west coast

We drove all the way to Crescent City after leaving San Francisco and spent time driving through the Avenue of the Giants. The Redwoods were amazing!

As we aimed to arrive at Gold Bluff for sunset, along the way we realized it would be tight getting there in time. Dude remembered another recommendation.

This is Moonstone Beach and it did not disappoint! The sunset was spectacular and the rock formations on the beach just added to the whole experience.

We also decided that we were all camped out. Camping overnight is logistically way too much work and if we wanted to see more, we thought we would forego it… as much as we have enjoyed camping on this trip.

The next day we made a list of places we wanted to see along the way to our next stop, Lincoln City, OR.

We spent the whole morning exploring places we spotted along the way and did not manage to get to our first stop until 7pm.

Whalehead Beach

Natural Bridges

Our misadventures took us down a four mile, single lane, gravel and potholed road looking for the first place on our list… the sand dunes. We passed by one vehicle where the guys gave us a funny look. That was our first clue that perhaps we were not where we were supposed to be. But we thought, why not? We’re on an adventure after all. Almost driving the whole four miles, we decided to ask the men in a second vehicle heading in the opposite direction where this road led. Their answer was, “Um… Nowhere. Just the beach. We went fishing. Not sure what you’re all doing here.” We all had a good chuckle over that and quickly turned it right around and continued our search for the dunes.

We finally made it and it was nothing as we had expected and to top it all off, not even a sunset to make our efforts worthwhile. Oh well… It took us another 2.5 hours to get to our motel in Lincoln City and needless to say, we were not able to visit any of the remaining spots on our list. We’ll just have to head back down the coast another time.

The next morning we headed back to one of our desired stops. The Devil’s Punchbowl was very cool and we wish we were able to make it into the Punchbowl but the tide was high so there was no safe way in. (I also wish I had a decent photo to share.) To get in, we would have to wade around the outside and through one of the openings. We’re adding it back onto our list of places to see.

Instead of exploring more of the coast we decided to head straight to Seattle and arrive at a decent hour. We managed to get there in time for dinner with friends and now we are heading home today. We cannot believe our six week adventure is coming to an end.