Friday, August 20, 2010

Portland and back to the coast

So I'm back in Cannon Beach for the second time. I took a four night trip to Portland on Monday and now its Friday and I'm back in Cannon Beach. It was a sunny day and I'm waiting for the sun the finish setting before I go find some seafood and a free wifi connection.

We've been at the beach for 7 hours now and its been cold the whole time. I have a long sleeve thermal, a sweatshirt and a gore tex shell on and long johns and jeans on the bottom... And I'm still cold.

The beach here has a great little feature called Haystack Rock. Its worth looking up.

Portland was great. It was like Boston, more laid back because it is west coast, and I didn't find any of the tense busy bodies I met in Seattle. I stayed with Bryan from Couchsurfing and he was a great host. He had a total of 7 other couch surfers during the time I was there. 2 girls from North Dakota, 3 college students (one from Newton MA), and 2 hitch hiking girls.

The two hitch hiking girls are worth mentioning... They were unemployed, both done with school, one was a fire dancer (flaming hoola hoop style), and they said they were hitching down to Florida and the Gulf to document the oil spill.

I drove around Portland, sat around in Pioneer square for lunch, tried to go sailing twice (no wind), went to Mt. Tabor and the dog park there, visited a few other small parks and walked around town with Bryan and two of the other surfers he had.

So I'm back on the road.
My next stops are as follows:
Continuing on the coats highway as much as possible through Oregon and Cali.
Redwoods Nat. Park
Eureka
San Fran
Yosemite
LA
San Diego
Movaje Nat Preserve
Death Valley
Las Vegas
Grand Canyon S. Rim
Austin Tx
Houston
New Orleans
Miami
Lookout Mt. Georgia (hang gliding)
Hunting in Virginia or N. Carolina
DC to say hi to Family and friends
New York (hopefully in time for the Halloween Parade)

I have a map to show this. Comments and suggestions are welcome :)

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

2 comments:

  1. I loved Portland, and I'm glad that you like it. Isn't it weird to be on the beach in the summer and be cold? That's the part of the northwest that I didn't like, because the beaches are beautiful! I have only had a few sit on the beach days this summer. Too busy. Sounds like a great itinerary for the rest of the trip.

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  2. If you want to go to Napa remember Tom's mom is there-- she would love to see you (she's heard all about you).

    Only thing is Mary has her rules-- you would have to follow her rules-- sleep in the back bedroom, eat lots of her food (and probably take leftovers with you) and pretty much let her pay for things and do things her way-- a couple of weeks ago she bodychecked Kathryn to stop her from doing the dishes. Of course offering is always nice but when Mary says no she means it! E-mail me if you want her address and phone number

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