On Saturday we traveled through Cheyenne and drove around Pine Bluffs, WY where Meg’s family lived when she was born. It was fun to see the area and we even discovered a distillery in Pine Bluffs. We then drove another 5 hours across Nebraska to Seward (just West of Lincoln) where we spent the night. On Sunday morning we stopped at a cute coffee shop in Lincoln and then continued all the way across Iowa to Dubuque, on the Mississippi River.
We spent a lovely week in Longmont, CO. During the days, Meg took advantage of a nearby running / walking trail, made the 25 min drive to downtown Boulder to wander the shops, and worked on a jigsaw puzzle. In the afternoons after Matt finished work we visited a couple local breweries to take advantage of the last of the decent outdoor weather. Left Hand Brewing Company and Wibby Brewing both had large outdoor patios, including a very enjoyable gas fire pit at Left Hand. On Wednesday Matt took a vacation day and we went hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park, about 45 min away. The mountains were beautiful, and luckily a very smart park ranger recommended that we might want spikes for our hiking. We saw a lot of wildlife throughout the day: Steller’s Jays, Wild Turkeys, Antelope, Deer, and a Big Horn Sheep. After hiking, we drove to Fort Collins for a well-deserved outdoor dinner at Old Elk Distillery (we might have been sitting outside in our full winter coats) and a quick stop at Crooked Stave.
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.
