America Road Trip // Part 1

So, currently I am writing this blog post, sat in the passenger seat of our hire car. It’s Saturday of week 1 and we are heading down the amazing Oregon coastline! It’s so incredible, there is something very different to our coastline back home – I have never seen waves quite this high, crystal blue coloured sea, smashing against the dark brown cliff face!

We just stopped for lunch in Newport at a really cool place called Rogue Brewery and not going to lie we are completely stuffed! Now in the car continuing our trip along the coastline to a place called Coos Bay, where we will be staying tonight. So far I have only written a short paragraph and trying to keep the car sickness at bay!! I even bought sickness travel bands that you put round you wrist, yes I am sorry I am that person, such a woss!

I thought it would be nice, rather than flooding this blog and my social media platforms, to do a weekly snapshot of what we have been up to. I posted the other week about planning our adventure, this trip has been along time coming considering we first spoke about doing this 6 years ago! 

When we left on Monday we headed out from London and caught our flight to LA!

Flying in style and super comfortable, we both struggle to fall asleep on a plane. So basically in our 11 hour flight we had about 2 hours sleep. We were also going to have to contend with the 8 hour time difference so trying to get some sleep was a must! The flight was second to none with the service we received and was barely half full, so we actually had an extra seat between us, which gave us plenty of room! AMAZING!

When we got to LA, it made me super excited for when we head back their for the last part of our journey. Checking in for our connecting flight to Seattle we saw all festival goers from Coachella heading back out for their flights home. We will be staying in Palm Springs and I am so gutted that it will be the week after Coachella. 

So we caught a 2 hour flight up to Seattle and a short taxi ride into town. By the time we got to our hotel we could feel the hangriness (I am sure you all know what ‘Hangry’ means ;)) coming on so we quickly checked in and headed back out for a bite to eat. 

Seattle

Seattle was amazing. A hustling and hipster town with a Starbucks on pretty much every block! We bought the Lonely Planet book based on the Pacific Northwest, Washington and Oregon and did a few of the touristy things like go to Pike Place Market. The atmosphere was so amazing there – and of course I lost Curly in the crowd to then find him buying Salmon Jerky…..which I tried…..and was incredible! 

We carried on wondering the town and explored a lot of Downtown and the Waterfront. We took a boat tour, which usually I am bit like meh too, but this was really good, informative bit of a laugh and had great views of Seattle. 

The rest of our time involved, relaxing in the parks, reading and pottering. We saw this as our chilling out time, recovering from the jet lag. We walked the amazing Olympic park with sculptures, definitely worth the visit. And for dinner we were recommended the most amazing Thai restaurant, it was so good we went back again the next day to try the other dishes on the menu. A tiny little hole in the wall with only enough to seat about 20 people but churns out the most amazing Thai food I have ever tasted.

All in all, I would hands down go back here. It was an incredible start to our trip!

Portland

So Thursday morning we picked up our hire car!! This is where the real adventure started. Road map in hand, Spotify playlists ready, go pro set up! The first drive was only a couple of hours, but smiling ear to ear listening to ‘Feel Good Friday’ soundtrack. It was a great start to our trip to Portland.

I don’t really know what I was expecting of Portland. It was originally just one of those places we saw as like a filler location on our trip, somewhere to stay for the night. We actually ended up staying two nights and being there for about a day and a half. What a brilliant city. So chilled out and relaxing.

There wasn’t alot to do in terms of touristy attractions, or to see anything. But we were happy wondering the streets, seeing the urban gardens. Eating, drinking, snacking, trying street food from the numerous food trucks.
Whilst there wasn’t a particular thing we did or saw that was stand out for me here, the highlight was the best seafood restaurant I have ever been too. If you are ever in Portland make sure you get yourself down to Jake’s Famous Crawfish. An old school restaurant, impeccable service, a fresh menu daily with the fish caught that day. OH MY GOODNESS, every mouthful! No words!

Oregon Coastline

Part 1 of the Oregon Coastline. It was everything we expected! Incredibly picturesque. Before we hit the coastline we stopped in a National Forest in Tillamook, parked up and went for an explore. Oregon was starting to live up to its reputation as it was raining quite abit, but I grabbed my trainers and raincoat and we went for abit of a trek. It wasn’t long before we came across loads of logged trees, and in true Curly fashion he wanted to explore!


If you are planning a trip along the West Coast, definitely stick to Route 101. It was amazing. I think we stopped at least 10 times in the space of an hour, just to get out of the car and take it all in. Trying to just to choose a few photographs for this blog was so difficult as there is so many. And the photographs I don’t feel does it justice at how incredible it was.

After our little adventure in this creek, we headed out to the coastline.

Wow!

We are pretty lucky where we live in Dorset and I am used to the coastline. But this, was a whole other level of incredible. We drove down Route 101 to Newport where we stopped for lunch at the place I mentioned above, Rouge Brewery. Then continued our journey down to Coos Bay where we stayed for the night. Overall, this part of our trip has been better than we could have imagined! I can’t wait for the trip next which is down to Redwood National Park!

Part 2 coming next week! I hope you enjoyed a snippet of what we have been up to!

Much love, Charlotte x