Our final day was spent driving through Nevada, Utah and half of Colorado. We noticed the whole truck start to shake pretty violently the more we drove. Finally home and grabing our mail in town, I noticed the whole truck smelling of oil. Sure enough, the entire undercarriage and rear of my poor 4Runner was covered in oil, and there was a terrible knocking sound as we drove to the house.

First thing the next Monday morning I dropped Kate off at work then drove to the shop. After several hours they finally got back to me that it was the rear differential that was blown. I guess somewhere along our trip, a seal got blown and leaked oil from the differential, which caused the bearings to overheat and basically blow up. Thankfully the rear axle was still in good shape, but the $1,600 repair bill wasn’t something we wanted to hear. The trucks still in the shop and in the meantime we’re being gouged with a $60 per day rental car. You don’t have very many options here in the boonies.

If you haven’t done so already, I’ve posted all of our good photos on the site. You can see them all by following this link:
Pacific Northwest Road Trip Photos

You may also want to scroll down to the bottom of the page to start from Day 1.

I woke up with my headache mostly gone, but still not feeling up to the 16 mile hike to the end of the trail and back. So we picked up and made our way back to the truck. Instead we drove to the end of the road which was also the end of the trail: Glacier Point. The views were phenomenal.

After taking in the view, we scoped out Mariposa Grove, to see some giant sequoias.

Can you guess which pine cone belongs to the sequoia?
It’s actually the small one. Amazing that this little thing can grow to be one of the largest trees in the world and live to be over 2,000 years old.

Here I am counting the rings on one of the fallen trees. Mind boggling.

It was time to start heading home so we drove east towards Nevada… when we came across some yahoo parked on the wrong side of the road on halfway in our lane. But it didn’t take me long to notice what they were after… a BEAR!

This is the first time in all my many wilderness excursions that I’ve ever seen a bear in the wild. Kate and I would comment often how we haven’t seen much of any wildlife, and here, on our final trek home, we come across a bear feeding in a small meadow. We watched it for a while, as it paid no attention to the crowd that has formed by the road, but it eventually lumbered back into the forest out of sight.

But just as I was about to get back in the car, I turned and saw him actually making his way closer to us! We watched in amazement as it slowly came our direction, finding a downed tree and then clawing into it to snack on some grubs. It was the coolest thing ever. I think at one point it came to within 25 foot of me (standing by the open car door ready to jump in). Here’s some more shots of what easily was the highlight of our entire trip:

Today we went to my favorite place on the planet: Yosemite National Park.

We first made our way to the valley floor to the Visitor’s Center to pick up our wilderness permits. Camping at the typical campsites (complete with toilets and noisy neighbors in RVs) or at the many lodges in the park is next to impossible. Booking for both the campsites and lodges are hard to come by, but REAL camping in the wilderness is thankfully still easy to do. The permit is free if you get it on-site, or $5 if you reserve ahead of time which is necessary for the popular spots near and around Half Dome. They’ll even rent you a bear canister for $5 which is nice and very much needed.

Our site was going to be on the trail to Sentinel Dome. It was an easy two-mile hike to a footbridge where we setup camp. But wouldn’t you know it, I was hit by a massive migraine once we’re away from the truck (and much needed Excedrin). Kate was a trooper though and cooked up some spaghetti and finished cleaning up camp before bed. I think the roar of the river really helped calm Kate from thinking every noise in the middle of the night was a bear.

The whole purpose of this road trip is to get out and explore as much as possible, so we didn’t spend too much time in one place… but we found a few on our trip that we’ll want to spend more time at in future trips.

Case in point, San Francisco. We only had a few hours, so we started with a tour of Alcatraz.

Caleb and I did Alcatraz last time I was in the Bay Area, but this time Kate and I did the free audio tour which was pretty informative. All in all it’s a great place to check out.

We then parked the car and dug out the bikes and made our way across the Golden Gate bridge. It was a beautiful day for a ride.

Richard gave us a tip that we needed to go to Stout Grove, an amazingly scenic grove of redwoods and rumored location for the forest moon of Endor in the movie Starwars: Return of the Jedi. Simply put, no pictures do this place justice. It was one of the coolest places I’ve ever been to, dwarfed by giants and walking alone in this magical rain forest really did feel like another planet.

To get a sense of scale, here’s a shot of me standing in front of one of the trees (you may have to click on the image to see me).

I had always seen pictures of people driving through this giant redwoods, but was slightly disappointed when I didn’t see one anywhere. Turns out that only a few of these trees are still around and that all of them are on private land that you have to pay to access. Well, we happened upon one and had to check it out. I think it was worth the five bucks.

