Road Trip To Pacific Northwest

Last summer, we embarked on a week-long road trip to the Pacific Northwest stopping for the night at Ashland and Eugene in Oregon and Seattle in Washington.

I took the wheel as we pulled out of the driveway, taking the first shift, as the husband was not a morning person. He's not functional at all before 9 am. This was the day of the total solar eclipse of 2017 and we were previously told that we'd be encountering many delay as we would be heading towards the epicenter of the eclipse.

However, much to my delight, that did not happen at all. I had the road almost to myself. That was also the first day of school for so many. I know because our friends couldn't join us on the road trip because their kids were due back to school that day.

While I enjoyed driving in quiet and peace, I was longing to be able to do some drive by shooting. The husband was still in dreamland prostrate on the passenger seat next to me.

Somewhere in Shasta Lake, we stopped for gas and that was the cue for us to change driving shifts. It was here that the eclipse happened. We did not even get to Oregon to view it. Honestly though, I wasn't interested much, but the husband chose to stay put while the place darkened, you can definitely see the drastic change. He took a few photos but nothing really great, because we could not set up the tripod.

When we went back on the road, I was sitting in the passenger seat and the camera did not leave my hand the entire way.








Weed, California









We noticed that around the Oregon border that the sky had turned hazy. As it turned out, there were several wildfires burning at the same time and the smoke were being pushed towards California and in Southern Oregon we could not miss the signs. Best to stay inside the car and keep the windows closed.





This road trip was meant to recreate the road trip we took in 2006. It was the first travel we took (we were not married yet), and Oregon made such positive impact on both of us and it spurred us to crave traveling. As a homage to the 2006 road trip, our first destination is also Crater Lake NP. We saw it then covered in snow; now we were so excited to view it under blue sky; although we feared that the smoke had gotten over there too making the sky hazy, sigh.





We saw many people hiking towards Crater Lake, some with their thumbs out hoping for a ride.

Outside of the park, we stopped when we saw cars have stopped and people looking out at something.















OUR WORLD TUESDAY