Spokane, as some of you may know, is by no means the nicest city in America. In fact, a friend threw around the name Spokompton because of its reputation for being dirty and extremely dangerous. Nonetheless my 89 year old grandma has lived there for years and still finds it an enjoyable place. One positive, people are extremely nice there. Literally everywhere we went people helped us with smiles on their faces and seemed way friendlier than anything you'll find in the bay area (I hate to knock my hood, but its true). It was a great 2 day visit with grams before I was off to Seattle with Scout, yup, that's what I named my car.
Driving from Spokane to Seattle I took a little detour south to visit Mt. Rainier National Park. Even though it made the drive about 3 hours longer, it was such a good decision! Driving across Washington is so beautiful! I liked that I was alone because I could stop wherever and whenever I wanted, plus I was able to sing along to my music without anyone critiquing my pitch :) Add in lots of road blocks and construction and about a million vista points and I was stopping quite often just to soak it all up, breath in that clean and crisp mountain air, ahhhhhh.
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| Wildflower Season :) |
After stopping at Mt. Rainier and doing a little hiking, I continued onto Seattle. Well actually I was couchsurfing in Olalla, Washington, which is right across from Seattle. You get to take a ferry to get across! Staying with my couch surfing hosts, Kevin and Sara, was a great experience! They were extremely open and generous people who willingly allow tons of couchsurfers to crash at their house every night. It was basically like a hostel, but it was free. Couchsurfing is so awesome and I honestly feel like I’ll look there before I search for hostels in my future travels. Sara was basically my travel agent and told me all the cool things to see and do in Seattle, the cool neighborhoods to visit, places to eat, free things to see that were just as awesome as things that required $30 entrance tickets. I spent the night there and in the morning woke up nice and early to maximize my time in Seattle!
What a beautiful city that it, Seattle. I completely fell in love with it. Everyone kept telling me that it’s just because I had a stroke of good luck with the gorgeous weather, which is probably true, but if that’s what the summer is like, dayummmm, I wanna be there. I did all the touristy stuff, including the Space Needle (which blew my mind!), roamed some unconventional streets, saw the fish fly in Pike Place Market, took a nap in the Olympic Sculpture park, and then I got a local to take me around to some other cool sites. This isn’t just some random person I walked up to on the street, but actually my friend Dylan I met in Ecuador! This is why traveling is so great, so many connections all over the world. Anyway, I hopped on a bus out to by where Dylan lives during rush hour, bad decision. It took forever, forever. Traffic was so ridiculous. When I finally got there, we went to some typical spots for Seattleites. Green Lake was beautiful and right in the middle of a residential neighborhood, how cool! We ate at Dick’s Burgers, the In-n-Out “equivalent”, it was pretty good, but there’s just no comparison. Then, we went to Gas Works Park. O.m.g. We sat on the side of the hill at the park with an unrivaled view of the Seattle skyline and watched the sun go down. I was completely mesmerized. I ended up missing the last ferry to Olalla, which may or may not have been a conscious decision, and kicked it with Dylan and his friends for the night.
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| This thing called the Space Needle |
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| The view from the Top |
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| Looking out from Gas Works Park |
In the morning, I caught the ferry back to Olalla, there were a few minor complications, said my goodbyes at Kevin and Sara’s house, and packed up the car to head to Portland. Once again, a beautiful drive. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge, ah love it. I have no idea why there was so much traffic, but there was a TON. I was stopped on multiple occasions, just rocking out to my Pearl Jam “Ten” tape. I was headed to the Portland airport to pick up my momma who was going to drive the last few bits with me! I ended up only being about 30 minutes late, but I got her and we drove off to Beth and Steve’s house. The Marchi-Youngs have been family friends since before I was born so it was really great to see them. Dinner at their house was like a mini reunion, people who my mom played volleyball with back in Sf showed up and it was just a great visit. Unfortunately it was only for 1 night. All that means is that I have to go back sometime soon.
In the morning my mom and I set out for the Oregon coast. We drove through some wine country to get there, but all I was focused on were those huge, dark, ominous clouds ahead of us. Sure enough those clouds were parked on the entire coastline. It was still really pretty scenery with breathtaking views of the ocean, but the constant rain made the drive a little harder. C’mon, you want me to focus on the road when I have all this beautiful stuff around me? Ridiculous. 8 hours later we arrived in Brookings, Oregon. It was a random little town with surprisingly good Mexican food. Once again, it was a brief stay before we were hitting the road for California.
Ahhhh California, how beautiful you are. As we were driving through the redwoods I just kept thinking of the Santa Barbara beaches and just being in awe of the fact that I live in a place which has such incredible and beautiful diversity. I’m so lucky! But back to the redwoods, how amazing are they?! I just love them, those gentle giants. Another cool part of the drive was seeing all of these random statues on the side of the road that I actually have pictures with from when I was a wee little lass, the two most notable being an awkwardly skinny dinosaur and Paul Bunyan. The California portion of the drive was definitely the longest, but we chugged through it and eventually pulled into this little place called Berkeley, California. We made it home and what an incredible journey it was! Now, I’m ready for more. I want another road trip, a cross-country road trip, and I’m going to make it happen.
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| The Redwoods <3 |
