Great Alaskan Road Trip: Week 20 Roundup

Each Friday, I post some relevant (and not-so-relevant) stats about the trip, as well as a little write-up of what it’s like to live out of a van for weeks on end. Here’s where we are overall:

• Total miles driven: 13,382
• Total miles by ferry: 537
• Total days on the road: 137
• Total nights in a hotel: 10
• Total miles hiked: 123.14

Some interesting stats for this week:

• Fuel stops: 1 (diesel: $4.29 in Coos Bay, OR)
• Technical Issues: 0
• Elk sighted: 24 
• Bats sighted: 1 
• NPS Sites Visited: 2 (Oregon Caves Nat’l Monument and Redwoods National Park)

Not surprisingly, I caught Kevin’s “hantavirus” (not really hanta – it’s just a cold).  So we’ve definitely been taking it slow this week.  But we did see a few interesting things along the way that I wanted to share.  In Klamath, CA just outside Redwoods National Park we saw a road sign that said “Tour Thru Tree”.  We couldn’t pass it by without checking it out.  Somebody has carved a 7’4” by 9’6” opening in a 725-year-old Redwood.  Too bad our van is exactly 9’6” high.  No worries, we didn’t actually attempt to drive through – getting our van stuck in a tree would’ve brought an embarrassingly swift end to the trip for sure.

While we were in Redwoods NP, we saw this amazing bus.  The back has been converted into a greenhouse to grow fruit and vegetables anywhere, anytime.  We talked to the owners and they said things grow great but they do have to take it easy when cornering.  I’m sure this thing wouldn’t fit through the “Tour Thru Tree”, either.

The ocean views along the highway have been breathtaking – when you can see the ocean through the fog, that is.  For those foggy days, the town of Port Orford in Oregon has figured out a way to help people find the beach:

I loved the creativity of this Bandon, OR business owner.  The clock has obviously been broken for a long time.  Most people would’ve fixed it, but this guy just incorporated it into the business name – “Timeless Accents”.  Clever, no?

Oregon Caves NM and Redwoods National Park

Oregon Caves National Monument is a bit of a misnomer.  There’s really just the one cave.  But it’s definitely unique.  Instead of being limestone (like most caves) the rock has metamorphosed into marble.  We went on a ranger-guided tour (which is the only way to see the inside of the cave) that lasted an hour and a half.  There were about eighteen people in the group, so it was a bit cramped at times.  There were quite a few places where you really had to crouch down to squeeze through the passages – the lowest passage was about 45 inches and kind of felt like doing the limbo.  One lady had to ask to leave the tour because she was claustrophobic and also couldn’t handle all the stairs (500 stairs take you up about 230 feet).  But the rest of us enjoyed exploring the half mile of passages through the cool caverns (literally “cool” – the cave temperature is a constant 44 degrees).

The cave was discovered in 1874 and tourists have been exploring the cave since the 1880’s.  Things were different back then – people were encouraged to take souvenirs (stalactites and soda straws) and even to sign their names on the marble walls!  Although that kind of thing is frowned upon nowadays, the old signatures have been preserved thanks to the cave’s natural process of calcification. 

Left: Cave Graffiti; Right: Yep, that is a bat

We went from walking around under the earth to walking among giants at Redwoods National Park.  Coastal Redwoods are the world’s tallest trees, growing as tall as 370 feet.  They are simply awe-inspiring.

Oregon to California --- Along the Coast

Driving down the coast on Highway 101 has been an unforgettable experience.  I am kicking myself for not keeping better stats on how many lighthouses we’ve seen.  Here’s a small sample.

Top: Cape Blanco Lighthouse (Port Orford, OR), Bottom: Coquille River Lighthouse (Bandon, OR) and Battery Point Lighthouse (Crescent City, CA)

Oregon seems to have a really great state park system.  Many of the prettiest beaches and viewpoints have been included in the park system so that everyone can enjoy them – even horses.

I love seeing sea lions hanging out on the rocks or, in this case, on the docks of a nearby marina.  I kept getting closer to get a good photo, but these guys definitely looked better than they smelled.  Best viewed from a distance!

Great Alaskan Road Trip: Week 19 Roundup

Each Friday, I post some relevant (and not-so-relevant) stats about the trip, as well as a little write-up of what it’s like to live out of a van for weeks on end. Here’s where we are overall:

• Total miles driven: 12,961
• Total miles by ferry: 537
• Total days on the road: 130
• Total nights in a hotel: 9
• Total miles hiked: 123.14

 

Some interesting stats for this week:

• Fuel stops: 0  (What?  Guess we didn’t drive very far this week!)
• Technical Issues: 0
• Wildlife invasions: 0 (so far so good!)
• NPS Sites Visited: 0

 

Lots of goose eggs this week, guess we haven’t gone very far or done very much.  Poor Kevin came down with a cold (he claims it is hantavirus, but Web MD says common cold).  So we’ve kind of been taking it easy this week.

We have a wedding to attend on October 6th in Northern California.  It’s a little less than 500 miles away, so we plan to slow down the pace for the next couple of weeks.

