I suppose I should post something about the wedding first, but I have better pictures to share at the moment from the honeymoon, so this post comes first!
When time came to plan our honeymoon, we had a lot of grand plans for traveling the world; laying on tropical beaches, seeing exotic locations, exploring new cultures. And what would be a better avenue for those things besides a giant road trip of the Western United States! I’m half kidding of course. We toyed with plenty of ideas for a Carribean vacation, and after a lot of research, we just couldn’t find something that fit our budget, time constraints, and honeymoon ideals.
So, the idea of a big road trip around the West started brewing. Mollie had never seen anything on the West Coast besides San Diego and a little bit of Santa Rosa, so it would be an excellent chance for her to see some of this side of the nation. Making the drive to Spokane, Washington, where I was born and raised, would give us both the chance to see my childhood homes, schools, and play places as well.
We didn’t want to make the trip feel like an extended death march, and it definately had that potential. Our route would end up being many thousand miles, and in order to make all that driving bearable, we tried to space out big drives in between some good long overnight stays in special places. The first stop from Vegas was Napa Valley.
Napa is gorgeous. We made our biggest and toughest drive on Sunday night, nearly 12 hours of road from Vegas to Yountville, CA. Our destination was the Villagio, a very nice location in the center of a splendid little town. Just across the street from Bouchon, and a few blocks away from the French Laundry, both fine eating establishments. We spent two days in the perfect little hamlet of Napa. Everything there appears clean, well groomed, perfectly planned, never rushed, and definately snooty. We ate an awesome meal at Buchon, and spent time touring several vineyards around the valley. I highly recommend making a trip to Napa to anyone, it was one of the highlights of our trip.
Below is the barrel storage room of the Robert Mondavi Vineyard. The tour was an awesome experience.
Our stay in Napa felt surreal and wonderful. It was an excellent place to unwind from all the wedding planning, and was the perfect start for our big road trip. After our lovely stay, we headed on to our next destination, the Redwood Forest on the California Coast. The map above is deceptive…we headed coastal from Napa to Crescent City, and then on to Grant’s Pass.
Your eyes do not decieve you. I drove the Subaru through a tree. On a side note, it took far longer to clear the tree than expected. On the trailing side, as we inched through, we were blocked by several hundred Asian tourists, cameras in hand. It was truly incredible. I have a panorama of the tree with tourists included in the flickr gallery…hilarious.
Our initial plan was to do a little camping in the Redwoods. We left Napa in the morning, and made really good time on the drive, and before we knew it we had pushed on through the forest and found ourselves in Crescent City, Oregon. We explored this town and grabbed a meal, and felt pretty good, so we continued driving. Our eventual stopping point would be Grant’s Pass, Oregon. We found a cheap hotel to shack up in, and crashed for the night after a long day of driving. The big day would afford us a lot more time in our next cool spot, Cannon Beach, Oregon.
I was not informed of how cold it is in Oregon in April! We spent some good time at the Schooner’s Cove Inn at Cannon Beach. The picture above shows the view from our room, overlooking the bay and the infamous Haystack Rock. That’s one big chunk of granite, let me tell you. We spent the majority of our time walking around the small beach town, enjoying the tourist traps and interesting art that tends to survive in such places. We enjoyed a good meal at a little one room french restaurant called Nathan’s, which was a highlight.
By now we really started to feel seperated from our daily lives. Traveling by car, and seeing so many different interesting locations tends to do that. We were getting close to our Northern-most point, Spokane,WA, so we headed off early Thursday morning going East, paralleling the Columbia River.
I really enjoyed this section of the drive. I spent a big part of my childhood kicking around Hood River, Oregon. I have family there, and we spent a lot of time windsurfing on the Columbia during the summers of my Highschool years. I forgot the beauty of the Columbia River basin! Quite the spectacular place. We stopped at a few locations that I knew from my childhood, Multnomah Falls being a great one. Mollie was rather suprised to find such a gem so close to the freeway.
Our destination for the night was the Davenport Hotel in Spokane, WA. This is a gorgeous 1930’s hotel that had been completely renovated in the last few years.
Spokane was my home town for so many years, and it’d been a good many years since I had the chance to explore it again. It was very special to show Mollie all of the places that I had spent time while I was young, sharing memories and stories of my childhood. We spent a lot of time just walking around downtown, and enjoying the Spokane River, which was flowing hard this time of year. I’m not sure Mollie had ever seen such a powerful river! Here she is beside the Monroe St. dam.
One of the main reasons for the road trip idea, was the gal below. Nyah’s her name, and she is a two year old Vizsla. My mom has bred Vizsla’s for a few years now, and one of her puppies needed adopting, so Mollie and I jumped on the chance.
Vizsla’s are bird hunting dogs, pointers, by breed. I seem to always describe them by likening them to a slim Weimerunner, that’s rust colored. They are very personable dogs who love people, and have a great drive to please their owners. Very intelligent, and wonderful family dogs. We heard that Nyah was a great dog, and she did not disappoint!
We had the opportunity to have a meal with my parents and grandparents at a nice place in Spokane, which was wonderful. Saturday came too quickly, and we had to resume our drive back home. We loaded Nyah into her crate, and off we went, heading towards Idaho, Montana, and Utah. Again, we had planned on camping Saturday night, but it just didn’t feel right going camping after staying in so many nice places. We drove as far as we could stand for the day, and made it into Ogden Utah, which became our home for the night.
I don’t have any photos of the last leg of our journey. The drive through Utah was quick and painless, and we arrived in Vegas by the evening on Sunday. We pulled into the new house, with the new dog, and the new marriage, ready to settle down and ready for life to be a bit more normal.
The trip was great! No flat tires, no car problems, no run-ins with the coppers. Our expectations for the trip were met ten fold. The big drives didn’t ever feel like too much of a burden, and we got a good taste of what the West is all about. It was fun being treated like royalty for the weeks time. Great times and great memories!
