If you are just catching up on reading our blog be sure to go back and read the first two blog posts of this series entitled Drugs and Earplugs and Freeze-dried Food and Oreos.
So Andrew and I left beautiful San Francisco and headed for the coast. We had it all planned out…we were going to head up Highway 1 towards this little remote state park along California’s “Lost Coast”. We put the destination in our iPhones and Google maps said it would take about 4 hours. About 30 minutes after getting on the very curvy and windy coast highway Andrew was starting to make himself nauseous! So we had to cut over and get on a slightly larger, less curvy highway for the remainder of the drive up the coast. It turns out that if we had stayed on the coast highway (and continued to drive as slowly as we were driving) it probably would’ve taken at least 10 hours for us to arrive to our destination. We still spent many hours in the car that day…but in the end it was completely worth it. The last 3.5 miles to our final destination were down a very steep washed out dirt road…hence the 4-wheel drive. (It was even sketchier on our way back out!) We arrived to our campsite and set up the tent…this is definitely the most amazing campsite I’ve ever witnessed. Our little yellow tent was at the top of a cliff that dropped off to gorgeous black sand beaches and the soothing sound of the ocean.
After getting settled we headed out for an evening hike along the coast. We came along this amazing eucalyptus grove and you can just barely see the ocean off to the right. There were only a few other people that we ran into the entire time we stayed along the Lost Coast…so it was as if we had our very own beach and coastline for the evening.
Here’s me standing under one of the eucalyptus trees and Andrew all decked out for our hike.
After hiking for about 15 or 20 minutes we found a spot to access the beautiful black sand beaches. The tide was coming in…so we didn’t have long before we had to get out of there, but I’m so glad that we climbed down to the beach because this was our amazing view…
We both believe that the ocean is incredibly majestic…so full of undeniable power and mystery. Definitely worth taking the time to sit back and admire.
When I wasn’t taking my own pictures on our two week adventure…this is what I spent most of the time looking at! :)
After the tide started to get a little too close for comfort we headed back up the cliffs and watched the sunset. We sat back and enjoyed the misty, ocean air…I think we even saw a whale migrating North…or at least we are going to claim that it was a whale.
We camped peacefully that evening (No bears here!) and jumped back in the car the next day to explore more of the California coast. We headed North and ended up in a quaint little fishing town called Shelter Cove. We ordered some fish-n-chips from a local cafe and walked over to the beach to enjoy more of the ocean.
Shelter Cove is the current home of the Cape Mendocino Lighthouse. Twenty-five years ago the lantern to the lighthouse was transported via helicopter to Shelter Cove and the remainder of the lighthouse followed suit…positioning this 139-year old sailor’s beacon at the tip of Point Delgado. The lighthouse’s original location, Cape Mendocino, is California’s westernmost point.
The ocean cliffs were covered with these yellow flowers…it was stunning.
From the top of the cliffs we could see hundreds of harbor seals and sea lions swimming out in the ocean. Those little black dots are their heads bopping up and down in the water.
We hiked down to the beach and explored some of the tide pools and got up close and personal with some of the harbor seals and sea lions that were enjoying the sun.
We had originally planned to drive all the way up to Redwoods National Park…but as we continued up the California coast we were able to drive through several redwood tree groves (which was plenty for us). We drove through a stretch of highway fittingly called the Avenue of Giants and found ourselves surrounded by acres of redwood trees. I was amazed at the shear size of the redwood trees…
For all of you die hard Twilight fans…what does this remind you of?
The picture on the right cracks me up…Andrew was trying to look so cool! :)
We took the next couple of days to drive back to colorful Colorado…including a long stay on the Loneliest Road in America…and yes, it was quite lonely. We had such an amazing time and feel truly blessed that we were able to pick up and leave everything behind for a couple of weeks.
I’ll leave you with a few raw stats from our two weeks on the road…
- 3650 miles
- 787 pictures
- 13 days
- 8 nights in a hotel
- 4 nights camping (this went down from our plan of 6 nights which I was happy about)
- 6 bags of sunflower seeds (Probably 95% of which Andrew ate)
- 5 trips to In-N-Out Burger (Don’t judge!)
- 1.5 meltdowns (not bad – the full meltdown happened in San Francisco when I waited to long to eat)
- No money won playing craps (Andrew played in Vegas AND Reno…still no luck)
- Rain, snow, dust storms, blizzards, warm weather, cold weather, cloudy weather, sunny weather
- 95 mph top speed driving through Nevada
- 2 people
- 1 smelly car
Check back for some of Andrew’s thoughts and insight about our trip!
