With LA in the rearview, we were off and running...well, driving.
On the road for the first few days of a cross-country drive that would eventually land us at Blair’s house in Easton, Maryland - with many stops in between.
The full journey would end up taking us:
18 days / 17 nights
100+ hours in the car
Nearly 6,000 miles
Through parts of 19 different states
Packed into Blair’s 2015 Honda Accord (aka Sofia VerCara), we had our suitcases and backpacks with everything we’d need/could fit for the next 6-8 months + our tent, camping gear, and a few other things necessary to live out of a car for nearly 3 weeks.
The road trip’s first leg would take us up the West Coast to Tacoma, Washington where we’d stay a couple of days with Blair’s brother Josh, sister-in-law Ruthie, and nephew Jackson before we joined them for a few days in Glacier National Park for Jackson’s first camping trip.
Leaving LA and heading north to San Francisco there are two options - the slow scenic Pacific Coast Highway route or the more direct route through the center of the state aka the “California Heartland”. Having done this drive quite a few times before we chose the more direct way, despite the lack of sights and the pretty constant smell of manure from the miles upon miles of farmland.
Being the first week of July, it was around 100 degrees for most of the day until we got near SF and the temperature dropped nearly 40 degrees in a flash as day turned to night and we crossed the Bay Bridge into the city.
After crashing at a friends’ for the night we popped our final destination for the day (Crescent City, the last town in CA before Oregon) into the GPS and realized for maybe the first time just how massive of a state California really is. After 6 + hours in the car from LA to SF, we still had nearly 7 hours (not including stops) of California left to cover!
But this is where things officially got exciting. San Francisco marked the end of the ‘known’ part of the road trip for both of us. Pretty much everything from here on out was going to be a new experience, a new sight, a part of the unknown.
We set out bright and early, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge and heading north in search of giant trees. The world’s tallest trees to be precise - Coastal Redwoods. Today’s drive would take us through the only area in the world where coastal redwoods survive, including a famous stretch of highway known as The Avenue of the Giants.
About 2 hours outside San Francisco, the terrain starts to change; gold turns to green, farmland to forest, sleepy small towns amongst towering trees.
The average redwood in these old-growth groves is 500+ years and the tallest of these ancient giants stands as tall as a 30-story building!
The height and density of the forests coupled with the rain and fog give the area a magical/mystical feel. It’s no wonder this part of the country is the leader in bigfoot sightings.
We grab lunch at The Peg House in the tiny town of Leggett - population 122 (!) - enjoying a salmon burger, some grilled oysters, and a local beer as two old dudes who look like they moved here in the 80s to grow weed and never looked back serenade us with classic rock cover songs.
The Peg House in Leggett
Highway 31 driving through Avenue of the Giants
Continuing north, we headed deeper and deeper into this new rugged, rural California, up the 101 freeway and very close to where California reaches its westernmost point. We would have loved to take the full 100-mile detour to see the entirety of the little-visited and ultra-remote ‘Lost Coast’ but we had to settle for a quick stop in Ferndale at the Lost Coast’s northern entrance.
Ferndale Main Street
Ferndale proved a worthy detour to get a little feel for the area. The town is known for its well-preserved Victorian homes and Main Street storefronts - many of which date back to the 1880s. We learned after the fact that the homes are also known as “Butterfat Palaces” (lol) because they were built thanks to the considerable money made in the area from the dairy industry.
20 mins from Main Street we got our true taste of ‘The Lost Coast’ with a stop at Centreville Beach. Covered in fog and driftwood, the beach delivered a magical/mystical feel to match that of the redwoods from earlier in the day. End of the continent with an ‘end of the world’ feel.
Centerville Beach (near Ferndale)
But we couldn’t stay and ponder our insignificant-feeling existence for too long as we had one more redwood-related stop planned.
We flew through Eureka (population 29,000 and the closest thing to a ‘city’ anywhere within 200 miles) and into the forests of Redwood National Park for another hour before reaching our turnoff about an hour before sunset.
The Lady Bird Johnson Grove sits at the top of a ridge about 1000 feet above sea level. An easy one-mile loop allows you to get up close and personal with the redwoods, Douglas firs, ferns, and other plants without spending a ton of time out of the car.
It was a great stop to stretch the legs, soak in a bit more of this unique area, and give the car a little break. Andrew smelled burnt rubber when we parked and was concerned but after nervously googling it, it seemed the resin in the new brake pads we got before setting out was curing from so much use that day. Day 2 crisis averted! And our unintentional sunset timing couldn’t have been more perfect, the setting sun cutting through the gaps in the trees and lighting the already red redwoods even more bright.
One final hour in the car (or so we thought) and we arrived in Crescent City, the destination of our campsite for the night - except it wasn’t. Andrew had booked a site on Hipcamp and while it was NEAR Crescent City on the map, ‘near Crescent City’ in reality was another hour up the coast and into Oregon.
I guess we’d be saying goodbye to California today after all.
We grabbed some tacos and some caffeine for Andrew and pushed through the final stretch, finally arriving at the campsite on a ranch near the Rogue River at about 10 pm - a full 12 hour day. We put on our headlamps, quickly set up our tent, and went to sleep.
It was pitch black and the Oregon Coast would have to reveal itself in the morning.
-A & B