The same year I moved to British Columbia, my 3 best friends from Newfoundland came to visit me for 2 weeks during the summer. We spent a few days exploring Vancouver and then went on an epic road trip down the PNW Coast, visiting Washington, Oregon, and California. Along the way, we stopped in Seattle, Portland, Lassen Volcanic National Park, Crater Lake National Park, Lake Tahoe, Santa Cruz, Napa Valley, and San Francisco. Here’s the record of our adventure!

American Road Trip BlogRoll

California, Here We Come – After a shocking four month blogging absence, I’m stretching out my fingers and dusting off my keyboard just in time to take you with me on my highlight trip of the year – a 10 day road trip down the American West Coast with my 3 absolute best friends in the world! Though my lack of blogging might have you believe otherwise, it’s actually been a very eventful spring. I’ve already made one trip down to Washington State… read more

A Whirlwind Tour of Vancouver – It’s been an adventurous start to the trip for Melissa, Gill, and Karen! Unfortunately for me, while they’ve been out exploring Vancouver, I’ve been working, but I am now officially on vacation! The trip had a bit of rocky start – Gill and Mel got detained in Montreal for several hours on their way here and as a a result of having to get up at 4am (11:30pm PST), they were exhausted (and starving) when they finally arrived in Vancouver 14 hours later.… read more

First Stop: Seattle – The road trip has officially begun! The group enjoyed one last day in Vancouver before catching the night bus to Seattle. We decided to just drive one way to San Francisco, so we took the bus to Seattle where we picked up our rental car. The group spent the last day in Vancouver at Capilano Suspension Bridge. It’s located at the base of the mountains in North Vancouver and features a huge swinging bridge across the river gorge… read more

Driving Through Oregon – We departed Seattle in the morning for our second destination, Portland! It’s only a 2.5 hour drive so we arrived just in time to head into the city centre to check out some food carts for lunch. There’s more than 700 international food carts located all over the city, so there was lots of selection to choose from. Gill, Mel, and Karen all had gourmet grilled cheese and had the BEST falafel I’ve ever had in my whole life (seriously, I’m still dreaming about it)!… read more

California Dreamin’ – We crossed the border into California last Tuesday morning – unfortunately it was around this point that we hit a few bits of bad luck. It seems you can’t win with weather in California and it switched from sweltering (35+) to cold and thunderstorms. We drove down the eastern side of California, passing briefly into the sunny desert landscapes of Nevada. After passing through Reno we swung back into California to visit South Lake Tahoe.… read more

A Foggy Visit to San Francisco – If you’re still with me (I don’t think I’ve ever covered a trip in as much detail), you’ve finally made it to the last post! Our final destination, the shining gem of California’s Golden Coast – San Francisco. Unfortunately for us though, there wasn’t really anything shiny about it. After the beautiful weather in Oregon, the sun deserted us and we spent three days on San Francisco’s foggy shore. In hopes that the sun would peek its way out… read more