1 September to 31 October 2014 in Washington, Oregon and California, USA
When we started planning our trip around the world, we decided to do our best to make those 12 months last as long as possible. So, instead of travelling to as many countries as possible, we picked out our favourites and really took our time, slowing life down. So far it has worked very well and it will be difficult for us picking up again the Europe pace. True to our travel motto, we left Vancouver by train to Seattle - 1 hour by plane, 4 hours by car, or 6 hours by rail as we did. It was our way of saying a long goodbye to Canada because we could have easily stayed another month. And also because the route takes you through Vancouver, then along the coast right by the sea, through forest, along more coastline and forest, and finally arrives in the city centre of Seattle. Boarding the train at 5:30am in the morning meant that despite my foul mood (I still have not gotten used to travelling so early in the day) we witnessed a pristine sunrise followed by blue skies all the way to the USA.
As you know, we are regular visitors to California and have driven the Pacific Coast Highway (Highway 1) up and down quite a few times. It is never boring and everytime we find new places to visit. There is always a little secluded cove where we have not yet gone for swim or set up the BBQ for a sunset steak. Or a sleepy harbour town where we watched the fishermen bring in their catch of the day and talked about the "really really" big one...that always strangely jumped off the hook and got away:-)
This time though, we did not start in LA or San Francisco but much further north. Actually, and not many people know this, the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) does not start in the USA but in Canada just about 20 miles north of Powell River on the Sunshine Coast (Western Birtish Columbia). And it does not finish in the USA either, but goes all the way along the South American West Coast ending in Southern Chile somewhere. So, we actually started right at the most northern point when we were in Canada, and then continued across the border from Seattle all the way down to San Diego, through the states of Washington and Oregon in the process. We had never been to either of those two and thoroughly enjoyed exploring this new territory. Washington and Oregon, as you might have guessed, had a very similar feel to Canada with expansive forest and rocky coastline, mountains and sandy beaches. Even as we drove into Northern California, we still passed through thick forestry landscape marked by huge redwood and sequoia trees, until it finally became hotter and drier the closer we came to San Francisco.
Arriving in Seattle was strange at first. The minute we picked up the rental car, we stood in a big traffic jam, five lanes in either direction, cars everywhere, tall buildings. It was a bit of a shock after 2 months of quiet mountain and coastal harmony in Canada, with hardly anybody around you. We did spend a few days in Seattle and visited a lot of different city areas which were nice, but it was not really a place we felt too homely at. Our apologies to anybody who loves that city, no offence meant. A city that we did like however is Portland, and we liked it a lot. Smaller, cozier, quieter with a great beer brewing history, a nice city centre, street markets and our favourite street food carts. The idea is, you take an old van or bus, put a kitchen in it, and start cooking whatever food you like - Asian Noodles, German Bratwurst, English Roast Beef, Indian Curry, Canadian Poutine, American Burgers and Steak, whatever. You then get a handful of other food cart owners together, all park their funky and colourful decorated vehicles in a circle, for example on a market square, set up a few old wooden tables and chairs, maybe organise live jazz music. The result is, people meet and everybody is happily sitting, eating, chatting together. Slow food, slow dinner, easy going... You get the picture why we like it so much. And when we come back next year and ask you for some money to start a new business idea, you now know why :-)
Inbetween our favourite cities of Portland, San Francisco, Santa Cruz (where we won a Beach Volleyball tournament with 42 teams, hooray:-), Santa Barbara and San Diego lies a lot of uninhabited land. In other words pure nature, which we enjoyed and made good use of to the fullest extent. Hiking, swimming, beachcombing, snorkelling, bodysurfing, BBQing, beachbreakfasting, rockpooling, cycling, making friends with strangers while talking about our journey, and other such fun things. Highlight was definitely our unexpected whale encounter - totally unplanned, not on a boat, not on a tour and absolutely for free. As we were having a sunny breakfast somewhere on the Oregon coast, a man come over to us and asked if we wanted to see whales. Yes! And so we did, a few big humpback whales were feeding severel meters off the rocky cliffs, no binoculars needed. Our second humpback meeting came yet again at breakfast, just as we were having morning coffee and muesli on a small beach in Monterrey (California) where a large group with about 20 animals were breaching (half jumping out of the water) again and again. After that, we saw several other whale groups along the coast on our way to Santa Barbara.
And as if all this wasn't fun enough, the icing on the cake, the cherry on top so to say came late September and early October when our dear friends Olaf, Petra, Falko, Anni, Raffael and Sandra came all the way from Munich just to see us! Or so we like to think;-) We all had a super fanstastic couple of weeks together in sunny Huntington Beach, the surf and beachvolleyball capital of California. Thanks very much guys, happy days and good times we had aplenty!
Photos from Washington and Oregon https://picasaweb.google.com/110475049385279629687/WashingtonAndOregonUSA2014?authkey=Gv1sRgCJ2wp_ymqZWlCA
Photos from California https://picasaweb.google.com/110475049385279629687/CaliforniaUSA201402?authkey=Gv1sRgCJW8rtPxq_vpuwE
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