Road Trip - part 3

Everything else I can think of

It’s been a fortnight since we’ve been back from our holiday and we have been so busy it feels like the trip happened a lifetime ago. I'd better wrap it up before all the memories fall out my head, quick smart.

Part of the problem with the kind of road trip we took was that our schedule was very tight. We had pre booked all our accommodation, so we had a certain amount of miles we had to do every day, come what may. We decided it would be wiser to not run the risk of a night sleeping in a car or in a murder hotel, given that we had a lot riding on this trip.

I’ve been on trips in Europe where we didn’t book ahead and things did not always go to plan. One night spent sleeping in the carpark of a motorway services in the Alps was a particularly low point. I have also stayed in some amazing places this way. I’d never have stayed in a medieval castle outside Sienna if we hadn’t been winging it, but it is something that’s easier to do when there are less of you to cater for and no matter when I’ve done it, there is always the nagging stress of having to find somewhere to sleep as the day wears on.

Accommodation wise, we mostly used Airbnb, with an occasional flurry into Vrbo. Lincoln City was our least favourite accommodation as well as our least favourite place. The two things may have been related. We loved our stay just outside the city of Eureka where the lady had chickens and turkeys and we were allowed to collect the eggs and flirt with the turkeys. We also loved our San Francisco accommodation. We stayed in a beach side house in a place called Pacifica, with views of the ocean from every room and the endless crashing of the waves to send us to sleep. Everywhere else was fine, although I have strong thoughts on decent lighting, good bedside tables and power points in sensible places that I could do a Ted Talk on if required.

The up side of booking ahead was knowing we had somewhere to stay every night. The downside was that if we wanted to detour en route because we had found something amazing that wasn’t in our original plan, it didn’t always fit and we had to make some pretty ruthless decisions. Everywhere we went and ticked something off our list, we added several things that we wanted to come back to if we ever manage to visit again.

In general, some things we wanted to do didn’t pan out because we arrived either too late or too early. A large section of the Oregon part of our trip was along the coast, and we didn’t always arrive at places when the tide was in our favour. We had spent so long organising the big picture stuff and had forgotten to pay attention to things like opening times and what the sea might be doing.

We were all excited to go to Neskowin Ghost Forest, which is a drowned forest on a beach. When we got there the tide was too far in and we could only see about three ghost trees. Luckily, it was the most breathtaking beach I’ve ever visited in my life, ghost trees or no ghost trees, so that was ok. We also visited Yaquina Head where there is a weird beach made of cobbles, which apparently has amazing rock pools. Obviously we got there when the tide was in, so no rock pools for us. We did see some seals, which was pretty cool. We just couldn’t wait until 4.30 p.m. for the tide to go out sufficiently for us to see everything else.

Later, we drove to a place called Thor’s Well, which is a huge sink hole in the rocks, called The Drainpipe of the Pacific. When we were there, the sink hole was barely visible because our timing was as terrible as ever. Thor’s Well is worth a visit anyway because there are water spouts and geysers and all kinds of awe inspiring wave based madness which cheered us up immensely. We spent about an hour there, and if we hadn’t had to move on because of time constraints, I suspect we would have stayed longer. It was particularly exhilarating watching cocky tourists getting drenched attempting to find the perfect Instagram moment. I enjoyed that almost as much as the nature.

There were two beaches we visited where our timing was exactly right, Cannon Beach in Oregon and the Glass Beach at Fort Bragg, both cool for very different reasons. Cannon Beach is a cute seaside town with a stunning beach that made me want to buy a dog and run about in an Arran jumper with tousled hair. The Glass Beach is, as its name suggests, full of sea glass, due to the unromantic fact that for a long time, it was the town dump. It’s much prettier now, and there were hundreds of hermit crabs tooting around the rock pools and some excellent squirrels showing off in the gorse bushes. There were so many amazing beaches, particularly in Oregon, that you are in danger of getting beach fatigue. Every day of our journey we started with stops at all the scenic view points along the way. After about three hours of jaw dropping beauty, we were done. We were spoiled by it all.

The main thing I had forgotten was that travelling as a family involves a fairly significant amount of compromise on everyone’s part. We all had things we wanted to do and by the time we had made a list of everyone’s holiday bucket list, it didn't leave a lot of room for spontaneity. In the three cities in particular, we felt like we really didn’t get enough time to explore properly. The constant refrain was; ‘if only we had more time.’

In Seattle we revisited the Underground Tour, which neither of the kids remembered from the last time we were there. We went back to Pike Place Market, where we grabbed lunch and spent an hour people watching. I ticked off one of the things on my trip bucket list by going to Chihuly Garden and Glass, which was worth every penny of the steep ticket price. We also spent about an hour in a Goodwill store buying cool, t-shirts and wallowing in thrift heaven.

In Portland we visited Powell’s City of Books, which I thought would be overwhelming but turned out to be one of the nicest book shops ever, even though the Princess Bride themed cafe, was largely just funky wallpaper. We didn’t do much else there in terms of tourism because the kids wanted to go to a huge Walmart and marvel at all the stuff. They also wanted to go to a mall. I was a bit sad because I’d have liked to go to the Japanese Gardens and a few other places, but in the interests of family harmony, the mall won out.

In San Francisco, Jason wanted to go to Alcatraz, and given that he had patiently driven us around for over a thousand miles by this point, we allowed it. As well as eating the most expensive Chinese food of my life and getting my foot run over by an angry Chinese pensioner with an out of control shopping trolley in China Town, we also hung out with the sea lions at the pier, which was stinky and also quite brilliantly entertaining. We drove across the Golden Gate Bridge in a bunch of sea fog, which was quite exciting. We also met up with an old friend of mine who moved away from the UK a decade ago and is now a fully paid up US citizen. It was absolutely wonderful to see her and was something unexpected and brilliant that we did manage to find time for.

There are so many things we want to go back for. We shot through Berkeley at the wrong end of the day when we were tired and everything was closing. We did a whistle stop tour of bits of Silicon Valley. Jason and Oscar got kicked out of the Computer History Museum because they stayed so long it was closing around them, and they didn’t get to finish looking. We wanted to spend more time in Santa Rosa where we spent a morning at The Snoopy Museum, which was my best thing of the whole, entire trip, because Snoopy is life. I loved it so much I burst into tears twice while we were there. I didn’t get a chance to find the site of Barbary Lane in San Francisco and we didn’t ride on a trolley bus, just a regular bus, which was not the same.

Next time, the pace will be slower. We will make time to venture out in a more freestyle way. We will be more prepared in terms of tide tables and less prepared in terms of accommodation and maybe we will hit that sweet spot where a holiday feels more like dipping into other people’s real lives instead of a bunch of things to be ticked off before you dash for the plane home. That’s not to say that this trip wasn’t wonderful. It was. We are still pinching ourselves that we actually got to do all those things. We will bore people with the stories for years. It’s just that there’s always room for a little improvement.