The Little Things: Big Country For Sale.

Early last Sunday, Mike and I left for our cross country trip with quite a list of places to visit. Our first destination was the Avenue of the Giants outside of Eureka, CA, to see the giant redwoods. On our way along 101, we saw a sign for a tree we could drive through. Pull over? Uh, yeah. We got into the line with cars, paid $5 to drive through, and then... we waited. We were told at the beginning that the wait was about 20 minutes. It was more like over an hour. Luckily the wait was totally worth driving through a tree. Turns out a Lexus SUV is just small enough to go through - phew! Once we were through the tree, we headed for the redwoods. I couldn't believe how huge the trees were! I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. We set up camp outside of Crescent City and had a delicious one-pot pasta supper. We laid down to go to sleep, and then I heard a pitter-patter on the tent. Rain.

The next day, we packed up our wet tent in the rain and headed for Crater Lake in Oregon. The weather never improved and instead of a beautiful, deep lake, we saw a wall of fog. Not wanting to camp in the rain again, we headed back toward the coast and got a hotel in Eugene. To cheer ourselves up, we spent the next day in Oregon wine country as we drove toward Portland. Since we wanted to spend some time in Portland, we only visited two wineries: Pfeiffer (in honor of Katie) and Amity Vineyard. At Pfeiffer, we tasted twelve different wines, and they were all great. Nice surprise since we picked it for no other reason than the name and that it was open. The winery owner led us through the tasting, and when we told her we were from Berkeley, she replied, "Oh, Berkeley! I was arrested there." She spent a lot of time at Berkeley during the 60s, in particular occupying People's Park. Small world! We then went to Amity, a small winery on top of a hill with a gorgeous view of the Willamette Valley. We spent the evening in Portland, which is now a city I would love to revisit.

After a night in Portland, which included a visit to Voodoo Donuts and the Portland City Grill with a view from the 30th floor of the tallest building in Portland (I think?), we drove up to Seattle to visit Mike's friend James, We spent two nights in Seattle, the first bar hopping during the Chicago Blackhawks game followed by trivia at a Irish pub. The next day we went to Pike Place Market, enjoyed Seattle's great happy hour, bought dungeness crabs for dinner, and watched a few episodes from the new season of Arrested Development.

Once we left Seattle, we were on our own again in national parks and forest so there's not much to write about except to say that everyone should go to the Cascades and then stay at Keller Ferry, a campground in the middle of nowhere that is just spectacular. So far, everything has been beautiful, so here's a bunch of pictures to show you what I mean. Two more things: 1) the recession has put everyone out of business and everything is for sale. I can't tell you how many businesses we passed with "For Sale" signs. We also passed several plots for housing developments that were completely empty... 2) Small towns are under the impression that all travelers want espresso. So everywhere we went, there were little shacks with an "ESPRESSO" sign. All caps...