Which coast are we on?

Even the short days on this trip are PACKED with stuff that we're doing.

We got up pretty late this morning and bid adieu to Becca's sister in Seattle. We had a really fun couple of days in Seattle, and were taken care of extremely well. Even so, it felt nice to get back on the road. I think we get antsy after more than about 2 days without driving. Who knows what we'll do once we get back into Chicago and cease moving.

After a delicious and mostly organic lunch with Becca's sister Joanna and Joanna's boyfriend Jacob, we switched cardinal directions for the first time - from west to south. I dozed through most of Washington, but woke up as we passed into Portland, OR and got into traffic and construction. We were trying to get to McMinnville, OR in time to get into the museum that houses the Spruce Goose, the Evergreen Air and Space Museum. Traffic in suburban Portland held us way up, and we didn't arrive at the museum until 10 minutes before it closed. That was okay though, because it was overpriced.

So we wandered around the gift shop for 10 minutes, took covert pictures, looked through the windows of the checked out the planes on the outside of the museum, and played on the playground. The Spruce Goose was a Howard Hughes seaplane that is ridiculously big and only flown once in World War II, that I would explain more about, but you can check it out on Wikipedia.




Then it was back onto the road for a couple more hours. We cut over to the coast, and got onto US 101, which we'll be following most of the way down the coast to San Francisco. We saw a gorgeous sunset, which was quickly wreathed in fog. We drove through a bunch of Oregonian coastal towns, which really do resemble New England towns on the east coast. We stopped in Newport, and had dinner at the original Mo's restaurant. Phenomenal clam chowder, and fish and chips. The story behind the diner is pretty cool too - it's been around for 60+ years, and is now an Oregonian coastal chain.


So I guess that we're on the west coast, but you coulda fooled me! We're spending our most expensive night tonight at a coastal hotel that has tsunami contingency plans because we're so close to the ocean. We can hear the waves crashing against the rocks outside, and have a gas fireplace beneath the tv. Classsssssy. We're gonna get up tomorrow and go exploring, but here's the view from our balcony.


Tomorrow night it's back to camping at Crater Lake. Guess it all evens out in the end. May not have internet for a couple of days while we camp, but we'll be back and posting in San Francisco!