Day 1
After spending two days trying to get settled in Dallas, we headed out to the west coast for a much needed break. Dental school was finally over and Emily didn't start her new job for another month, so it was great to not have any responsibilities hanging over our heads while we were away.
We had an early morning flight out of Dallas, and since no parents or friends were around to drive us to the airport, we resorted to taking a cab. Our ride was unexpectedly interesting, as we were greeted at 4:30 AM by an upbeat driver who told us he had been waiting outside our apartment since 4:15, but had waited until 4:30 (our pick up time) to call. Its not too often these days that somebody actually shows up early (as we have learned from trying to get our cable hooked up down here). He told us how he had recently started his own cab company, and how much he valued being on time and serving his customers. I was thinking to myself at the time "Thank God we randomly chose this guy's company" out of all the others we saw on the internet the day before.
Our flight was on time, and getting through DFW was a breeze compared to O'Hare. We were both pretty tired though from all of our unpacking and organizing, and tried to sleep as much as we could on the flight to Seattle. A few hours later, we stepped off the tarmak into what I can only describe as heaven...cool, crisp air, as opposed to the heat and humidity that we've come to loath in Dallas.
We picked up our rental car and pretty much headed straight for Mt. Rainier, as our plan was to spend two days there before heading south to Portland to visit with our friends Bruce & Tina Dumser. It took us about 2 hours of driving from Seattle to get to Mt. Rainier Ntl. Park, but we didn't mind the drive, as it was scenic in itself.
As luck would have it, when we got to Mt. Rainier we were informed by the park ranger that half of the park (mostly the east end) was closed down completely due to excessive flooding that had washed out large sections of road. This came as a bit of a disappointment, but we decided to try and make the best of what was available to us. While this was Chris' second time to the park, Emily was seeing it for the first time.
All was not lost though, as we quickly realized that there would be more than enough hiking trails and views afforded from the side of the park that we would be going through over the next two days. Emily was quite taken with Mt. Rainier when she finally got a clear view of it, and who could blame her. During the two days that we spent in Mt. Rainier, there was nary a cloud to obstuct the view of the summit. When Chris had previously been to Mt. Rainier in high school, the view of the summit was constantly obstructed by clouds. Mt. Rainier is so high that it essentially constructs it's own mini weather system, which can be dangerous to hikers trying to summit.
1) Emily excited to see Mt. Rainier 2) Mt. Rainier 3) A falls complete with rainbow...could you ask for more?
Emily had found some information while looking on Fromer's website the week before for a nice rustic cabin right outside the park called Wellspring. It was located about 5 minutes from the park entrance, and turned out to be one of our favorite parts of the trip. If anyone plans on heading out to Mt. Rainier anytime soon, we would definitely recommend staying there. When we drove onto the premises, there was a bulletin board that had our keys hanging and some information regarding the cabin. The room was quaint and rustic, complete with a stack of past journal entries from people who had stayed there previously. It was fun that evening to read through what people wrote, and if you happen to stay in the same cabin, you can have the added intrigue of reading our journal entry!
Our quaint little cabin Tenaya
The cabin's log...
Day 2
The next day consisted of more hiking in the park. The weather could not have been more perfect, as we mostly had blue skies, with a few clouds hanging around the peak of Rainier. After hiking most of the afternoon, we decided we'd head out. We had lunch at a great tavern outside of the park that had the best blackberry pie that either of us ever had, and then started the drive south to Portland to hang out with our friends Bruce & Tina.
Day 3
The next morning we got up and headed out for a couple of hikes near Mt. Hood. The four of us headed out to an easy, short hike that led us to Little Zig Zag Falls, and then we headed out for our more challenging hike of the day: Mirror Lake. For a good summary of the hike and some great photos (Chris did not have his camera for this one), we'll refer you to Bruce & Tina's blog.