The rest of the day was spent driving down to Gilmore, CA (about an hour south of San Francisco) to spend some time with Kate’s cousin Kaci (and luckily Aunt Kelly who was also in town while Kaci’s husband was in China).

We attempted to stop by Sawyer Cellers in Napa to pick up a couple bottles of the family wine, but sadly they were closed at the time. Next time.

We left Eugene and drove straight for Crater Lake… an amazing lake completely surrounded by sheer mountains. Said to have been formed by the collapse of a giant volcano, there are no streams in or out of the lake so it remains one of the most pure freshwater lakes in the world as well as deepest in America.

It’s also a place that gets more snow than anywhere I’ve been (including our lovely mountain home at the moment). They average 500 inches of snow a year, and with the particularly strong winter we’ve had, they’re thinking it’ll be July 4th by the time they finally clear the snow from the rim drive. Sadly just about everything was still covered in 30 foot of snow, so we could only access this one point of the lake. We’re already planning on going back to bike the entire rim road next time.

After leaving Crater Lake, we stopped to see an amazing chasm carved by the roaring Rogue River. With all the snow melting, we got a chance to see some incredible raging rivers on this trip.

That night we made our way to Medford, OR to have dinner and chat with Richard Larcombe and his family. Richard’s last day of work at NNYM just happened to be the next day so it was nice to see him off as he’s now heading into full-time evangelism.

We quickly left Seaside and started down the coast.

Our first stop was Cannon Beach (where we determined we SHOULD have spent the night), and a visit to Haystack Rock, one of only a handful of marine gardens in Oregon. We lucked out and got there at low tide so we could see all the amazing variety of marine life clinging to the sides of the rocks. Here’s some of the cool stuff we got to see:

Then we hopped back in the car and made our way to Tillamook, home of our favorite cheese (and hard to find icecream).

I think our first introduction to Tillamook was when we in Alaska last year and Kate’s sister, Abby introduced us to it. Sadly, it’s not available in the midwest as far as we know, so we’ll be taking plenty back home with us.

Just north of Florence was my favorite part of the drive. There the coastline is dramatic, dotted by picturesque lighthouses and this… the Devil’s Churn, a small inlet where the waves have carved this awesome little channel into the volcanic rock. Very cool.

We started the day by having breakfast at the Tin Shed. A great little hipster spot (clearly a local hangout) that has wonderful food.

We then went to Powell’s Books, an amazing bookstore that we found out about from a guy stuck in the same Utah traffic jam we were in on Friday.

We bought some cool books, and even looked for Emily’s out-of-print book, but no luck. Their selection is amazing, so I recommend a stop if you’re ever in Portland.

After the bookstore and a little lost driving around Portland, we ended up at the Japanese Garden which turned out to be this amazing little spot just on the edge of downtown. Apparently this is the most authentic Japanese garden outside of Japan, and I believe it. It was super cool and well worth the $7 admission.

Then on our drive out of town we stumbled upon the Roloffs, the stars of one of our favorite shows, Little People, Big World.

We had every intention of finding a nice bed and breakfast in quaint Astoria, and did a web search and found what looked like the best value. Unfortunately we realized too late that this lovely establishment wasn’t actually IN Astoria, but in Seaside, a non-descript ocean-side village that I’m assuming lacked much the character of our intended destination. At any rate, the first room we were given had several yelping dogs in the adjacent rooms. I went to the front desk and asked what was up with the annoying animals. Her reply of “this is a pet friendly establishment” is not what I wanted to hear. They then gave us an “upgraded” room on the top floor. What can I say… it had a ROUND bed. Classy.

Today we left Utah, drove through a rather bleak Idaho, and entered glorious Oregon.

I-84 led us along the Columbia River for about an hour which made for a nice drive. We saw a few massive hydroelectric dams (or so I’m assuming).

At Hood River we headed south towards the infamous Mt. Hood. Here’s the best view we had of the mountain itself. The closer we got the more the weather moved in. We planned on camping, but had to change our plans due to the thunder.

Scenic highway 35 was a great drive at this time of day. One day we’ll be back to the Portland area to do some skiing. One day.

Day 1 of our Pacific Northwest Road Trip.
Leaving Breckenridge around noon, we headed towards Salt Lake City, UT… which was a fairly uneventful drive until about 2 hours from our hotel when we hit a traffic hairball in the middle of Utah.

There was a fairly significant wreck on highway 6 that closed both lanes of traffic and required two helicopters and several emergency vehicles. Everyone was out of their cars and walking around for about an hour and a half before they finally opened the road.

Hotwire.com hooked us up with a nice suite for only $80. The service helped out a lot on our trip as our itinerary was very flexible and often didn’t book a hotel until an hour or so until we got there.

Tomorrow, it’s off to Oregon.