Summer 2016 Roadtrip Part 2: Oregon

So to finish up Day 3, after we drove through the redwoods forest, we headed to Oregon! We only had about a 30 minute drive from the forest to our campsite so it wasn't bad at all!

We made it!!!

Cross this one off the list!

Our camping site for night 3 of the trip!

Harris Beach State Park

We caught a gorgeous sunset!

Josh liked to climb on the rocks so I got a great picture! 

Taking in the sunset

 Day 4- Brookings, OR to Portland, OR

The next morning, I drove into town to get us coffee and we talked about how it's much different camping when you can drive to get coffee in the morning. We weren't sure how Nate Saunders would feel about that but we were able to take our coffee with us on a wonderful morning walk by the coast!

We spent all of day 4 driving up the Oregon coast. This was probably my favorite day. We had picture perfect weather and gorgeous coastline the entire day as you can see from the pictures below:

 I loved all of the bridges in Oregon and especially Portland as you will see other pictures further down. The bridges were all so cool!

This picture was literally on a postcard that I sent to our family

Heceta Head Lighthouse

The sea lions were sunning on the rocks below us

Ok so I did a good bit of planning for the trip beforehand and I found this next site on a Buzzfeed list of surreal places to see in the US. I checked the tide calendar and Josh and I arrived shortly after high tide in order to get the best view of this nature feature called Thor's Well. When the tide comes in, this area fills up and spouts water out pretty violently. Everything I read said that if someone falls in, they probably won't make it out alive. I attempted to get a video of the tide coming in below.

Thor's Well

 

Josh in front of....a bridge. They are just so cool!

Another awesome Oregon bridge

Netarts Bay

We left the coast after Netarts Bay to head to Portland and stopped by an amazing cheese factory that popped up many times in my searches of Oregon things to do. It was a pretty cool self guided tour, we could watch them cut and package the cheese on the factory floor and we got to sample different types of their cheese!!

Tillamook cheese factory floor

As we were leaving the Tillamook factory, we saw a sign for putt-putt golf so of course we had to stop. This course was amazing!! Probably the best putt-putt course Josh and I have ever played. The course had hills, curves and sand traps! Sadly Josh won overall but I did get an eagle on a hole!!

Coolest putt-putt course ever!

Day 5- Portland, OR and surrounding area

So this day was great because we were staying in the same place for a second night! We took a day trip from Portland to the Columbia river gorge. It was only like an hour away and there were gorgeous waterfalls and gorges!!

Wahkeena Falls

Columbia River- that's Washington on the other side

Wahkeena Falls 

Multnomah Falls

Multnomah Falls from the bridge

Oneonta Gorge- we climbed over those logs to get to it!

We were going to hike through the gorge but just shortly behind Josh the water got waist deep and we weren't feeling it. Someone told us that spots were even deeper than that before getting to the Oneonta waterfalls.

Balancing skillz

After exploring the Columbia river gorge, we came back to Portland and checked out a few of the different neighborhoods, walked around downtown, visited the famous Powell's Books and left with some vegetable gardening books, a great math book for me and backyard building for Josh. 

Day 6- Portland, OR to Forks, WA

 We left our Airbnb in Portland to head to Washington! Before leaving, I wanted to visit Mt. Tabor park which is a city park in Portland on top of a extinct volcano! On a clear day there are supposed to be great views of the city to the west and Mt. Hood to the east. This was not a clear day. It was cloudy and rainy so this is the best picture I got of the city and we didn't see Mt. Hood at all. We did see it yesterday on our drive along the Columbia river but I couldn't get a good picture.

View of the city from Mt. Tabor park

We left the park in search of some great coffee. We ended up at Stumptown Roasters and the coffee was great! While we were there, we also locked our keys in the car so here's a shot of Josh calling roadside assistance. It ended up not being a big deal- there were here within an hour and we just ate an early lunch at a pizza place across the street. 

My next blog will be camping on the Washington coast, Seattle, camping in Idaho and driving through Yellowstone!!