Disclaimer: This blog entry wasn’t written until 15 years after the trip. It should be noted that this was a huge mistake to have not written it way back when. Sometimes, after writing so much about other days, it happens that at the time directly after the trip (or even during), I convince myself that the details are not that important. Years later, these details are that important, and pulling them out of foggy memories is difficult. The photos help and often leave clues, and then Caroline’s memories are usually far clearer than mine. With that said, here goes.
Thinking about the dearth of photos I posted back then due to bandwidth limitations, I’d nearly forgotten just how difficult it was handling the images we were shooting back in the day. First off, we had a brand new Canon Digital Rebel XT sporting 8 megapixels of resolution. Whatever we shot, we had to wait until we got home to work with the images, even if we’d had a notebook: dealing with the images would have been too slow. Once home, they were transferred to a spinning hard disk using Windows XP and Photoshop CS2. Adjusting images was slow and cumbersome compared to these days when I can assemble panoramas made of 10 photos in under a minute, and I can use presets to get a quick idea of what color corrections will look like. Exporting a couple dozen images also takes less than a minute.
But here we are in 2021 and the biggest conundrum I face is not using too many images as I’m the one who’s attempting to write something to each image. The photo above is from Cape Lookout and was taken as we left the state park with the same name. We were out here to have another night in a yurt.
Tillamook means cheese and ice cream here in Oregon, and that means COWS!
We did some backtracking here by driving through Pacific City past the Cape Kiwanda Haystack rock. Last night, we took the drive out past Tillamook Bay, and so today, we are mixing things up by approaching from the southeast back towards Tillamook.
Ice cream stop in Tillamook.
We’re not making a lot of stops as we have quite a few miles to cover today, like most days we were traveling with Jutta. This is Crab Rock, just north of Garibaldi.
The views of things I couldn’t imagine my mother-in-law ever having seen with her own eyes is what drove me to plan these trips and then where to stop. Sometimes, the inspiration for stopping came from the backseat as Jutta would exclaim how beautiful something was. Coastal woods and an overwater cabin reflecting in a large, quiet pond were just one such sight.
Looking back down the coast as we’re about to leave Oregon.
With the addition of the state of Washington to Jutta’s list of places she’s visited, bragging rights to having traveled the entirety of the Pacific coast of the United States is now in the bag for her.
Off in the distance is our next stop on this major road trip.
This is Mount St. Helens seen from the Johnston Ridge Observatory in Washington. On a previous visit, Caroline and I visited the Windy Ridge Viewpoint, which, in my opinion, is the most interesting location to visit in this park. Johnston Ridge offers a great view of the blast zone from the perspective of being in it, while Windy Ridge offers an overview of looking into the direction the blast traveled and getting a great view into Spirit Lake. Windy Ridge also offers a closer view of the Crater at the cost of a more isolated backcountry drive.
World’s Largest Egg in Winlock, Washington. Admit it, you’d have stopped, too.
Mt. Rainier in the distance.
There was no way we were going to let Jutta be this far north on the coast of the western United States and not have her walk barefoot in the sand and surf. Sometimes, I thought she was a bit reluctant but the enthusiasm of her daughter pulled her along.
Speaking of her daughter Caroline.
Staying the night in Forks, Washington, at the Town Motel, so we are well-positioned in the morning to visit the rainforest and Olympic National Park.