Coast to Canyon | The Summary

This post will sum up our trip and tell you a bit more about taking a small car on a big journey and doing it all on a small budget. If you have followed my last few blogposts about this trip, you will have seen many of the highlights and beautiful scenery along the way( I will post links back to those blogs at the start of each area in this post). This post will differ in that many of the photos shown are from my iphone 3GS and some are from my Canon 7D. This will show a lot more in between moments that I did not show in the previous 5 posts as well as some more technical writing about the trip.

We started the trip on June 1st, 2012 and returned home on June 17th, 2012. We bought our 1990 Miata under a month earlier at 98,000 km’s and brought that mileage up to about 106,000 km’s by the end of the trip. Below is a map covering the route we took.

Coast To Canyon | Our First Roadtrip Together: Oregon Coast

Crossing the Lewis & Clark Bridge over the Columbia River into Oregon and stopping in at the Astoria Coffee House and Bistro

Cannon Beach

Just past Tillamook our Miata hit the 100,000km milestone of it’s life.

Our first campsite at Jessie M. Honeyman Memorial State Park. Perhaps I should take the time here to talk about what we packed. I’ll first start by saying what we sacrificed; A cooler, a coleman camping stove, full-size camping chairs, and Fluevogs. That’s right, no Fluevogs came with us on this trip. Hard to believe for those of you who know us. We actually did pack in the Coleman and some other pots and I decided I didn’t like how much extra weight the car was carrying, so we ditched the stove, the pots, and some clothing at my parents just before we crossed the border. Now on to what we did pack:

Clothing(this was a tough one, we had to continually cut down what we wanted to bring before we left), toiletries, two towels, two pairs of shoes and flip flops, light blankets for bedding, roll-up inflatable mattresses(you can see those tied down to the convertible deck behind the seats in the above photo – not the smallest of things), a small tool kit for the car, small LED flashlights, a pot, some forks and knives, some rope, a 2 person tent, pegs, a tarp, a full-size camera bag(more about this to follow), a Manfrotto Tripod, and the spare tire. As you can see the trunk was a little unorganized at first, but we quickly developed an unpacking and packing method that worked well, and we were able to pack the trunk better each time.

ATV’s in the dunes!

Siuslaw River Bridge

The day we left J M. Honeyman it started to pour rain on us. This was the first real test of rain in the Miata, and it did great; Didn’t leak a drop! We decided to outrun the rainstorm as we didn’t want to unpack and setup the tent in the middle of a storm. This decision did take us much farther than we had wished to drive that day and becoming desperate to find a place to sleep for the night, we found an RV park on a pretty nice Golf Resort in Garberville(Terrible name for a town right?). It was a small place in a forested valley. While we weren’t so keen on staying in an RV park, we discovered some of it’s perks. We were able to make use of the resorts’ hot tub, and we met some really nice people who were leisure vehicling(my new word for RVing) around us.

Coast To Canyon | California

Our first brief stop in California was the Tour Thru Tree in Klamath. The Red Convertible Camaro ahead of us was the only other car there at the time.

A little ways South of Garberville we took the #1 off the 101 towards the coast. For the driving enthusiasts out there, this is one of the most incredible drives I have ever done! Go look it up on a map, and then go do the drive! It’s absolute driving bliss! The twisty roads through the Redwood’s last a good long time and then spit you out onto the coast where you have plenty more fun on the curves along the open ocean.

Cooking was also an interesting aspect of the trip. As I said before, we had to ditch a cooler because of space so meals were usually bought each day before the usual dinner time. We kept things pretty basic, enjoyed veggies and small amounts of meat, and bought items to snack on through out the drive; dried fruit, nuts, etc. We also did s’mores over the fire and popped some popcorn in our pot. Corn on the cob was another common one we put in the pot. On our drives we kept two water bottles and refilled them often to stay hydrated.

First trip over the Golden Gate Bridge!

Ghirardelli’s! Why yes, I would like this giant slab of chocolate…

On our way out of San Francisco we stopped in quickly at an oil change shop and got the Miata’s oil changed. It’s imperative to do this on such a long trip.

The Big Sur.

My first time at an In-N-Out, and our last stop in California.

Coast to Canyon | Arizona

Below is our drive through the Arizona Desert at night. It was a very long drive, and 99% of the other vehicles on the highway were semi trucks. We were very happy we did not do it during the day though. Temperatures would have been too high for that long of a drive in a car with no A/C. We also avoided driving through the LA rush hour this way.

