Back
So here we are again, back in the bottom left-hand corner of the country, adjusting to a landscape of thisand thisafter a few weeks of thisand this!Well, I'm being overly dramatic, but you know what I mean!
It's such an enormous country, and so very beautiful everywhere you go, especially from central California up into the Pacific North-West, which is where we went.
We stayed at a couple of places on the way up the coast to Portland. We spent a few days with Lily in Olympia, then with her and Nick on one of the San Juan islands between the US and Canada, before a few wonderful days with family in Canada itself.
We drove about 3500 miles (over 5500 km). Driving time is great time for conversation, good music, appreciating the luxury of cruise control, and taking in the view as the landscape changes. Oh, and lots and lots of daggy photographs of trucks. I love 'em!My Dave looked after me so well. Every day's drive was planned, every night's bed was booked, and every morning, when I got in the car, he had a freshly chilled bottle of Perrier waiting for me. He took me to some wonderful places — Mendocino, of course ... hushed groves of giant redwood ... an inn at the mouth of the Klamath River, in northern California, where from our bedroom window we watched Indian fishermen and sea lions competing for salmon as night fell ... deserted, rocky beaches ... and the world's biggest bookstore — you have to see it to believe it.
We've seen pine-covered islands ...and totem poles ...And there were snow-topped volcanoes in all directions. Lucky, huh?