Day 4
Day 4 found us heading out to the coastline (one of Chris' favorite parts of the NW) for some more scenic hikes, photo ops, and some camping (which the women were thrilled about). After hiking and eating at a coastal pub, it was time to find a campsite for the evening. After coming to the realization that this was the first weekend of summer for the public schools in Oregon, we soon found ourselves racing down the coastline for about another hour, trying to find a campground that had an open site. Finally we arrived at a perfect site about an hour or two before dusk. The campsite was within walking distance of the beach, and we were pumped by our good fortune. While the women went to fetch some firewood at the local market in town, Chris and Bruce went about setting up the tents and fetching kindling.
Once everything was set up and ready for the evening, and the women had returned with firewood in hand, it was time to head to the beach and take some photos. After photographing some beach scenes, we thought it might be funny to make some pseudo album covers, as if we were a band. The examples are below...
The evening ended with a nice fire (see Bruce & Tina's blog for a more detailed description) and some smores.
Day 5
After a huge breakfast, we said goodbye to the Dumsers and began our trip farther south down into southern Oregon and Northern California. Southern Oregon was absolutely beautiful, and after looking back on our trip, wished we had spent more time there. One of the inherint problems with a road trip like this is that you never know if you should keep going to see other things, or stop and spend more of your time where you're at.
At any rate, this day was mostly spent driving, in preparation for our next day in Redwood National Park.
Days 6 & 7
After spending almost a week out in an area of the country that is so beautiful, you tend to have a feeling of diminishing returns. It is harder and harder for you to be "wow'd" by something, no matter how interesting or scenic it may be. However, spending our day in Redwood definitely was worth the trip. While the park is nothing spectacular in and of itself, the forests definitely do not disappoint.
Usually its not hard when framing a photo to get everything in frame, and if it is, you just take a few steps back until you can get it all. When trying to shoot the Redwoods, you can keep backing up and backing up, and it doesn't matter, it's damn near impossible to get a full tree in frame. It made me wonder if a fish-eye might be handy for a situation such as this.
1) Looking up a Redwood 2) Redwood full-frame 3) A couple highlighted perfectly as we were hiking
4) Emily dwarfed by the forest
Even with this difficulty, we enjoyed realizing how small we were compared to the sheer size of these beheamouths. We realized though during one of our hikes that even really big trees such as these, that reproduce via seeds, may still have concerns with the size of certain aspects of their male anatomy. This was confirmed when we saw "Well-Hung Redwood", a part of the park less advertised, and not on our map that we were given upon entering the park, yet nevertheless just as entertaining.
After enjoying a great dinner, we went back to the coastline, as Chris was eager to get at least one opportunity to photograph a great sunset, much to Emily's dismay. Being the awesome wife that she is though, she let Chris photograph for an hour while she waited in the car. From that night on, it was an unspoken truth that Chris was not allowed to photograph in the evening, but was to focus his attention squarely on Emily.
These days were spent in the area of Monterey and Carmel. Nothing too exciting happened here, other than the usual tourist stuff: eating, walking around Fisherman's Wharf & Cannery Row, perusing, more eating, etc. We mostly enjoyed walking around some of the art galleries, but were at a loss for words when we found out how expensive most of the work was. We actually had a woman say to us in one of the galleries: "For only a few hundred dollars you can try out the artwork in your home, and if you don't like it, can return it." So you can see that we were just window shopping, nevertheless, we enjoyed ourselves.
Day 10 to the end....
We decided instead of spending another day in Monterey, that we would drive through the famed wine country of Napa, and then head to I-5 north, where we would catch Crater Lake National Park before officially ending our vacation.
Driving through Napa was lackluster, although the wineries were nice to look at. Unfortunately we didn't have the time to stop and go tasting, but we really didn't feel heartbroken about this, as we had done this previously on our first visit to the Portland area (which has its own great wineries in the Willamette Valley).
We finally got to I-5, after what seemed like a very long and drawn out drive, and headed north to Crater Lake. The next morning we booked it to the park entrance, and spent our last day taking in the views from the rim of the lake. Melting snow added to the scenery, which was amazing to begin with.
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