Two weeks, a plane ticket, a rental car and backpacking gear. What more do you need? We ended up driving the coast, camping on the coastline, hiking the pacific coast trail amidst many elk, hiking through the redwoods, and going to Crater Lake, OR. The trip started out in San Francisco; quite the happening city with lots of nightlife and plenty of tasty ethnic foods. I, personally, am a garlic lover and recommend a restaurant called the Stinking Rose. The Stinking Rose sells nothing but garlic flavored food, even deserts. Leaving San Francisco, we chose to drive up the coast on Highway 1. For those of you who have never driven Highway 1, it is a beautiful and scenic drive. Just make sure you realize that you average around 20 miles an hour in many spots. This drive can add significant time to your travel, although, it is worth every minute. The scenery is absolutely breathtaking!
Along the coast, we were able to find some remote coastline where we set up camp. Prior to the trip, I researched the temperature at the towns near Crater Lake. The temperature was around 60 degrees, which is perfect hiking and backpacking weather. When we reached Crater Lake, we started the drive up to the park, and up, and up. As we were driving, we were watching the temperature drop; 40, 35, 30. We got into a little snow, then eventually a LOT of snow. There turned out to be drifts that were three times as tall as our Chevy Blazer. At the top, we were greeted by blizzard conditions where visibility was less than 10 feet. Didn't get to see much of anything that day, unless you count all of the signs about avalanche warnings that were posted everywhere. So much for the hiking and backpacking plans. We came back the next day, and the weather had cleared. The scenery was magnificent. Many people were sitting and just taking in the awe inspiring sights. This is definitely one of the places that pictures just don't do the scenery any justice at all.
Since we couldn't do a whole lot of backpacking in over ten feet of snow, we headed back down the coast and did some beach camping and hiking along the beach. Here is a picture of the California shore from one of our camp sites.
It was beautiful scenery along the coast, the colors were vibrant.
Many times the ocean would have some pretty big waves, sometimes I wished we had access to a surfboard.
Along with the coastal hiking, we went to see the Redwoods, and were happily surprised to find a plethora of hiking trails at our disposal. Which, of course, we used. The trails were fantastic, some were pretty well marked and flat - so we found some others. We found some not so well marked trails, did some backcountry exploring, and saw all sorts of spectacular fowl and flora. During some of our hiking, we ran into (just about literally) some elk herds. We had to walk right through several herds during our trek. Here is a picture of us hiking along the Pacific Crest Trail with some elk nearby.
And a close-up of an elk.
It was really a wonderful trip with so much scenery to see! I hope to get back to Crater Lake again sometime soon.