Lincoln City, OR --- Glassblowing 101

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The Oregon Coast

Okay, okay…so I know I’ve been a little lax about the posts lately.  Part of that is because we’ve been staying in Oregon’s state parks instead of RV parks so there hasn’t been reliable Wi-Fi (although the parks system here is amazing – lots of sites with power/water hookups and other great amenities.)  But we’ve also been having so much fun that I keep putting the blog on the back burner.  It’s been fantastic to explore all the little towns along the Oregon coast – each seems to have its own character and charm.  And it seems like every few miles there’s some stately lighthouse to see or a wide sandy beach to walk on (but not for swimming this time of year…that water is cold!).  And highway 101 hugs the coast for much of the drive, providing some spectacular ocean views.

Well, at least when there’s no fog the views are fantastic.  Unfortunately we’ve run into fog about 50% of the time.  It’s still lovely, but the photos don’t turn out quite as impressive when all the rocks along the coast are enshrouded in mist.  But notice how the road follows the coast – it makes for a great drive no matter the weather.

But we try to take advantage of the sunny days.  The shoreline near the town of Cannon Beach was gorgeous.  That enormous monolith is Haystack Rock, rising 235 feet up from the sea.

Even though the water is too cold for swimming or snorkeling, we still managed to see some sea life up close and personal at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport.

We spent a half hour watching the staff feed the sea lions at the aquarium.  Later we discovered we could have fed a bunch of wild sea lions for free just a few miles away at the town docks. 

We have a little more than two weeks left on the road trip, so we are doing our best to soak up as much of the cool beach weather as we can before returning to the fiery land-locked oven that is Phoenix.  Is it really still over 100 degrees there?  Yikes!

Tillamook, Oregon

According to the Moon guide, the small town of Tillamook is home to the third most popular attraction in the state – the Tillamook Cheese factory.  It claims that over a million people a year visit the factory to do the self-guided tour.  We were skeptical about those figures…I mean, it’s just cheese, right?  But we thought we should probably check it out for ourselves, especially considering how much we both love cheese.  Apparently we’re not the only ones…the parking lot was nearly full and there were easily a thousand people milling around, eating cheese (free samples!) and gorging on ice cream (not free, but the line was super long).

The bird’s-eye view of the packaging process was like something out of the show “How It’s Made”.  Those orange brick-looking things on the conveyor belt are the 40-lb blocks of cheddar.  That’s a lotta cheese!

One thing we noticed was that they seemed very concerned with quality control…and to be honest, seeing this on the production floor wasn’t exactly reassuring.  But we’d already tasted the free samples and lived to tell about it, so no harm done!

Our next stop in Tillamook was the Air Museum, which was originally built in 1942 to house war blimps, of all things.  They were used as air escorts for large naval convoys and also for anti-submarine coast patrols.  Seventeen enormous hangars were built around the country to store the airships – two were built here in Tillamook, but one of them burned to the ground in the early 1990’s. 

It’s hard to tell from that photo, but the hangar is enormous – it is supposed to be the largest wooden structure in the world by volume.  (It was built entirely out of wood because steel was needed for the war effort).  It’s 192 feet high and over a thousand feet long.  Inside is an impressive collection of war planes.

Looking inside, it’s easy to believe that this building was used as storage for not one, but eight 250-foot-long K-ships.  K-ships were helium-filled blimps, which are different from with dirigibles (rigid airships, like the Hindenburg).

Photo courtesy of Tillamook Air Museum

After our recent trip to the Boeing plant, we enjoyed looking at the variety of designs of all the warplanes in the hangar. One of my favorites was this P-38 Lightning – the chiquita banana lady on the nose was sure to strike fear into the hearts of the enemy.

The Great Alaskan Road Trip: Week 18 Roundup

Each Friday, I post some relevant (and not-so-relevant) stats about the trip, as well as a little write-up of what it’s like to live out of a van for weeks on end. Here’s where we are overall:

• Total miles driven: 12,685
• Total miles by ferry: 537
• Total days on the road: 123
• Total nights in a hotel: 7
• Total miles hiked: 120.14

Roses at Portland’s International Rose Test Garden

Some interesting stats for this week:

• Fuel stops: 1 (diesel: $4.16/gal in Troutdale, OR).
• Technical Issues: 1-ish (blew a fuse on our air compressor when Kevin was topping up the tires.  We didn’t have any spares on board but after a quick trip to the auto parts store we were back in business.)
• Wildlife invasions: 0 (so far so good!)
• NPS Sites Visited: 1 (Lewis and Clark National Historical Park)

On our way back towards the Oregon coast, we decided to stay in the Portland suburb of Troutdale at the Edgefield Lodge, a hotel that used to be the dormitory for the Multnomah County Poor Farm back in the early 1920’s.  It’s part of the McMenamins pub empire – in the 1990’s the brothers bought and revitalized the main building and all the outbuildings.  There’s a spa, vineyards, a winery, a distillery, and of course a brewery – all on-site.  So you can pick your poison.

Local artists have covered every interior wall with artwork depicting the building’s history (and other random wackiness). 

The rooms are all named for famous artists and musicians who’ve performed here (like Stevie Wonder and B.B. King) and for prominent past citizens.  We ended up in the David Flinn Buxton room, named after a pioneer farmer who settled here in the 1850’s.  There’s a portrait of him painted on the wall by the lamp; he’s the one with the beard (not to be confused with his stern-looking wife, Fanny).