West Coast Roadtrip

Eventually we got itchy feet in San Fran, and it was time to hit the road. We snagged a shiny little american car, and headed north. To tell the truth, we stopped at some pretty unremarkable places on the way north on the interstate highway, but eventally we gained enough courage to veer left to the west coast.

Pretty soon we hit some snow, and spotted some wildlife up close. The main highlight of nothern california though would have to be the Redwood National Park area. This was probably our first bite of north american wilderness, which was fun. No bears or beavers, but plenty of cool ancient trees swaying in the breeze, with scatterings of snow to add the icing to the cake.


Redwood National Park, Northern California

Pretty soon we found ourselves driving over the state border to Oregon, and into sea lion country. There is this large cave open to the sea in some cliffs, where you can get an elevator down to a viewing area. The sea lions definitely seem to like the cave, with about 200 of them belching and clambering over each other to get in there. They really are a smelly and noisy lot who seem to enjoy little slap fights with each other. Jenai seemed to feel some sort of affinity with them, posing for this shot.


Sea lion caves, Oregon

From there it was up to Portland. Reading the newspapers, it seems that Portland is home to a really progressive bunch of residents - they care about their city. It's had a great name in the States for planning issues ever since they put in a tram in the 1980s. So that was interesting enough. Despite the population of 2 million, it felt a bit smaller, maybe Newcastle size, with an obvious streak of alternative culture and fashion. So we had a good time wandering around the city and a few neighbourhoods.

Washington state was next on the agenda. We had a plan to spend some time on the rugged Olympic Peninsula, but somehow we lost track of time / got confused between miles and kilometres, and just managed to skirt around the edges without seeing the really cool stuff there. But we did spend a night in the artist/hippie/maritime town of Port Townsend, staying at a hostel on a former US Navy base.


Seattle skyline

We got a car ferry to Seattle, which was a scenic way to arrive in town. It really is in a spectacular location, being surrounded by the Puget Sound and numerous lakes. Pretty soon after arriving, we managed to meet up with my ex-flatmate from Glebe, Zach and his GF Rachel. Being a master chef himself, Zach took us to a few great places including some very authentic mexican and a classy italian place where he just happened to know all the staff. We also hit the Pike Place market, a waterfront sculpture park, the aquarium (complete with extroverted sea otters), learnt how to play shuffleboard, and paid homage to Soundgarden's Black Hole Sun. There was also some cool surry hills type areas that we spent some time in tasting seattle's best coffee, microbrews and nightlife. I can't leave seattle though without commenting that it rained pretty much the whole time we were there, but after a while you just learn to walk through it without any umbrella or whatever, saying to yourself "this isn't rain, just a little damp!".

So with seattle seen, we grabbed a bus and headed north over the border to Canada . . . . (next exciting installment soon) . . .

All the west coast photos:

West Coast Roadtrip