Staying at my grandparents in Chandler, AZ.

Our packing got much more organized, so much so I was able to fit one of the inflatable sleeping mats into the trunk. Leaving just one mat, the tripod, and the tent to fit more snugly on the deck behind the seats. This worked well, and was much more streamlined in the wind than with the the second mat tied down on top of the 1st mat and tent. My tripod lay just in front of the mats, untied and quickly accessible. My camera bag, a Lowepro Fastpack 350 was nestled into the trunk in a way that I could open the bag up and get anything out of it without taking the entire bag out. All I had to do was fold the towels out of the way and I had easy access to it. The towels were mostly there to protect the inside of the trunk lid from getting scratched, and also for a bit of extra comfort on the inflatable mattresses, which do have sections in them that function as pillows, but the towels added a little more support. Here’s the list of what I brought in my camera bag for the trip

– Canon EOS 7D – Canon 24-70 f/2.8L – Canon 16-35 f/2.8L – Sigma 10-20 f/4-5.6 – Circular Polarizer –  Fader ND Filter – 2x graduated ND filter(one hard edge, one soft) – 3x batteries – charger – 4x 16GB memory cards – lens cleaning kit – 15″ macbook Pro – Macbook charger/cable

Sedona

Defibrillators on lamp posts…

Flagstaff, and a sign for Albuquerque!

The Grand Canyon

Coast To Canyon | Bryce Canyon, Utah

I think the three pictures below sum up Utah pretty well.

left: Canyons and incredible red rock formations

middle: Mormons and polygamy, and those that oppose it in satirical, creative and drinkable ways.

right: flat, bland driving with a hope of mountains somewhere far, far in the distance.

Coast To Canyon | The Home Stretch: Leavenworth & The BC Okanagan

After Utah, we cut quickly through the bottom corner of Idaho and looked for Shoshone Falls in Shoshone. Turns out they are not in Shoshone, and we had already long passed them. We made it to Oregon, where we camped for a night along Snake River on the Oregon/Idaho border. It was a beautiful spot, but the winds picked up fiercely that night, and out of fright from our tent flying into the river, or a large tree branch falling on us or the Miata, we barely slept. We made it through the night,  packed up(the entire packing and unpacking process usually took us about 20 minutes), and made our way to Leavenworth, WA.

After a night of almost no sleep, and a very long drive, we booked ourselves a luxury room in the Bavarian Ritz, and spent the rest of the evening drinking craft beer, eating bratwurst and pretzels, and listening to accordions. We were very happy to be back in a place with greenery around as well. It seems most of Utah, Idaho, and even a lot of Washington are dessert/prairie.

The next day in Leavenworth was the Leavenworth Drive, which brought hundreds of German automobiles into the town, along with a few of our friends from Vancouver who we met up with for some lunch and beer!

After lunch in Leavenworth we rushed off to the Oroville/Osoyoos border crossing into Canada. We made it into Osoyoos and camped for the night at the side of the lake. The next morning we took some time for Similkameen Valley wine tasting, and arrived home that evening.

The trip was a great journey for us, it grew our relationship, and we are able to really enjoy reflecting back on it, cherishing certain things and laughing about others. Would we do it again? In a heartbeat, though I think we’ll take a trip to MEC first. We browsed around there a few weeks back and discovered that they have a ton of things that would help us save space, including sleeping mats that roll up to less than a quarter the size of the ones we used. I think it’ll be worth spending some money there before our next trip.

So is a first generation Miata a good car to take on a road trip? I would say that greatly depends on the kind of roadtrip. Perhaps I can offer a little more insight. I would not take it down the I-5 to California EVER, or on any long drive on other large, high-speed American freeways. That is simply not the way to enjoy the car. It is quite noisy, and feels pushed around by the winds a lot when you are on the big freeways. Plus you feel can feel pretty small and vulnerable next to all the ridiculously oversized trucks and cars these days. However, there is almost no other car I would have wanted to drive all the way down the west coast. It was perfect for the twisty roads, driving with the top down is, well, it’s the best, and the road-feel in this car is something else. It’s got soul this Miata.

A trip to me is never fully completed until we have unpacked and I have thoroughly cleaned the car. So there we have it, a clean car, and the last Coast to Canyon blogpost!

