We had a long day of driving ahead of us, leaving central California and making our way to the Redwood country north of Eureka and the Bay area. It was a bit of a shock to return to civilization and to have to deal with the traffic of the central valley and counties east of the bay. We crossed through Napa and finally Sonoma before arriving in the forests of Northern California. The temperature drop was fairly significant as we approached the coast.
Near Orick we hiked the Lady Bird Johnson Grove trail through a forest of old growth Redwoods. The trail was named for the wife of former president Lyndon Johnson a fitting tribute to a woman who championed conservation. This would be our second of four encounters with great trees on this trip.
Our campsite that night was at Golden Bluff Beach just outside the national park and 10 km off US101 on a twisty pot holed road. We arrived at dusk to find the beach in the throes of a rather significant windstorm. The campground was fully booked that night but evidently many campers never showed or stayed. We were fortunate to have reserved a site that backed onto the woods so we set up the tent in a clearing in the forest fully protected from the wind. We spent a glorious evening exploring the windy seashore before retiring to our shelter.
The next morning we had left before daybreak as we had a 10 hour drive ahead of us as well as a visit with an old friend outside of Portland Oregon who had been on my first Habitat for Humanity build in Lesotho back in 2005. We crossed into Oregon on the lonely 199 and continued to Forest Grove. Perhaps it was just that we spent a lot of time on rural roads in the state but western Oregon was by far the most lush lamdscape we had seen to date. We passed orchards and farms of every description. It seemed like you could plant anything in the soil and it would grow.
Sadly apart from the short visit with my friend Oregon would be a drive through state for us and we pressed on into Washington to make our last campsite in the US before dusk. Skirting the traffic of Portland, we followed the Columbia River on the Oregon side and finally crossed the Columbia into Washington at the gritty mill town of Long View.
We pulled up to Coho campground in the Olympic National Forest near Montesano around 7 pm to set up our tent in the rainforest. We had finally left the arid climes of the southwest behind.
The next morning after an hearty oatmeal breakfast we made our way nothwest on the Olympic peninsula to Port Angeles where we would catch the ferry to Vancouver Island. On the way we passed some interesting sites including the largest Sitka spruce in the US. At Port Angeles we had some time to kill so we visited the most amazing camping outfitting store, Swain’s General Store. The place was clearly a fixture in the region and catered to every imaginable need.
On the ferry we enjoyed gorgeous views of Washington’s Olympic mountains and pulled into Victoria around 7 pm.
sedativegunk 