Oregon Coast - June 24th & 25th

From Olympia we took a while to get going, so decided to bypass most of Portland (the bigger city in Oregon, just below the Washington State border), as we’d still had enough of the city! So we drove through a few pretty confusing streets in the city (the GPS on my phone kept dropping out, and there are lots of one way streets!) but didn’t really have a look at much. But from what we saw and had heard of Portland, it’s a pretty alternate sort of city – lots of hippie types, and LOTS of bikes instead of cars (like a lot of places over here).

Another thing we noticed about Portland were the layers of freeways (although much smaller than the ones around Seattle) heading into the city, and the multi-level freeway bridges again.

Then we headed towards the Oregon coast, where we’d stay for the night. Much of what we noticed on the way was pretty similar to in Washington State, with lots of moist pine forests alongside the road, but there was also a lot of farmland that we didn’t see in Washington (but we were really only in the coastal areas of Washington).

Cannon Beach, the first town we got to on the coast, where we stayed for the night, was a cute little town where we took a little wander around and had a good look at Haystack Rock on the beach – was pretty impressive! It’s apparently the biggest freestanding coastal rock in the world, at about 235 feet tall. So that makes it 72 metres tall, just a tiny bit taller than the rock cliffs at the Great Ocean Road, and the 12 Apostles there.

We saw a little deer along the side of the road when driving through town, and we tried the famous Clam Chowder at Mo’s Restaurant, a seafood chain on the Oregon Coast, then back to the RV park for the night. We also took a photo of a massive American ‘truck’ (pick up) compared to an Aussie sized ute – quite a difference! And there are SO many big ‘trucks’ over here!

The next day we didn’t have quite so nice or even just overcast) weather – most of the day was spent in pouring rain, or thick fog so that we couldn’t see much of the coast at all! It was probably quite impressive, but we didn’t find out for too much of it… We did see some impressive parts though, and also some more squirrels, up much closer than before, which was pretty exciting! And we also saw elk along the road side (a fair distance away for the males, but still!), which was way exciting!

The typical view we had...

It was COLD!

...And more than a little foggy...

But the squirrels were pretty cool!

Pretty foxglove grows alongside the road in a lot of places

Male elk in a paddock alongside the road

Female elk in a paddock a lot closer to the road