Coast to Canyon | The Home Stretch: Leavenworth & The BC Okanagan

…Continuation from Coast to Canyon | Bryce Canyon

After Bryce Canyon was a lot of driving for us. I don’t think I even busted out the camera once. We found a few nice drives here and there, but most of Utah was really quite boring and we just wanted to push through it as fast as possible. In fact, all of Utah was really quite boring except for Bryce Canyon. We stopped for a late lunch/dinner in downtown Salt Lake City, which at rush hour is practically a ghost town. It was the weirdest thing! Then there was the task of trying to find a restaurant/coffeehouse/pub. Yeah, that took a long time. We did, much to our surprise, find a really nice bakery/restaurant. I think our favorite experience in Utah, aside from Bryce Canyon, was finding a beer called Polygamy Porter, with the tagline, “Why have just one!”.

We rushed through Utah, and through Idaho, and Eastern Oregon, and Central Washington(Which has some weird looking giant government facilities in the middle of nowhere), before coming into the Wenatchee area and  settling down in the wonderful little Bavarian town of Leavenworth. This was a fantastic idea, and couldn’t have had better timing. We spent a bit of money on a stay right in the middle of town at the Bavarian Ritz, and discovered meanwhile that the accordion festival was in town that weekend. We spent that warm afternoon/evening wandering the town, and found an excellent cheese shop called Cheesemongers. We tried many different variations of cheeses(we bought wasabi cheddar and one other and they were both delicious) and then sat down at Icicle Brewings‘ patio for a beer taster flight. The beers were all incredible, and we got the chance to meet and chat for awhile with a really nice family(who told us we have an accent, which is kinda weird, but really cool because we have never been told that before) and their beautiful Burmese Mountain Dog.  We finished the evening off with some bratwurst, warm pretzels, and a very dynamic selection of twenty five or so mustards at the Munchen Haus where we sat down beside some accordion players who serenaded us in a traditional european style as the sun dropped behind the Cascadian Mountains and the evening became lit by the warm glow of lanterns.

The next morning was full of bright sunshine and the sounds of accordions as the people from the festival, with their hundreds of accordions, paraded down the main street in a very Bavarian fashion. The town was up and teeming with life and this was a good thing because by noon it was ready receive the hundreds of German cars pouring in from the annual Leavenworth Drive that hits the town every year. I had been a part of this drive in previous years and come into the town with the crowds of VW’s, Audi’s, BMW’s, and Porsche’s but it was honestly nice to already be there and be relaxing as all the cars drove in. Kristen and I found some friends who drove down from Vancouver and met up for lunch at Baren Haus.

Shortly after lunch, and after all ze German autos rolled in, it was time for us to roll out. We were on the road and headed for the border, so excited to get back into Canada! We drove through the Washington OkanOgan area, and up across the border into the Canadian OkanAgan. We had a fantastic time in the States, and are very thankful for our experience there, and for all the people we met and spent time with, but we were so glad to be back in Canada. We settled down that night in Osoyoos with a spot right beside the water, which was an excellent idea for all of half an hour. We were happily setting up our tent, just about ready to peg it into the ground when all of a sudden these super strong winds picked up and almost carried our tent into the water. We both had to stand there holding the tent back, unable to do anything but hold it under the relentless wind until thankfully a kind neighbour came and helped us hold it down while I quickly pegged it into the ground. We got the tent secured down and the wind stopped not 10 minutes later and stayed dead calm for the rest of the night. Worst timing ever to put up a tent!

We woke up again the next morning to a calm lake and blue skies and packed up to head West.

We took the drive home slower and made a bunch of stop offs in the Similkameen Valley Vineyards to stock up on some bottles of wine for family, and friends, and a few for ourselves of course. Our first stop, and our favorite of the valley, was Forbidden Fruit Winery. It can be easy to miss this place, but it is well worth turning around if you do miss it and going back. These fruit wines are to die for. We took home a bottle of the Pearsuaion for ourselves, but we will definitely be back for their other incredible flavours in the future. We made stops at Orofino(the only strawbale construction winery in Canada – such a cool idea), and Crowsnest Vineyards where we found one of our favorite wines because it is so good and because it is so different than any other wine we have ever tried. It’s called the Taj, and that’s all I’ll say. Go get one for yourself.

With some bottles of wine packed into the car, memory cards fully loaded of photos, and a plethora of really good memories, it was finally time to complete the last leg of our trip; the Crowsnest highway back to the lush, green coast of BC!