Adventure Seekers! Want “Photo Ops” Like This?
Have you ever wanted to drive down one of America’s most beautiful and rugged shorelines, with every night offering up another view like this?
Sunset Over The Pacific Ocean!
Yes, this one of the most beautiful ways to end a day – staring out at the sun setting over the Pacific ocean…after an incredibly visual drive down Oregon’s coast….and it all happened to us last spring, when my wife Alex and I decided to drive from Seattle to Los Angeles, by way of an Oregon coast detour…
The Oregon coastline is one of the most beautiful roads to travel, although you have to give yourself plenty of time to stop and take pictures…because once you cross over the Columbia river from Washington to Oregon, the views never stop…
Highway 101 – Oregon’s 400 Miles Of Wild Beauty!
The entire length of Oregon’s coastline, by way of highway 101, is roughly 400 miles, beginning at the mouth of the Columbia river, with Washington state to the north and Oregon to the south – beginning where the Columbia river meets the Pacific ocean – a very popular shipping area…
Watch Your Step!
Apparently the weather can be quite volatile in this area, so there are plenty of warning signs as you gaze upon the might Columbia…lucky of us, the weather on this trip was gorgeous…after a short drive, you come upon your first “photo op”, the beautiful Cannon beach…
It’s just the first of many places you have to stop and take pictures…the huge rocks and beautiful sandy beaches, with a brisk salty sea breeze as well…
The Never Ending Views!
Like much of California’s coast, Oregon has a hilly and rocky terrain right to the water’s edge, so you drive along flat stretches of road and then you head up as majestic vistas open up as well…
It’s only a matter of a few minutes before we are back at sea level and driving into the famous cheese town of “Tillamook!”
Of course, we had to stop and take the self-guided tour through the huge cheese factory, where you can see tons and tons of Tillamook cheddar cheese being made right below you…
They are happy to let you capture the experience, giving you many places to stop and capture the activity below, and plenty of chances to sample their cheese as well…
After Tillamook, you head back inland for awhile, and you drive along a two lane highway that is fairly busy during the summers, but in the late spring on a weekday it was surprisingly quiet…
Light Up Everybody!
After a beautiful drive through the trees, you are sent back down to the ocean, where we came upon one of Oregon’s great lighthouses…
Yaquina Head Lighthouse is one of the most popular lighthouses in the United States, with hundreds of thousands of guests each year…
The tower is the tallest on the Oregon Coast – rising 93 feet in the air. According to an Oregon lighthouse website, this is the only Oregon Lighthouse with a marble floor. It stands 162 feet above sea level, and can be seen from ocean vessels as far away as 19 miles!
There are plenty of places to park, and many visitor areas that provide information as well as a great place to take picture after picture after picture…
Seal You Later!
There is an abundance of wildlife to discover on the drive, like the seals that lie out on the beach and rocks just to the south of the lighthouse…
And these rocks you see don’t have bumps on them, they are covered with pelicans!
From that point on, it’s just non-stop beauty as you drive along the pacific ocean. We finally decided to stop for the night at Gold Beach, which has just amazing beaches to explore, as well as nice motels located right along the ocean…
It’s just a short walk through sand dunes before you end up right to the ocean’s edge…
Coastal Whale Watching!
One of the most entertaining parts of the trip was sitting on a piece of driftwood and keeping an eye out for whales….sorry this isn’t a closeup, but the water spray at the upper left of the next photo is from a whale that played around in the ocean for about an hour while we were there…
Oregon’s Magnificent Sunset!
And of course, at the end of the night we sat on our balcony and watched the sun go down over the Pacific….
California’s Mighty Redwoods!
The next morning we left Oregon and headed inland on highway 101 through Northern California..yes, this is pot country, with stories of massive marijuana farms hidden in these hills…because this is one small highway through a never-ending sea of tress…
The Chandelier Drive-Thru Sequoia Tree!
The most fascinating part of this drive is about 180 miles north of San Francisco, when you drive through forests that are hundreds of years old…
Then you see a sign that tells you to pull off the highway in order to discover a family-owned tourist attraction that allows you to drive your car right through a giant Sequoia!
It costs $5 to enter the park, and after a short drive you end up looking at The Chandelier Tree, which you can then drive your car through, or do what we and everyone else did: pose inside it!
It’s as campy a tourist attraction as you imagine it would be, but that didn’t stop us from driving through it…and yes, our Prius fit snugly, and there was very little room to spare…
After that it’s a couple of hours to Napa valley and a glass of wine to call it a day…a perfect way to end a two day drive from the northwest corner of the continental United States to the greatest wine growing region in the world….
So there you have it, our adventures along the Oregon coast – it’s truly one of the most beautiful stretches of road in the world – and you can enjoy it with Tillamook cheese, classic Oregon coast lighthouses, plenty of whales, seals and pelicans, and a California drive-thru tree to cap it all off!
Leave a message if you’ve ever undertaken this adventure!
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