Wyoming · Idaho · Washington · Oregon · California
July 17, 2022
The dark blue waves surge rapidly from the open Pacific toward the black lava coast. The sun stands in the sky
like a slightly faded cork coaster just above the horizon, veiled by thin clouds. Then I hear a loud "Fruuuummp!" and suddenly foaming surf bursts upward through a ten-foot-wide hole in the
ground directly in front of me. The phenomenon, Thor's Well, is a fascinating, but also somewhat treacherous natural phenomenon located only a couple of hundred feet off Highway 101 in
Oregon. Will I dare to stay and watch it in all its beauty until the sun has set?
Here comes the second part of our travelogue about our 5,000-mile road trip through Washington, Oregon, California and Idaho. Jump in the car with us and come along as we travel from Thor's Well to a stained-glass beach, to the volcanic crater that hides the deepest lake in the U.S., and then to pitch-black lava trees.
July 3, 2022
11 hours of driving. Holy cow. After we cross Yellowstone, I try to get some sleep. After another 1,600 years, we reach the Idaho border. "Hooray, we'll be at the campground in twenty minutes!", I exclaim exultantly, rubbing my butt which is now as flat as a waffle.
"You do realize we just crossed into a new time zone, right?" my boyfriend asks cautiously. "Pacific Time is an hour behind Mountain Time."
So that officially makes it one more hour of driving. I'm freaking out.
When we finally pitch our tent at sunset, the trip really begins. On the first part of our camping adventure through the northwestern U.S., I'll take you to a spectacular waterfall with a marmot, to one of the most surreal and colorful museums in the world, on a snowshoe hike with an avalanche, and to the place where Mount Saint Helens exploded in 1980.