Driving North

After parting ways with Jen and Ara, and Matt and Amanda, we left Yosemite and headed west, to San Francisco. My brother Toby lives there, so we wanted to visit while we were in this part of the country. When we met up with him on Sunday afternoon he had just gotten back from a quick trip to L.A to visit friends. I don't know anyone else who flies to another city to meet a friend for lunch. We hung out with him for a couple of days, and he let us get caught up on our laundry and whatnot, and took us out to dinner. I didn't realize until after we left, but we didn't have the camera with us the whole time, so unfortunately we got no photos with him, but he's doing well.

Did you know the Golden Gate Bridge was red? Meghan apparently didn't. Maybe she never watched "Full House"

Meghan and the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge

Leaving San Fransisco, we headed north, driving up the famous Highway 1 along the coast. It was gorgeous, but very twisty-windy and slow, especially with me stopping to take photos every few minutes. We figured at that pace it would take us weeks, so after a while we cut somewhat inland to Hwy 101. We stopped in Redwoods National and State Parks to see the big trees there too. They aren't quite as old as the Giant Sequoias that we saw in Yosemite, nor as big in diameter, but they're taller, growing up to 350 feet tall. It was pretty cool, but personally I thought the Sequoias were more impressive. I think standing at the base it's hard to tell the difference between 300' and 350' in height, but the difference in the thickness of the base is staggering. We saw the Sequoias first too.

Beaches and rocks along the California Coast

The big trees at Redwoods National and State Parks

After seeing the big trees, we drove northeast, visiting Crater Lake National Park in southern Oregon along the way. This is an ancient volcano that collapsed on itself thousands of years ago, creating a large lake. The lake has no inlets or outlets, so the water level is a balance of the precipitation it receives and the water lost to evaporation. Because of it's somewhat high altitude, remote location, and lack of polluted in-flowing water, the lake is very clean and clear. There's an island in the middle of the lake (Wizard Island - cool name) that would have been fun to canoe out to, but it was a bit early in the season when we were there, so some of the roads had yet to be plowed out and the beach access was still closed.

Crater Lake National Park

Continuing north, we stopped for the night at Smith Rock State Park near Bend, Oregon. This is often referred to as the birthplace of American sport climbing. A few decades ago, as climbers began to concentrate more and more on pushing the limits of difficulty, they started climbing rock faces with no natural place for protection. They started placing bolts (similar to concrete anchor bolts) that they could clip into to allow safe progress up the rock. This had been done for decades on blank sections of climbs before, but in North America not generally as the only protection for an entire climb. At Smith Rock, the athleticism of the climbing became the focus, and the bolts were generally placed close enough together to allow the climber to fall at any point and be caught safely by the rope. Smith Rock has now become a world renowned sport climbing destination. We hiked through the park, taking a look around, but had already decided we wanted to get back to Canada sooner than later, so we would wait to buy the guidebook and really get to know the area until another time. We'll be back Smith Rock.

So, we kept driving north. It was now Thursday, and we weren't sure how busy the ferry from Port Angeles, Washington to Vancouver Island (Victoria, B.C.) was going to be on the weekend. We decided we wanted to be on the Friday morning ferry, so we drove through Washington State almost without stopping. It's a shame, because we've heard how beautiful it is there, but if we took our time everywhere we wouldn't get very far. We got to Port Angeles overnight, and got a space on the ferry in the morning. The M.V. Coho made the trip in 1H20, and it was an enjoyable crossing. We didn't see anything too exciting, but that's ok. It was almost strange seeing things like Tim Horton's whose absence we had grown accustomed to. We were back in Canada, and it felt good to be home. Time to explore the island.

The MV Coho

More updates coming soon!

Ian