USA Road Trip - Week 1

We were really excited to get started on our road trip. We left early Tuesday morning with hopes to reach the Oregon coast by dinner time. So we spent the day driving through the state of Washington. All I can say about Washington is that there is forest everywhere. It was a pretty scenic drive. We also drove quickly through the city of Seattle, and it looked like a really cool city. By mid-afternoon we were back to the Pacific coast and we had a very scenic few hours of driving. We went through Astoria, and drove over the really long bridge there and drove around the town a little bit. We reached our first day’s destination at around dinner time and after visiting a few full campgrounds we found one that had room for us.

The place we had arrived at was Cannon Beach. It had been recommended to us by our friends Derek and Karen who had just come from there a few days earlier. Cannon Beach was beautiful. The beach there was absolutely massive and it had huge rocks sticking out of the beach and small islands dotting the coastline. It was really beautiful and that evening there was a light layer of fog covering the beach so it enabled us to get some really cool photos. We walked around for quite a while and then the next morning we went again. The rocks are partially covered during high tide, but when it goes down the bottoms of the rocks are revealed and they are covered with starfish, barnacles, clams, and all other sorts of sea creatures.

On the second day of our road trip we continued down the beautiful Oregon coast and eventually turned back east towards the city of Portland.

The third day we drove into Portland and stopped off at its famous Voodoo Donut shop. This place is famous for its outrageous donuts. They have donuts with every possible topping. We ordered 4 donuts: an “Old Dirty Bastard” donut (topped with oreos, chocolate, and peanut butter), a Maple-Bacon (mmm… bacon), a giant apple fritter, and a habanero donut. Needless to say we didn’t need to stop for lunch that day. Apparently every other traveller was stopping there too. There was a half hour lineup there. The place had received quite a bit of notoriety lately after appearing on both “No Reservations” and “Man vs Food” – two food-themed travel shows.

After eating our donuts we went to an outlet mall nearby to do some shopping. Joh needed a nice outfit for when we go to church on Sundays, and I was way past due on getting new flip flops. My old ones were worn so badly that there was a giant hole in the heel. I guess that’s what happens when you wear them every day for seven months and walk around on all types of terrain for hours.

After shopping, we drove down the historic Columbia River highway. This highway was amazing. It went way up to the tops of the cliffs alongside the Columbia River. We had some absolutely crazy views of the valley below. After the highway was over we drove for the rest of the day along the interstate and clocked off a lot of miles.

Eventually as we drove through north-east Oregon and south-east Washington the landscape changed into a prairie-like landscape. Seemingly unending wheat fields were all around us. I had no idea that there was this type of environment to the west of the mountains.

The next day we put in a lot more miles and stopped at a campground an hour or two away from Yellowstone National Park. This was near the city of Belgrade, where on the following morning we found a URC church in which we could attend worship services.

After church on Sunday we drove into Yellowstone Park and explored the North-West end of the park and searched for a campground to spend the night. Unfortunately in Yellowstone, the sites are all first-come-first-serve, so everything was full. We found a nice site right outside the western entrance to the park and then the following day we re-entered the park and explored a lot more. Yellowstone is so big that you can drive around all day and still not see everything. The highlight of our exploration was definitely the canyon and the views of the Lower Falls. We hiked down into the canyon and got some amazing views. There was one lookout named Artist’s Point that was absolutely unreal.

After exploring, we went to our campsite that we had booked earlier. It was a really disappointing site. It was just a field with a bunch of marked sites. The site outside the park that we had the night before was much nicer. Regardless we made the best of it and ended up having a really nice evening. At around dusk we were approached by a guy on a bike. He was biking around the campground looking for a spot for his tent. Since the campground was full, he put on his Flames hockey jersey and looked for Canadian license plates. His strategy worked on us, and we let him onto our site. He was doing a trip on his bike across the country and he was planning on eventually continuing his trip into Europe and into the Middle-East. Naturally he had some really good stories and we hounded him with question after question about his trip.

The following morning we parted ways and we headed to go see Old Faithful. In case you’re unaware, Old Faithful is a geyser that erupts every hour or so and spouts hot water 60 feet up into the air. We got there and discovered that Old Faithful isn’t quite so faithful anymore. He was about 20 minutes late. In the past he was pretty much like clock-work – spouting off pretty much every hour on the hour. It was neat to see but extremely touristy. We stood there with 100s of other tourists on a special platform made for viewing the geyser.

After Old Faithful we drove out of the park via the South Exit and into Grand Teton National Park. We had never heard of this park until two or three weeks ago when we started researching the top national parks in the US. The recommendations we saw online proved to be correct. The park was beautiful. There is a big lake with a huge mountain range next to it and the view of the mountains with the lake was one of the most incredible scenes we’ve seen on this trip. We spent last night in a nice campground in the south end of the park and now we’re continuing our way south.

We are really enjoying this road trip. It is really a completely different style of travelling than what we’re used to. We are taking things really slow and taking frequent breaks. We really enjoy stopping at a nice scenic overlook for a picnic lunch or cooking dinners on our hibachi on a campsite and having campfires. The nights and mornings are a lot colder than we expected, so our sleeps haven’t been too great but we are still really enjoying it.

Over the next week we’re heading towards the Grand Canyon via the state of Utah. Utah has some amazing national parks as well so we’re really looking forward to this week. Hopefully we’ll be able to post again soon. It’s a lot more difficult to find an Internet connection when we’re camping but we’ll do our best.

USA ROADTRIP DAY 1-8