I guess I should really refer to this as the part of the trip where we drive to Seattle, despite the fact that we spent the night in Corvallis, OR (where Oregon State is).
First off, when googlemaps tells you that a trip is 6 hours based on the direct route and you want to go see a coast and some big trees… add in a substantial amount of time. We left at 8AM and arrived around 11PM.
This time was spent mostly in the drive to the coast, which featured lots of wonderful grades. It is very unnerving when you are driving downhill and see a ramp that goes up off of a turn for “runaway trucks”. It is downright terrifying when you are being followed quite closely by a truck and the RV in front of you just won’t go any faster. Thank God for those turnouts.
After some amount of driving, we made it to the coast, and as promised, Kris and David ran right into the water. Beautiful. They were soaked, and I was entertained. The sand was a very interesting color, black. After they dried up some, we headed onward to see some trees taller than a football field.
The redwoods were amazing, and can stand up to 370 feet tall, making them the tallest trees in the world. Sequoias can be wider but Redwoods are on average taller. Here’s another factoid to throw at you. They weigh 500 tons. For those of you who lack our mad math conversion skills… thats a million pounds. We walked around Ladybird Johnson’s Grove for a bit marveling at these things (all the while being pursued by bees) before we headed back into the car for Corvallis.
What followed was something of a comedy of errors. First off, we totally misjudged how long this was going to take us when we started averaging a speed of about 40 MPH until we finally hit the interstate at Grant’s Pass. We did hit a landmark 4000 miles during this part, so that boosted morale all around. We were getting pretty hungry and low on gas so we decided to take care of both of those in Eugene (about 40 minute drive out) at around 9:00 PM. Or at least… we thought it was Eugene. We grabbed some dinner at this deli which seemed a lot less sketchy from the outside. When we sat down to eat however, we noticed a couple of people walking in off the street, into a back room NOT a bathroom and every time this happened the person at the front turned and walked to the back. On top of this, we saw one of these characters walk in TWICE and whenever one of these interesting people walked in they took a few looks around before going back. One guy actually stutter stepped once he saw that there were actually people eating there. We finished our food quickly and ran. As if this experience weren’t enough, we couldn’t find a gas station… not even with the use of our GPS. We finally got back on the interstate, discovered Eugene to actually be a couple exits down gassed up and made it to Corvallis for a quick night’s rest and then up and out early morning.
The drive from Oregon to Seattle was much less eventful. We tried to go see Mt. St. Helens but thanks to terrible weather we saw nothing (terrible weather = clouds covering the entire volcano). Before we got into Seattle, we changed the oil and filter in my car… yes we have actually been in the car that long. Then we rolled on into Seattle.
