Today we left Corvallis and Oregon for good (until we go back to visit). We started out the day fairly well by getting the oil changed in the car 2 hours before we had scheduled it since the person who had the 8 AM slot didn’t show up on time. Yesterday we had spent some time downtown visiting a couple of places, most notably the Book Bin where we bought more books (because we can’t resist), including an Essentials of Geology textbook for $15 so I can learn more things about rocks, so we just grabbed a bit of breakfast at New Morning Bakery (for those of you in Corvallis, go there and get their hazelnut pancakes with Marionberry syrup, it’s soooooooo good) while the car was worked on and meandered back through downtown Corvallis one last time.

We checked out the Farmer’s market, just in case we saw anything that we thought we needed to have on the drive, but didn’t find anything in particular. It’s a good thing we didn’t because we would have had to declare it when we got into California. Anyways, we picked up some groceries, stopped by the coffee shop out on OR 34 that makes delicious coffee and picked up some coffee and beans, and headed west to the coast.

The coast was nice. We continued down US 101 and caught some nice views. We stopped at Seal Rock and walked along the beach for a bit while I satisfied my need to dip my toes in all the water ever.

We eventually got to California where they had a little port of entry where they asked if you had any fresh produce. Like I mentioned, had we bought anything at the Farmer’s market, we would have had to declare it and who knows what would have happened (someone probably does, but that someone is not me). There was a bunch of construction early on in CA, but we managed to find a nice turnout where we could watch the sunset. The clouds and the ocean gave us a great show for our last sunset on the coast.

From there, it was weird driving through the forest when the light was fading. We tried to go down the main road through the Redwood National and State Parks, but it’s closed! So we turned off that road onto another one that Robert said he had seen a sign pointing down for the visitor center (we saw a little frog jump across the road on the way), except it ended in a gate. We turned back and got on US 101 again. Next we tried the Elk Meadows turn off, which leads to the Gold Bluffs campground (which was full) and was not useful. We did see an elk standing in the parking area eating some grass.

In Orick (a tiny town with barely anything in it), we checked a map to see where we should go next and found nothing helpful. Long (and boring) story short: we went down to Acrata to stay in a hotel since the drive-up campgrounds were full and Robert needed to get some work done. While he worked, I played around with pictures and finally posted my backlogged days from before Corvallis (check out the Lara’s Words category for a full list of posts), woo!