducks. Eugene was a total bust. The University of Oregon campus was ugly and super tiny. The Stadium was a long walk from campus and the downtown looked like crap. The silver lining of Eugene: good Mexican food. We ate our first Mexican food of the trip and it was very good. From there we headed down to Wilderville to spend the night.

Day 13 - Redwood National Park to Sacramento

We left early from Wilderville and headed toward Redwood National Park. If you're someone who says, "A tree is a tree" or "Once you've seen one tree you've seen them all," I think you need to visit Redwood National Park. These trees are incredible. The tallest tree in the park (380 feet) is inaccessable by normal means but you can easily see 340 foot behemuths from the road. Many of the trees are easily wider than a car. We drove down an 8 mile unpaved (wild you might say) road through the forest with trees often only inches from the car. It was an incredible drive. When we got to our destination we took a short walk through one of the many trails and were transported back in time to the Jurassic era when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. Giant trees erupt from the ground 20 feet from each other and ferns and moss cover the undergrowth. After filming some exciting footage we had to travel back to the future (zing!). We were on a mission to get to Sacramento at a reasonable hour to meet up with our cousins. We asked a forest ranger what the fastest way to get there would be and he recommended a route down the coast and cutting up when the mountains were a bit thinner. Instead we got in the car and chose to follow our navigation system's instructions... What a terrible mistake. Never, ever drive US-299 unless you absolutely have to. It was 150 miles of somewhat busy mountain roads. We averaged about 35 mph. In other words, it was sheer hell. From there we headed down I-5 to Sacramento to meet up with our cousin Charles.

-The Guys