Sacramento

Next up: Sacramento. It made the list not so much for sightseeing, but for professional reasons as there are a lot of environmental jobs in the city.

We poked around the historic district, which included a good toy store and a huge candy store with free samples. It was definitely a cheesy tourist trap, but fun none the less. We also auto toured downtown and saw the government buildings from the car window.

Monica, Liz’s friend from high school and Ben’s from his DC internship, now lives in Sacramento and kindly hosted us while we were there. It was fun to delve into California’s idiosyncrasies with a fellow mid-westerner. Thanks Monica for the great evening. Hope to see you soon in DC!

We didn’t spend much time in Sacramento, just enough to know that it would be an acceptable place to end up one day.  There isn’t anything special about the city that’s drawing us there, but if a great job happened to come up it could definitely be an option.

San Francisco and the Bay Area

Heading south from wine country, our California exploration took us to the Bay Area. San Francisco was high up on our original list of cities to check out, closely followed by some of the slightly less expensive areas like Berkeley. Not surprisingly, environmental jobs abound in the area, so it’s a definite career possibility.

California Wine Country

Northern California was our third, and final, wine region. We didn’t end up going into Napa, but rather spent our time exploring Sonoma and the Russian River areas a bit.

The Redwoods

Part of this trip is seeing the things you always hear about. The redwoods were no exception and they did not disappoint.

Crater Lake and Ashland, Oregon

Our highlight of southern Oregon was supposed to be Crater Lake.

As diligent travelers though we checked the weather while still is McMinnville. They claimed that there was a 70% chance of snow the next afternoon. We were skeptical of snow in early October, but begrudgingly started shifting our schedule anyway.

The next day, the drive down 99 and 5 to Ashland had lots of nice scenery and was wonderfully sunny. About five miles before the Crater Lake turnoff, curiosity got the better of us and we called the visitor center again. They said it had been snowing off and on throughout the day without accumulation and gave us a 50/50 chance for a view. We liked our odds and pointed the car east. The first half of the detour was filled with beautiful fall colors and sing along songs. Then the clouds started appearing quickly followed by rain which turned to sleet near the park entrance until finally the rim view looked like this…

If they hadn’t had accumulation earlier, they did now. The driving deteriorated rapidly and during the twenty minutes it took us to head out the other side of the park there was about three inches on the ground.   We managed a fleeting glimpse of the lake through the clouds, but are hoping for better luck next time.

We spent the night with a couchsurfer in Ashland (thanks Debbie!) renowned for their Shakespeare Festival. We tried to get tickets to a show but they were sold out, probably because it was Columbus Day weekend.

McMinnville, OR

Our travels took us next an hour and a half south of Portland to McMinnville, Oregon. As a point of interest, there are two McMinnvilles in the US. As our racing took us to McMinnville, Tennessee this past summer, we have now seen them both. Such a sense of accomplishment.

We stopped in this McMinnville to further our wine appreciation. The Willamette Valley is one of the premier Washington wine regions and McMinnville is the area’s larger and more tourist oriented town. It has many small restaurants and boutique shops.

Portland

Our next destination after Tacoma was Portland, which added the 11th state to our list, Oregon.

We did a lot of hanging out in Portland. We stayed with a friend from OSU, Erik, and his wife, Jenny. It was a blast to stay with them. Thanks guys!

Tacoma, Washington

After blasting through Seattle, we chose to stay at the cheapest motel we have found thus far in our travels. It just so happened that it was in Tacoma, an hour south of Seattle. Coincidentally, Tacoma was home to the glass blowing super star, Dale Chihuly, and is now home to the Museum of Glass. With a day to kill before we could go to Portland, we decided to spend it at the museum.

Life is a little tastier in the Pacific Northwest

The Pacific Northwest is a place all to its own. Things are just a little different here. Case in point: coffee shacks. Every little town has at least one, if not a few, of these drive-thru gourmet coffee houses. They take over empty lots like weeds. They are delicious.

Seattle

Unfortunately Seattle is a very short post. We felt the best way to experience the city was to stay with a local, but luck wasn’t on our side despite our efforts. Without a host, we hit the highlights in a day.

We first went to the Seattle City Center, home of the World’s Fair in 1962.  Of course, its most famous landmark is the Space Needle.