May 9th-13th: Portland-San Francisco

May 9th-May19: Oregon Coast -> San Francisco -> Lake Tahoe

It has been a while since I have last updated this but here it goes:

Portland, Oregon:

We drove from southern Washington to Portland to get out of the cold. In Portland we were guided into Portland by our friendly GPS, Dave. There was no room at the first place we tried and the other hostel in town only had two private rooms left. Portland is a very artsy city. The first place we stopped was a street lined with hippy vendors and organic bakeries. At the hostel we were invited to go on a free art walk around the Pearl District. It turns out that all the art galleries open their door and provide free beer and wine on the first Thursday of each month. The art was a little bit too far in left field for most of us and ranged from what looked like poor Photoshopping (by Gus Van Sant) to a arcade with a smoke machine in it. The people on the tour and the food and booze made up for the art though.

Oregon Coast:

From Portland, we headed out to the Oregon coast to drive down the 101. Our first stop outside of Portland was at the Tillamook cheese factory in Tillamook Oregon. The engineers are all obsessed with factories, robots, and production lines, so the stop here was considered essential. Tillamook Cheese is actually the #2 distributed cheese in America, and there were many free samples of fresh cheese. After the cheese stop, we drove down the 101 to Florence, Oregon and camped at Jessie M. Honeyman State Park, home to 2 miles of Dunes on the Oregon coast. The 101 was as ridiculous as the movies, and the dunes looked like something out of a star wars movie. We heard of a dune buggy tour company near where we were camping and we decided to go for the half hour “fast tour”. It was crazy fast and really fun, the driver took us around most of the 13miles of dune that were out there and took us down the steepest hill in the park at lightning speed.

We drove south from Florence to Harris Beach a national park right on the Oregon side of the Oregon/California Boarder. On the way we stopped for a stroll along the beach at Point Blanco Lighthouse. It was a really nicely developed campsite and our little site had a short stonewall around it and a stone staircase leading from the parking spot to the tenting area. The only problem with Harris Beach was the rain. After we went to bed it started and did not stop until we left. Gill and I had a very waterproof MEC Tarn 3 tent and Marija and Tessa had a not-so-waterproof Woods brand tent. We woke up dry. Marija and Tessa not so much. Marija left the tent to seek refuge in the car and while she was there the tent collapsed on Tessa. We were still bone dry and fast asleep.

We stopped for lunch the next day at a city park in Eureka California. In order to dry out all our wet camping gear we decided to spend the next night in a yurt. Yurts are a popular place to stay at US campgrounds. They are essentially the Eurasian take on the Tipi. Our yurt had a heater and the campground (in Redding, California) had free breakfast so we could not complain. The next day we were off to San Francisco!

San Francisco:

In San Francisco (more specifically Mill Valley) we were going to stay with Marija’s aunt Grace for three nights. We told Grace that we would be there for dinner. It was a short drive from Redding to Mill Valley so we had some time to go ROCK CLIMBING! It was the first rock climbing of the trip and it was a nice introduction to California climbing. We went to Mickey beach near Stinson Beach. The road up to the climbing was one of the windiest that I have ever been on, so windy that Marija and Tessa looked in vain for an alternate route back to Mill Valley. I was a fan of the curves however it was like an Oceanside rally circuit.

Grace and Josh were nice enough to host the four of us in their beautiful house. All the food, conversation and wine were excellent. Grace is also an engineer and had all sorts of insightful things to talk about. We all had a great night sleep (our first in a real bed in a week). The next morning we got ready to head into town.

We were not yet out of the car when we first got scammed. A guy, claiming to be the parking attendant, asked us for $15 and slid what looked like a parking verification onto our dash. After he scampered off we quickly realized that it was just a random receipt that he had put on our dash and the guy had no relation to the parking authority at all. Damn! We paid the real machine for parking and pledged to pay more attention to these things. In the city of San Francisco we drove the steepest road, the windiest road, walked up some crazy hills in search of the Full House house, saw some sea lions, went to the fortune cookie factory and Pier 39. What a great day of exploring the city. We got back in the car, drove across the Golden Gate Bridge and made it back to Grace’s in time for dinner.

Nappa and Sonoma Valleys:

California is known for its wineries. Marija’s uncle recommended three wineries to visit. He also got us a free tasting at one of the vineyards. First stop Viansa Vineyard where Mike the helpful wine guy poured each of us a flight of four wines. Viansa is a small-scale winery set on a beautiful estate along the highway to the Nappa Valley. The second vineyard we visited was Artesa. Artesa is a fancier winery where we had been given a free tasting session courtesy of Marija’s uncle Josh and the mysterious Glenn of Artesa. Gill was the only one ID’ed out of the group, she was not impressed. We then drank 4 new wines and decided that the 2005 Cabernet Savungion was the best. Artesa then comp’ed us a bottle of the ‘Cab’ and after lunch we drove off to the last winery Gloria Frerrer. We didn’t stay too long at the last winery because we were all tired, but did sneak onto to the champagne tour. When we got to the champagne making and storing warehouse we saw the coolest robot of the whole trip. Marija, Tessa, and I all debated what type of robot it was (Puma, 6 degree of freedom) while Gill watched the rest of the tour along with everyone else there for a tasting.