On The Road Again?!?!?

 And so it begins...We have emerged from the woods like our big harry friend here...

In our deadend state of being we decided to get out and have an adventure, instead of the usual bike race or major ride we chose a less body abusive method of entertainment and landed on a ROAD TRIP.

But Where to Go?

THE COAST is clearly a great option. Driving the PCH seemed like a ripe idea. 

The original plans were to hit Carmel Ca. and head up to Vancouver BC.  Quite the undertaking if you look at it on the map. So we shortened it by cutting out a lot of CA. We figured we'd start in Eureka CA and head on up... and looking at daily mileage we still seemed a bit overwhelmed... 7 hours of drive time each day was looking like a little much so another cut came about. 

BYE BYE CANADA!

oh and Washington too.

SO here is the story of our mostly Oregon Coast Extravaganza  

We drove into CA on the first day through good old Reno NV... it was a quick drive and we had a few too many stops along the way.. once we hit Reno we found us some dinner in the form of QUDOBA! sorry, no photos of the hugenornauos burritos, but dang it all if they weren't just busting at the seems.

Reno has a SIERRA TRADING POST retail outlet

and we spent way too long there!

so we hit the road to Redding for a quick overnight.

We ran into the BIG GUY on our way into Eureka and ended up in this weird ghost town on the coast. Eureka was wildly empty of all but the homeless equivalent of the ZOMBIE INVASION!  

It was weird... the shops were mostly closed though they looked cool inside and the town just had random bums wandering. I think we were the only tourists.

The Town was beautiful though and had some beyond belief architecture... the Mansion below is right out of the LemmonySnikkets series.  Every building was in the same style... all build in the 1880's. 

only one little problem

TSUNAMI!

This is the place we stayed.. can you see the ghost in our room window?  the whole place smelled like bad chinese food except our room thank the heavens above.. it was great! no smell and a great bed and just super cute.

This guy is a huge statue out in the bay 

as a tribute to lost Fishermen. 

He was really cool.

my wife is HOT but always cold

Trinidad Beach was so pretty and empty that we had heaven all to ourselves.

lots of rocks and islands and birds.

This is the Trinidad Light House

The one that started it all... 

Our search for Light!

Trinidad Beach

on to the Redwood Forest

just a bunch of little trees...

you could sleep 12 inside this burned out tree

thats me like 20 feet up this thing

this is big boy

These Redwoods are super cool... now, to those that have been to Sequoia these might look like small little bonsi trees but that is just about Trunk Size.. these guys are Growers! the tallest trees in the world. this guy is like 4 Statue of Libertys tall and shes a huge B.. inside joke, those that laugh get it.

Now we drive, the hiking through the forest kinda wiped us non exercising losers out so we drive and drive and start looking for food... food food food... im hungry.
We hit a little town just inside of Oregon (can you believe we just got to Oregon?)
There was an immediate change in the weather! rain rain and rain... wait, thats not right... it was still beautiful and sunny but there was a change in the people... all of a sudden the world seemed a little bit better. everyone had a how can i make your day better feeling they carried with them.
Signs went from

DO

NOT

LITTER

to

PLEASE 

DO NOT 

LITTER

also the fines went up $5000.00 for littering in Oregon but thats not the point here, or maybe it is... it just seemed like they cared more and made me want to too.

My cute niece Taj was out riding her pet tortoise Flash the other day.

 Erin rode this guy in tribute to her epic ride.

This guy was in the town of Bandon, it was awsome!  super clean and all the people were so great and the fish tacos... let me explain... WHOLEY $#!*STORM THE FISH TACOS!
I mean wow. we like them on flour torts and when they said 2 for $7.00 we thought that was an ok deal... thinking they were your regular little buddies... I mean like your regular size corn tort size, not the bullcrap that Tacos180 is trying to pull off with silver dollar size torts, but regular ones.
Well, they brought out a couple of Cafe Rio sized burittos which they called a taco... and so sooo so good.

That was the 2nd lb added to the belly.

Onward up the coast

We started the real sight seeing from here... look at Erin trying to be a whale... thats a right side jaw bone there she has in her mouth... yummy!

So we met this dude who was telling us about this whale jaw and the area and gave us a magizine that had a bunch of mile points marked, he said he worked in the Light house there and that these were the best places up the coast to stop and stare... 

Despite the thought that he might be sending us too meet some backwood Gypsies who would robb us and sell us into the fish gutting slavery market, we stopped and boy was he just a good guy... these places were super cool. 

thanks random dude! 

ok, so there is a lot of these light houses up the coast but this one is one of the coolest., its elevated from this beautiful beach and you have to hike a bit to get up there. and it was good!

that is the same guy off behind Erin... there was construction on the bridge that led over to the house and we stopped in the perfect place...
You see this coastline.. its beautiful aint it... well, its kind of a rare thing on the Oregon coast.. Im sure its there all the way up but like 70% of the time your behind the huge pine trees.  We stopped where there was like a 50 foot gap in the trees with the most amazing view.

up close and personal

Strawberry Hill

One of the places we were told to stop was here... seals and amazing tide pools...

THEY WERE RIGHT!

We hiked down to the beach which was gorgeous in its own right to find seals out on these rock a ways out... kind of neat but kind of far away so we took matters into our own feet and scurried, scampered, scaled and scuttled our way out to them til they were about 12 feet away across a watery divide. 

This lil fella was just hangin like this the whole time

propped up and puttin out the vibe.

Then came the STARFISH...

I was like hey Erin, you know I've never seen a starfish and she was like me either... and then BAM! There were like a hundred of them on this beach... mostly purple and orange.

They were everywhere. It was so much fun... we would pick them up and play ninja. Talk about the perfect throwing star!  And they would kinda scream in the air like a kid dropping over the edge of a roller coaster and if you believe i would throw one of these your and idiot! no nijas no throwing and no screaming... i did have the chance to flip one back over so he wouldn't be unprotected and into a pool of good water.. he said "thanks, now the birds wont eat me."

The next day up in Newport

we hung out with 

Bubba and his friends!

SEA LIONS

These guys were so great... there were lots more than what you see in the photo here and they have such a great personality. Its like one big game of dog pile but then its like "all set... now don't move."
Seriously, its nap time and when one moves he wakes the bunch. Its like dominoes, almost a nuclear chain reaction.. once one goes the rest follow and its chaos. barking and posturing and awesomness and in about 60 seconds they are back to sleep.  3-5 minutes later, someone shifts and its pandemonium. Then sleep.