Author: Meg Kelly

When Matt finished work on Friday, we loaded the car and drove 182 miles to Tahoe Vista, CA on the Northern edge of Lake Tahoe, just minutes from the Nevada border. We saw our first snow of the season dusting the shoulders, but the road itself was clear. We arrived after dark to our cozy little cabin and awoke at sunrise on Saturday to a beautiful view of Lake Tahoe. After a quick walk along the shore, we grabbed a coffee shop breakfast and started our 7.5 hour (570 mile) journey, stopping at the Bonneville Salt Flats before continuing on to Salt Lake City, where we stayed overnight with John and Jen. Sunday was another long driving day (500 miles) across Southern Wyoming to Longmont, CO.

We celebrated the end of Meg’s work on ‘Wicked Bodies’ with our dear friends Tim and James who live just over the bay in Walnut Creek. They hosted us for the week and fed us well, introducing us to soup dumplings and feeding us delicious home cooked meals too! We “treated” their neighborhood trick-or-treaters on Halloween, took an afternoon to visit the Marin Headlands, and played many board games. It was a well deserved week of rest for Meg, and truly a joy to get to spend time with our west coast friends!

Sunday morning we woke up early to get on the road. We drove the Avenue of the Giants to get a final dose of Redwood trees, stopped in Petaluma to have lunch and pick up treats from a local bakery, then crossed the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco. We spent the next week in a fancy suite at the Hyatt Regency, a block away from Yerba Buena Center for the Arts where Meg was managing the final performances of Liz Lerman’s Wicked Bodies.

After a very tasty breakfast from Bandon Coffee Company we continued our trip down Highway 101 for an additional 170 miles to Trinidad, CA. Along the way we stopped at many beautiful roadside viewpoints, visited a mostly sunken ship, purchased local smoked salmon for a lunch picnic in Redwood National & State Parks, and hiked out to the Grove of the Titans. We spent the night in a very cute & cozy cabin among the Redwood trees in Trinidad, CA and had a lovely dinner on the patio at Trinidad Bay Eatery (fish, oysters, and clam chowder!).

Matt took Friday off to give us more time to wander down the Pacific Coast Highway on the way to San Francisco. After a hearty breakfast at the Osprey Cafe we bid adieu to Seaside and headed down the coast, stopping at Hug Point State Park, Tillamook Creamery (cheese Disney!), the Yaquina Head Lighthouse, Pelican Brewing Company for lunch, then Cape Perpetua before ending our day in the very sleepy town of Bandon, OR.

Sunday morning we grabbed breakfast at Ten Ton Coffee next to our hotel and then hit the road for the 275 mile drive to Seattle to have a short but lovely lunch visit with our friend Nina. From Seattle, we headed to Olympia, WA where we jumped on Highway 101 to drive along the coast to Seaside, OR, another 200 miles. We spent four days in Seaside and really enjoyed our visit. Meg went for morning jogs and walks along the beach while Matt worked. In the evenings we walked along the Promenade to the main street to check out the local establishments, and on Wednesday night we visited Astoria, OR which was about 25 minutes North of Seaside, on the Columbia River very near where it empties in to the Pacific.

Today we explored Walla Walla, WA and the surrounding areas. We started with a delicious breakfast at Bacon & Eggs before driving just over the border into Oregon to hike along Tiger Creek. By the time we finished hiking it had warmed up considerably, so we changed out of our hiking gear and visited Canyon Winery, L’Ecole No. 41, and Foundry Vineyards for tastings. We rounded out the day with an astonishingly good dinner at Saffron Mediterranean Kitchen before heading back to Waitsburg for the evening.

When Matt finished work on Friday we made the short two-hour drive from Moscow to the Oregon wine country. We stayed in a lovely hotel in Waitsburg, WA.

We visited brother Graham is Moscow, ID. Apparently we were having too much fun to take many pictures! We stayed at the Monarch Motel in downtown Moscow, very close to the University of Idaho, and Matt worked out of Graham’s spare bedroom. Meg made multiple visits to the Co-op for groceries, we cooked White Chicken Chili and Potato Leek Soup in celebration of the Fall weather, and we met all of Graham’s awesome colleagues.

Saturday morning we left Salt Lake City early to drive 6.5 hours to McCall, with a stop in Boise for lunch. On Sunday we hiked a couple of miles in Ponderosa State Park, along the shore of Lake Payette, had lunch in McCall, and then continued another 3.25 hours to Moscow, ID for a total weekend drive of approximately 635 miles.