Road Trip Review - Seattle to San Francisco - 1400 miles

In the past 6 years or so, I have been fortunate to have gone on several epic road trips around the United States. I would still be doing them now if it weren’t for COVID, and in my blogs, I have talked about individual spots that I have visited, but here I would like to talk about the road trip in general.

This one was a 1400-mile, solo road trip from Seattle to San Francisco. It came about because my middle child graduated from college and wanted to go on a road trip with her brother, who was in school at the time in San Francisco. They rented a car in San Francisco and camped their way up the coast to Seattle.

Since I have a quest to visit a National Park Service property in every state, and at the time, wanted to visit Oregon and Washington states, I decided to meet my kids in Seattle, and as they both flew back to their respective homes, I drove the rental car BACK to San Francisco, and visited the places I wanted to see along the way.

I flew into Seattle airport, and literally saw my daughter standing in line waiting to get on her plane back to Chicago. We hugged as she was ushered on the plane, and I made my way to the doors. There, my son drove up in the rental car, and we headed north for one night near Mt Erie, just south of the Canadian border. My son likes to rock climb, so I had arranged a guide to take us on a day of climbing for the next day. We stayed at a great Airbnb, and watched the sky turn all sorts of colors due to the forest fire smoke that was in the air.

It was nice to spend some time with my son, and when our short climbing stint was done, I dropped him off at the airport for his flight back to San Francisco. I started south.

These were my stops:

Mount Rainier National Park (Washington)

Gifford Pinchot National Forest and Mt St Helens (Washington)

Columbia River Dam Area, Bonneville Lock & Dam (Oregon)

Mt Hood National Forest and Timberline Lodge National Historic Site (Oregon)

Newberry National Volcanic Monument (Oregon)

Crater Lake National Park (Oregon)

Redwood Forest National Park (California)

I had one big take-away OTHER than that the scenery is breathtaking:

ALWAYS when you see a sign that catches your interest, take the turn! I would not have had the encounter with “Joe” who had witnessed and documented Mt St Helen’s eruption from FAR to close, and I would not have visited the Newberry Monument if I had not turned when I saw a sign. These things were not on my list of things to do, but they made the trip a better experience!