We decided to drive down the West Coast starting in Seattle and ending in San Diego. The drive can take between two to three days but we figured we should do it in three weeks, camp along the way and explore some of the sights. We left Seattle very, very late and we had to drive four hours to get to our first stop. Our Airbnb host recommended we stop at Cape Disappointment State Park, so we decided to make that our first stop. The drive was wet and miserable but the scenery beautiful, the trees looked amazing.
We arrived in Cape Disappointment after dark and managed to find a campground that was still open. In the morning we realised that we had missed the signs for the state park campgrounds which looked amazing, but the one we found worked out better because it was a very cold night. My first camping experience was not very pleasant. It was freezing, luckily we had missed the rain by a few days but the ground was damp and we had to sleep wearing our thermals and jackets. It was very relaxing hearing the sea while we slept.
The campground was a short walk to a very long stretch of beach.
There wasn’t much else for us to do in Cape D and so we left for our first stop in Oregon… yay. We drove over the Columbia river and crossed the border into Oregon. Driving over the Astoria-Megler Bridge was really cool, the bridge is a beautiful work of art and engineering.
We stopped in Astoria for lunch, a really quaint and pretty little town on the river.
We got a few supplies on our way to make the evenings more bearable and finally arrived at our first Oregon stop, which turned out to Cannon Beach. The campgrounds were privately owned and pricey but they were well located. We set up before heading out to the beach to catch the sunset.
The evenings were nippy but we were warm. We went on a tough run along the long Cannon Beach, it was a tough 10km. After the run we did a bit of sightseeing and went to the Ecola national park. The sea looked beautiful from the park.
We went on a moderate-ish hike, the climb was a bit tough especially after a run along the beach.
We caught a beautiful sunset on our last night in Ecola and were happy to have had sun all day long.
We had good weather while in Cannon Beach and left just in time. We stopped in Portland to get bread and saw a lot of homeless people on the streets, and headed to the Columbia River Gorge scenic view. Most of the parks on route were closed, and the weather turned shortly after we arrived.
We had planned to camp in Newport but after the long drive and given the fog and rain we ditched that idea and checked into an inn. The weather cleared the next day and we had breakfast at the beach before our long drive to our next stop in Oregon :-).
quick stop at the Oregon dunes …
had the best shrimp and fish in Port Orford…
and managed to get to Harris Beach State Park before dark. The campground was great and it was getting slightly warmer as we made our way down the coast. Harris beach was really beautiful, we were up early and enjoyed our coffee and tea on the beach. This was our last stop in Oregon before entering California. We loved Oregon, it is beautiful with incredible beaches and parks and very friendly people.
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