Road Trip – San Francisco to Oregon

April 9th, 2010 by Eileen Leave a reply »

Despite all the traveling I’ve done in the continental U.S., I’ve spent relatively little time in the Pacific Northwest. I aim to fix that now that I’m spending a prolonged period of time in the Bay Area, and my first road trip involved a six-hour drive from San Francisco to Ashland, Oregon, a beautiful little town right across the California-Oregon border.

As we drove up I-5, the topography took the turn from lush rolling foothills to spiky, towering mountains, reminding me why I need to continue exploring the Pacific Northwest. Mountains have a way of conveying majesty in a way that the ocean, with its impossible vastness, cannot. A mountain is at once humbling and inspiring — finite, looming proof of how small and impermanent we are.

As much as I wanted to keep on driving up, up, up north, I was with other people and couldn’t just follow my whims as as I can when I’m traveling solo. Not that I’m complaining too loudly; Ashland is lovely and worth a few days’ time to stop and take it all in.

: The trip begins. Sunrise over Sonoma.

: Mist rises from the water.

: A Lab bouncing around the bed of a truck on Highway 101. Folks … don’t do this. Seriously.

: Grapes aren’t the only fabulous, luxurious crop in these here parts.

: Almost otherworldly green hills along Highway 101.

: Northern California: vineyards in front, mountains looming behind.

: God’n'Country on the side of a barn.

: I-5 bridge over Lake Shasta, just north of Redding, California. My first glimpse of this gorgeous lake.

: Lake Shasta seems to just go on and on and on.

: Sign pointing to Weed – yes I am 12 years old.

: The ethereal blue Lake Shasta.

: I think this one is called Black Butte? One of the land masses adjacent to Mt. Shasta.

: The awe-inspiring Mount Shasta.

: Mt. Shasta, a volcanic mountain with 4 volcanic cones. Theodore Roosevelt: “I consider the evening twilight on Mt. Shasta one of the grandest sights I have ever witnessed.”

: Lots of color along the side of the road approaching Oregon.

: Another view of the butte/foothill/whuteveritis near Mt. Shasta.

: Mt. Shasta, 14,179 feet. Joaquin Miller: “Lonely as God, and white as a winter moon, Mount Shasta starts up sudden and solitary from the heart of the great black forests of Northern California.”

: Mt. Shasta, “White Mountain.” John Muir: “When I first caught sight of it … I was fifty miles away and afoot, alone and weary. Yet all my blood turned to wine, and I have not been weary since.”