Pacific Northwest

Leavenworth, Washington 1600 miles

We started our first coastal road trip with a bang, leaving for our journey at 9pm and driving overnight. We were somewhere in Montana when the sun came up. On this day, we drove "Going to the Sun" road in Glacier National Park (my first time driving/riding through the mountains!)

It didn't take long for us to give up hiking Logan pass. At this point, we had been up for close to 36 hours!

We did the math wrong and ended up not getting to our hotel in Leavenworth (Obertal Inn) until 3am... we are pretty sure that we missed out on some cool scenery in the dark. All the more reason to come back someday!

Portland, Oregon 300 miles

To stay on schedule, we woke up pretty early - to an amazing belgian waffle bar in the lobby of our hotel. We spent some time walking around Leavenworth and admiring all of the German details.

We made our way to Seattle a few hours later and spent some time exploring Pike Place Market. Look at all these pretty flowers!!

For lunch we enjoyed some awesome smoked flagship mac & cheese at Beecher's Handmade Cheese. After stopping for some much-needed coffee at the Nook, we made our way south to Portand.

We checked into our hotel to rest for a bit, then went out to explore. On our list was Powell's books, the Pearl District, and the famous white stag sign. We finished our day with dinner at ¿Por Qué No?.

Loleta, California 500 miles

We woke up in Portland and started making our way to the coast! Our first official stop was Thor's Well - pretty cool. Phil got a little too close to it for my comfort... I feel like you could easily get sucked into this thing! We were able to take our time on this day and take in the scenery without the hustle and bustle of the city.

We stopped at the Sea Lion Caves but we were told that the sea dogs weren't around at the time (bummer) - so we continued on our journey.

We ended up taking a side road throught the redwoods to get to a hidden beach (but we can't remember what road it was!) It was unbelievable how cool and damp the air felt once we were in the trees, but as soon as we made it to the beach everything warmed up. At certain points, we weren't sure if we could even make it through this road.

It was Phil's turn to pick dinner and he wanted barbecue, so we ended up finding our way to Humboldt Smokehouse where we had our first ever BBQ burrito experience.

Big Sur, California 470 miles

We literally drove through a tree on this day! Our first stop of the day was the famous "Chandelier Tree" in Redwood Park. We also ended up taking a detour to drive to Fort Bragg to visit glass beach. At this point in my life, I was not used to driving through mountains – so this drive was a little out of my comfort zone. We made it to the coast again, only to find out that the beach was closed :( (we'll get it next time!)

After making our way back inland, we drove through San Francisco, spent a little time in Monterey, and eventually made our way to Big Sur. In my head, I always envisioned the pacific coast highway to be right next to the water like a beach.... but it's quite a cliff edge! I had to hold my breath on a few of the turns, but we eventually made it to our campsite where we got to see a beautiful sunset over the pacific.

Lake Tahoe, California 340 miles

We woke up to a little rain in the morning, so I was so happy that I stopped and got some photos along the coast the day before! We packed up and made our way back up the coast, stopping in Monterey for breakfast at Loulou's and making our way up to San Francisco - aka Matt Nathanson's home city. We first drove to Bernal Heights as the sun started to come out. We didn't find Matt's house, but we got a great view of the city!

After that, we checked out Mission Dolores park and made our way to Fisherman's Wharf. This is where we started to run out of time, so unfortunately we weren't able to explore too much before taking off - but we obviously had to stop and watch the sea lions for awhile.

When I was finally able to say goodbye to the sea dogs, we made our way to Lake Tahoe where we spent some time on the beach watching the sun go down behind the mountains. I've learned that I always start to feel a little sad once we get past the "halfway" point on our road trips.

Salt Lake City, Utah 600 miles

Ah, the long drive back. We didn't really have many stops in mind on our route, so we spent most of it... driving! Once we got to SLC, we visited Red Butte Garden to watch the sun go down. At this point, I decided that I wanted to see an awesome sunset every night.

Rapid City, South Dakota 670 miles

Another big day of driving! We were feeling pretty tired - our only stops were to stretch and get gas. We made it to Rapid City late afternoon and spent some time visiting Crazy Horse Memorial. As we waited for the light show to start, we got to see the best sunset of the trip yet!

Home 570 miles

We kicked off our day with a visit to Bear Country U.S.A.! We got there right when they opened and were rewarded by watching the bears have breakfast - leftover buns from local restaurants.

My favorite thing to do here is to watch the little babies roam around. They clearly love an audience! The followed us as we walked around the enclosure and when they saw us leaving, they moved on to the next group of guests!

After that, it was the home stretch! If any of you have driven from the twin cities or vice versa, you know this drive can feel pretty long and sometimes uneventful. It doesn't help when it's cloudy! It rained off and on for our drive and at times it felt like forever, but we eventually made our way home and were reunited with our boys!