After spending nearly all day yesterday driving, we did more of the same today. With a destination 1,200 miles (1,930km) northwest of home, we broke up the segments into two nearly equal distances by driving from Phoenix, Arizona, to Fresno, California, yesterday, and then today, we finished the trek. It rained most of the day, at times coming down heavy, making for some white knuckle moments on the narrow Highway 101 through the Redwoods of Northern California. Normally, there’s nothing particularly troublesome about driving in a bit of rain but we’ve not seen the stuff since sometime earlier in the year, as in back in January or February. By the time late afternoon had rolled around, we were resigned to the imagined fact that it was going to rain all day, but then, just as we reached False Klamath on the ocean and our first opportunity to find ourselves oceanside, we were offered this view above.

But the sky wasn’t done with us yet as it cut itself in two with this bisection that seems to suggest, “Leave this gray from down south behind you as on your right and to the north, Oregon is about to smile upon you.” Had the heavens closed up after our first stop, we would have been content to have had a minute to admire the silver sea. Besides, who could have asked for a moment of molten gold ocean to pull us from the car just 20 minutes later? By the way, in an alternative universe, there is a similar picture of me in silhouette, as it was Caroline’s idea to snap a photo of me with her phone as I stood in the same place. Seeing her image, I told her to assume my position, and I took this one of her. On more occasions than I wish to publically admit, though that’s just what I’m doing right now, my wife has some really good ideas and is quite inspired. Just don’t tell her I said this, as it will all go to her head, while it’s her modesty that lends itself to her better qualities.

Our minds are blown as little could we have imagined that we’d make the southern Oregon coast by sunset and that we’d see it in all of its spectacular glory at an overlook we’d never visited. As I’ve shared before, this is our 20th visit to Oregon in the past 18 years, and while I might brag that we’ve seen every inch of this beautiful isolated stretch of the Pacific coast, on every visit, there seems to be just one more place that we’d somehow missed. Today, that stop was at the McVay Rock State Recreation Site, which is less than 3 miles from the Oregon and California state lines. How had we missed this?

Our final stop was a few miles up the Pistol River at the Fish Inn that we found on Airbnb. This place off the beaten path is more than a dozen miles away from the nearest town with Brookings to the south with its population of 6,465 and Gold Beach to the north and its population of 2,293. We’ll be spending the next few days on this 35-mile-long sparsely populated stretch of coast in a kind of remote self-isolation as we try to have as few encounters with other people as possible, minus the requisite stops at Dutch Bros. for coffee.