USA road trip, Post 5: Oregon coast

On Thursday afternoon, September 19th, we crossed from California into the southern part of Oregon. Driving the Oregon coast had long been a travel goal for Ben and I, and it certainly didn't disappoint! Here are the highlights from the two days we spent exploring the Oregon coast...

Not long after we entered Oregon, I looked out the car window and saw a spectacular sight: the TOP of the clouds! Seeing it from a plane is one thing, but seeing it from a car is quite surreal! The sea of clouds extended as far as we could see into the distance. There was a lot of oohing and ahhing over this incredible sight!

Dad on Cloud 9 ;)

I don't think we were up particularly high - it's just that the bank of cloud was hanging extremely low over the coastline, as you can see in the following photos taken 3 hours later. This awe-inspiring view was my favourite on the whole trip...

And a 20-photo panorama Ben took (click to enlarge)...

On Thursday we had lunch in a small town that seemed to have an inordinate number of pizza joints and gone-out-of-business restaurants along the main thoroughfare. We eventually found a bustling seafood shack at a marina off the main highway, and warmed up with some fish and chips and clam chowder.

On Thursday and Friday nights, we stayed at a beachside motel in Yachats (which I had been calling "Yack-ats", but a laughing local told us was pronounced "Yaw-hots").

On Friday we left Roxy at the motel to do some work, while the rest of us retraced half an hour of the previous evening's drive to explore the town of Florence. We're pretty sure some of the most stunning coastal views were on this portion of the drive that we did three times, but on Thursday it was dark and on Friday it was foggy and raining, so we didn't get to see much of it!

We forgot our camera on the day trip to Florence, but it had a cute little historical district along the river. We had lunch at a British restaurant, wandered in and out of galleries and speciality shops, bought some kites, and finished up with a warm drink before heading back up to Yachats.

On Saturday, we left Yachats and headed north again. We had lunch at the Tillamook Cheese Factory, and then watched from the upstairs viewing room as hundreds of blocks of cheese travelled along the conveyor belts and were packaged up, supervised diligently by the assembly line workers. We read the signs detailing the history of dairy cooperatives and cheese production in the region, and finished up our visit with some cheap and yummy gelato.

Tillamook Cheddar production

Giant blocks of cheese!

"Cheese? No thanks, I'll have a handbag!"

After leaving the factory we continued on to Cannon Beach, seemingly the most famous and oft-recommended spot on the Oregon coast. After we eventually found a spot to park, and wrestled our way through some shoulder-high grass and across a few sand dunes to access a beautiful empty beach, we put one of our new kites to good use. Flying a kite in such a peaceful and picturesque location, while waves rolled in and horses galloped past, was one of the absolute highlights of the trip for me.

From Cannon Beach we headed inland to Beaverton, near Portland, and stayed the night at a hotel there. On Sunday morning we went to a meeting nearby, and that afternoon we drove the rest of the way home.

And that was our 9 day road trip from Las Vegas to Vancouver via the California and Oregon coasts! Hope you enjoyed the drive. :)

East Canada trip, Post 3: Quebec City

On Tuesday, September 28th, we drove all the way from PEI to Quebec - about a 10.5 hour drive, mostly through New Brunswick. On the way, we saw some beautiful fall colours beside the highway, but it was very hard to get a good photo of them while zooming past. My best effort is below, along with the sleeping beauties in the back seat...







That evening we checked into our lake-front cottage at Lake Augustine, about 20 minutes from Quebec City. This would be our home for the next 3 nights. It was a cute, compact little cottage with two bedrooms, a kitchen/lounge area, a bathroom, and a verandah looking out on the lake.

Raquela and I had discovered while organising this trip that holiday cottages are a fantastically economical accommodation option at this time of year. This is because cottages are generally used during the summer - and, as they close up for the winter around October, we scored the off-peak rates of about $50 per couple per night, both in Quebec and in Bar Harbor (see Post 1). Who wouldn't love a bargain like that?!

After checking in, we went for a drive to get a few groceries, then hung out in our cottage enjoying a relaxing evening of eating pizza and playing a hilarious Pictionary card game.

