Driving

I think that we all agree that the one major downside of our trip was that it involved a LOT of driving to destinations.

 

We drove to the Petrified Forest, then we drove to a hotel in California (fabulous hotel) to sleep, then we drove to another hotel (not so fabulous) to sleep.  Then we drove through the Redwood Forest, up to the (closed on Tuesdays apparently...I guess I forgot to read all the information) Cape Blanco Lighthouse.  None of my pictures from the light house came out.  They are all like this one.  It was VERY windy, foggy and drizzly.  Hopefully Eric had better luck.

Then we drove to another hotel, this one with beach access, horrible parking, but yay for beach access!  Then we drove to Portland, then we drove to Astoria, then we drove to Tillamook, then we drove to another hotel, then we drove all day to yet another hotel, before driving all day home.

It was a lot of driving and although we love to spend time together chatting in the car, it did get tiring after awhile.  We spent some time on the less stressful roads listening to the book The Mysterious Benedict Society.  A fabulous read.  :)

Most of the driving was done on the Pacific Coast 101 which added a lot of time to the drive.  There was so much one-lane curvy, windy driving.  Eric and I are cautious drivers while many others seemed to be EXTREMELY comfortable with the roads...speeding around curves and turns.  Crazy!

 

 

It was really interesting driving through California.  We kept seeing field upon field upon field of sunflowers.  I can only imagine they are harvesting them for the seeds as it was nothing like the time we drove to Rhode Island.

 

We got really lucky weather-wise on our trip.  It was lovely, drizzly, rainy and overcast most of the time we were driving.  It wasn't until the day we started driving home that the heatwave started.  Even though we had a lot of driving to do, it was in our favorite type of weather.