Sunday

We left the sprawling mecca of Reedsport at 8:30 after a quick continental breakfast in the hotel lobby. I had forgotten that I don’t like blueberry bagels halfway through eating it, but I made the best of my horrible situation. We had a long drive ahead of us, so we fueled up and set off.

As we drove through Coos Bay (hee hee) we noticed that “OCEAN VIEW” had been painted in huge white letters up a little hill to the side. We hadn’t planned on stopping, but my curiosity got the better of me and we drove up the small hill. Holy shit, what a view – it was amazing, and it was deserted. We hung out for a few minutes taking pictures and throwing clumps of grass into the wind, then turned to go back to our car. As we did, several other cars pulled up. A shout rang out from one of them – “HEY! Is that a Pentax there?”

Um? Confused, I nodded and said it was a Pentax K200. Turns out the shout came from a professional photographer from Charleston Oregon who was excited because he *never* sees other people shooting with Pentax. He was thrilled – so much so that he offered me a lens. ! I trotted back to his car with him, and he fished out a 2X teleconverter for me! He showed me how to use it, and after convincing me that it was really okay and he didn’t need it, we exchanged cards and went on our way. WOOOO! Free camera gear! I was completely blown away by his generosity, and after finding out that he and his wife were planning on coming to Vancouver next year for the Olympics, I told him to drop me a line if he needed anything. I’m fairly certain that only I could drive through the US and stop at a random view point because the paint told me to and end up being offered free equipment complete with a lesson, but that is okay with me.

Delighted, Ed and I giggled all the way to our next stop down the road to take some more pictures. I’m going to have fun with the teleconverter!

More driving. In fact, by the time we checked into our second hotel, we had driven over 1700 kilometers. We stopped at some beaches in Oregon and found more deserted beaches for awesome times. The water was insanely cold, we got a lot of fun pictures, and almost lost our travel companion in the ocean.

The cross into California was pretty low key, but we were excited anyway. We finally started seeing signs saying “San Francisco: This Way”, so we knew we were on the right track. Sure, we still had 360 miles to go – what of it? We’re on vacation! We stopped in Crescent City for a late lunch at Denny’s, then made our way down the Redwood Highway. We drove through a tree!

Finally, just after 8pm – almost 12 hours after leaving Reedsport – we caught a glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge. It was almost entirely fogged in, but we had to pay a toll so we figured it was the bridge. Also, it was orange. I’ll try to get some pictures tomorrow when we head out that way for exploring, but even though we haven’t actually yet SEEN the bridge, it was epic all the same.

Unfortunately, we ran into a problem when we got to our hotel. We were worried that parking would be hard to come by, but when we got there we realized there was NO parking whatsoever – the front desk says the hotel is a “no car” hotel (which wasn’t on their frickin’ website ANYWHERE), and the nearest lot was 3 blocks away. Well, fuck. I was stressing out huge over this, and it really fucking sucked. I drove us around the area for a bit, and we stopped to ask a few hotels what their rate was. Finally, I saw an ad in a small magazine I picked up in Crescent City that showed a hotel 2 blocks from our original destination for $49 a night. We checked it out, and success – they had a room, would honour the $49/night rate with a little shuffling (we have to change rooms tomorrow), and the first hotel would only charge us 1 night cancellation fee instead of the whole 4-night stay. Not perfect, but definitely better than the alternative.

I’m now attempting to upload 128MB worth of photos to Flickr at 2.1kb/s. Needless to say, it’s a little agonizing – I’ll edit this post when it’s done and add links to relevant words, but in the meantime, just go right to my Flickr stream and have a look around.

We’re planning on hitting Fisherman’s Wharf and Alcatraz tomorrow!

Saturday

We left our house at 6:56am, endlessly pleased with ourselves for making it out the door before 7am. Our drive to the border crossing took 44 minutes, and our high spirits quickly turned to irritation as we realized that every other person in BC had ALSO left their house before 7am, and were now in line to cross into the US ahead of us. We figured we were in for at least a two hour wait, but after 20 minutes or so the line started moving and we were able to get into the Duty Free lane for some much needed urination and goji-berry cheek tint (hey, I had to buy SOMETHING).

I was feeling pretty smug about the whole thing, actually – all the people who had arrived at the border insanely early only to cause a massive jam hadn’t realized that only 1 lane would be open until 8am; long weekend be damned. Soon after we arrived, they opened up EVERY lane and we were able to sail through the bus crossing, of all places. Naturally, I totally planned it like this and it was absolutely not a massive stroke of luck that had us in the States and on our way by 8:45 or so.

We only stopped once in Washington, in Federal Way. We both needed to pee and I decided I needed to go to Jack in the Box, where I had a breakfast bowl (without cheese sauce or e-coli). From there it was through the rest of Washington and to our first planned destination – Portland Oregon. I had grand aspirations to take advantage of the lack of sales tax, so we stopped at the sock store and Washington Square so I could go to Sephora (expensive makeup is even more awesome when there’s no state tax). We had lunch, molested Hello Kitty, then went to Target to stock up on beverages and salty chocolate before hitting the road again.

The original plan was to take the I5 straight through to California, but we decided to head west at Salem and take the coast down. The scenery was epic, and our first glimpse of the open Pacific Ocean was incredible. We stopped at a lookout, where Ed forced me to scale an insane cliff face so we could play on the beach at sunset. All phobias aside, it was totally worth it.

We were told at a gas station to head south until we got to Florence, where we could spend the night. The sun had set by the time we made it there, and we were looking forward to finding a hotel and getting some sleep, as we had been on the road for 13 hours at this point.

Yeah, that didn’t happen. Not one of the MANY motels in Florence had a single vacancy, so we were forced to travel further south on a windy road in pitch darkness. Finally, we came upon Reedsport and a blessed Vacancy sign at the Best Western. Sweet Jesus, BEDS!

And so it came to pass that we are currently holed up in what is probably the most expensive hotel in the middle of frickin’ nowhere. The room is costing us $129USD for the 10 hours we’ll be here, which is a little hard to swallow – but at the same time, we’re on vacation, we’re exhausted, we don’t know if we’ll have any luck down the road, and fuck it let’s just stay here.

Turns out that Florence is in the middle of a huge Harley Davidson Jamboree or something, and every room has been sold out for days. There’s a rodeo, a carnival, a car show AND a motorcycle show/meet all going on at the same time. We have excellent timing.

This update cost me $12.90 USD to write, and I can’t even upload it.

Pretend you’re reading this real time, ok?

good night!