The next morning, Wednesday, Ben took the following photos from our cottage verandah. These are easily our best fall foliage photos from the entire trip, so enjoy the colours!













After breakfast, we drove into the city to explore historic Old Quebec. After a number of roadworks-related detours, we finally got close enough to find a park and set off on a wander around part of the old city walls.

From Wikipedia:
Founded in 1608 by Samuel de Champlain, Quebec City is one of the oldest cities in North America. The ramparts surrounding Old Quebec (Vieux-Québec) are the only remaining fortified city walls that still exist in the Americas north of Mexico, and were declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1985 as the 'Historic District of Old Québec'.

Here are some photos of old walls and newer grafitti...

































The area inside the city walls, known as Old Quebec (Vieux-Québec in French) is divided into the Upper Town (Haute-Ville) and Lower Town (Basse-Ville), which are linked by some steep steps and the less exhausting funicular option.

The entire Old City is extremely touristy, but that's to be expected when a bizarrely European-feeling city, complete with cobbled streets and French as the offical provincial language, is merrily holding its own in the middle of North America! It really did feel quite surreal to us to think that this was still the country we live in!

Here are some photos from the Upper Town...





















Now to interrupt these photos with a very "small world" story indeed...

As Ben was standing on the street waiting for me to come out of a souvenir shop in the Upper Town, who should tap him on the shoulder but Carson H!!! This is a friend from Queensland whom we did not know was still travelling, let alone on this continent. I had actually emailed his sister just 2 days before from PEI, but by the time we ran across him his family still didn't know that he had ducked up into Canada from New York. We thought we already had some good "small world" stories, but this is definitely one of our best yet!





After the initial shock had subsided, we introduced Carson to David and Kela, and he spent the rest of the day wandering around with us.

Here are some more photos from the Upper Town. The huge fancy building is Chateau Frontenac, a hotel near the edge of the cliff that looks down on the Lower Town...

















Looking down at the Lower Town...









The view from the Citadel, an active military garrison on a cold and windy hilltop in the Upper Town...













A few more Upper Town photos...

















The view from the funicular that took us down to the Lower Town for $2 per person...





Lunch at a restaurant in the Lower Town...





More of the Lower Town...





























After we parted ways with Carson in the late afternoon, we drove to Rue Saint-Jean ("rue" is French for street) to quickly check out a chocolate factory/shop we'd seen on the map, and then it was back to our cottage to eat dinner and get ready for the Wednesday night meeting - in which the four of us were the half that spoke English. It was a lovely evening and fun to re-learn the art of singing in French!

That evening we played more amusing card games, and Ben took this night shot of the lake from our cottage verandah...





The next day, Thursday, we spent the day driving around Île d'Orléans (French for Orleans Island and pronounced something like "Ill Door Lee On"), an island in the St Lawrence River a few kilometres from Quebec City. The island is 34 km long and 8 km wide at its widest part - David and Kela were amused to realise that this is only a bit smaller than Barbados (well, it's the same length but less than half the surface area)! It has six municipalities, each of which is centred around a small village named after a saint (eg. Sainte-Famille, Saint-Pierre-de-l'Ile-d'Orleans, etc).

Île d'Orléans is covered in farms, roadside shops, wineries, etc. As it was a rainy day and past the peak summer season, there were probably a lot less places open than there would have been 2 months earlier, but we still found enough to occupy us. We stopped at various shops and bought as much as we dared (Ben and I only had carry-on luggage on the trip; David and Kela had more bags but had already done a LOT of shopping), visited a chocolate factory/shop, toured a well-preserved lord's house from the 1700s, ate a huge lunch at a roadside restaurant, and generally had a nice relaxing day.

Here are a few photos ("does this pumpkin make me look petite?")...

































And that was our time in Quebec City and Île d'Orléans! We loved its old world European feel, although Ben ended up liking Montreal (our next destination) better due to it seeming a bit less touristy. However, I would love to go back to Quebec sometime - especially during a snowy winter when it would be even more picturesque!

PS. More photos are in our East Canada road trip Picasa album.