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8/28/04
Northern California and Oregon have a beautiful rugged coast that the highway follows pretty much the whole drive. We drove over the Golden Gate Bridge on our way out of San Francisco and it was so foggy that we couldn�t see the top of the bridge, just like the tour guide had mentioned the other day. It�s usually this foggy but we had a perfect day the day of our tour, go figure. Our whole trip has been pretty much good timing like that. We started off by going to an old Faithful Geyser. There are three in America and we saw one of them. It is a hole in the ground that shoots 350 degree water about 60 feet in the air for 3-4 mins at a time. It always goes off at the same time, every 40 minutes. Then we visited a redwood petrified forest. Similar idea to the place in Arizona except they were HUGE redwood trees that had been buried thousands of years ago by lave and ash. Drove to the coast for a few lighthouses but we couldn�t see them at all because of the fog. Started the next day driving to a place where we could drive thru a redwood. Yes, I said drive thru. We also walked thru it but it is amazing how big these trees really get. Some of these trees are over 200 feet tall. We went to a lumber mill where we could take a tour of part of the factory. It was neat to see them working with the wood. We drove trough a town named Eureka that is known for a few Victorian Painted ladies, the huge colorful houses. Went to a place called Trees of Mystery and Sky Trail. The trees were redwoods and other trees in odd shapes naturally and some carved by chainsaw. The Sky Trail was a gondola ride up the mountain, beautiful views of the ocean and forests from up there. Our journey in Oregon started the next morning visiting a few lighthouses on the way up the coast. The lighthouses on the Oregon coast are VERY easy to get to, we have had some tough ones in the past to find but these are literally right off the highway. We also visited a Walk Thru Animal Safari where you can feed lamas, goats, deer, rams and donkeys. Play with lynx cubs, hold skunks, raccoons, opossum, and ferrets. It was so cute to see the baby animals and have the animals follow us around because of treats. They also had lions, tigers and bears � OH MY! Our last day of Oregon was spent visiting more lighthouses and visiting a place called Sea Lion Caves. They are huge sea caves where sea lions live and you can take an elevator down into the cave to see the sea lions. We didn�t see any in the caves because they were all on the cliffs sunning themselves. As we got to the top to see the sea lions on the cliffs we were just in time for a worker to point out a shark out in the water cruising by the sea lions. It swam away but we could see it perfectly in the water from where we were watching, wonder if the sea lions knew?!
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