Now The Fun Begins.........Sand Dunes, Redwoods, Napa and Sonoma!

All’s Well That Ends Well

Friday September 29 & 30, 2011

Oregon is an outrageous state.  So diverse,  desert, mountains, coastline, lakes, timberland, great towns and more.  Can’t believe how many dunes are on the  coastline. We went on a dune buggy tour of the sand  dunes in Florence.  Great fun and awesome sites. 

Route 101 is everything everyone has told us.  Along a wild, spectacular coastline and then inland into forests, then out to the coastline again and beautiful vistas.  Pictures don’t  do it justice.  At least mine don’t.

That's Jeff, a little spec, standing at the base of the BIG rock.

We stopped over in Trinadad, but after leaving in the morning realized we should have gone just a little bit further to Brookings.  Much more of a town, right on the water. Oh well, we had a goods night sleep.

 

Next stop along Route 101 was The Redwoods south of Crescent City, Cal..  Wow-one cannot even begin to describe or take pictures to do justice to the awesomeness of those gigantic trees and their beauty. 

Is that a bear in the woods?

Muscle Man!!

That's one big beautiful root.

The hikes through these woods are just overwhelming.  We stayed over in a campsite right in the Redwoods.  Slept in late only because the sun was so far high up above the trees, who would know it was morning.  Did a little laundry, filled our propane and off we went to Sonoma. 

The trees and hills and valleys were just stunning but even more so when we arrived in the vineyards.  So many vineyards to see.  One after another and then we passed our favorite, Silver Oaks.  Unfortunately they didn’t have tastings there as it was not their main vineyard.  It was 5 PM by now and most of the vineyards close about 4:30.  Darn….Just have to wait until tomorrow. 

So we pulled into Calistoga, Ca. where friends, Brad and Sharon Suhr, now live who used to live on The Vineyard. Brad ran the Edgartown Bike Shop and got the opportunity about 4 years ago to buy Calistoga Bikes. We’ll be visiting them tomorrow for a bike tour of the vineyards.  Can’t wait!  We actually had a hard time finding a place to stay as there were festivals and a national moto-cross bike race in town, but we ended up in the Bothe-Napa State Park (scheduled to be closed along with many other due to California’s terrible finanaces) that was quiet and lovely so all’s well that ends well.