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Portland

Our vacation is over now. Since our last post we drove to Portland, Oregon. Portland is the hipster capital about which you may have had a laugh with the TV series Portlandia. We found the city pretty laid back and nice. Nonetheless, if you come from Europe, you may just as well go to Sweden, because there they also have wool sweaters, mustaches and retro-styled bikes.

Crater Lake

Driving from Los Angeles from Portland we made a few stop overs. The nicest of these was near Crater Lake:

 

Crater Lake is a huge volcano caldera, almost a perfect circle with a diameter of around 10 kilometers. It’s hundreds of meters deep and filled with thousands of years of rain water. When we arrived there in the morning, the water was completely smooth. The dark blue is the color of very deep water.

West coast

After Portland we went south again, because from San Francisco our plane back to Amsterdam leaves. We stayed in little towns, always at motels near the beach: Lincoln City, Newport and Eureka. Compared to California, Oregon is very quiet, with even more nature and a bit more European attitude. It’s also a bit cooler and we even felt some real raindrops! Stuff that’s wrong in California, seems to be better organized in Oregon. People drive a bit more safely, especially Portland is pedestrian-friendly and there seem to be less mentally ill homeless.

Our trip along the coast was very beautiful. The coastal towns themselves were not that impressive: built along Highway 101, they don’t have city centers. The 101 is not your typical European highway either: every time it enters a town border, the maximum speed goes down to 45 km/h. But as we said: the landscape was amazing: nice beaches, with rivers flowing trough them into the sea, sand dunes, forest and huge rocks in the water. The waves rolling in from the pacific ocean break violently, creating a loads of foam and causing a white mist that’s visible even a couple hundred meters landward.

 

The road meandered along the hillsides and the sea: a marvelous view all the way! In case you ever plan a road trip along the coast: make sure you have the seaside half of the road! Crossing the state border, we immediately noticed we entered California. The road was rough again and chaos started straight away. For some reason, people in California don’t care for safety and traffic rules, whereas Oregonians take their time and even maintain safe distances when driving behind other cars (sometimes).

Redwood National Park

At the Redwood National Park we stopped for a hike. It wasn’t one of the longest, but may have been the nicest of all hikes we made during the last half year. These redwoods look taller every time we see them and this time the rest of the forest was also very beautiful: lots of ferns, birds and even a waterfall!

 

Our last night in the USA we spent in Napa. Napa’s street plan looks a bit more like a city as we know them from Europe. The center is old not situated along a highway, there’s a river flowing through it and there are nice big houses. Napa Valley is famous for the wine that’s produced there: it’s one of the biggest wine areas of California. We didn’t have time to see much of it and try the wine though. Koos’ parents advised us not to drive too much on a day, but with packing bags, having breakfast, checking out and riving for about 5,5 hours, there’s just not so much time left before sunset.

To be continued …

Now we’re at San Francisco airport, waiting for our flight. We’re a bit sad too leave this beautiful country. We’ve already written about the drawbacks of living in the USA, but we will surely miss the wide open spaces, wonderful nature, the comfortable life, the climate of California and our new friends. We do look forward to seeing you in Germany and the Netherlands though! We’ll keep you posted on where we’ll be going next!

Edit 24 May 2014:
Here’s a map of our trip:

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