Day 9: Friday 7th September 2012 - Portland to Lake Crescent

We had a delayed start to the day after all the cocktails from the night before. This was, however the biggest drive of the trip, heading all the way up to the top of Washington state by the end of the day. The Benson does a wonderful buffet breakfast in the same lobby we were up until late drinking in. It did somewhat restore the damage.

After making the most of being in town - a quick trip to Macys and a haircut, we were back on the road. We took the indirect route this time, heading back to the coast via a town called Seaside and got back on route 101. We wanted to go through Astoria into Washington state. While getting back to the coast brought the coastal mist back again, Astoria was far enough into a bay to avoid this. To cross the state line you cross a long bridge with fantastic views on either side.

The drive through Washington deviated quite substantially from the coast, going around the Indian reservations. By this stage it was getting late and having never yet managed to get a good view of the sunset setting over the West Coast, this was our last chance. There were few points were the road re-joined the coast. We found one high up view point and stopped to take some pictures of the car. It was still about an hour to sunset and we decided to chance going a little further along to get a better view.

By accident we stumbled across an area called Ruby Beach which had a public carpark and access to the sea. It was the perfect location. A stony beach with cliffs and rock features with an awesome view of the setting sun. There was already a reasonable crowd of people, many with tripods and professional looking cameras. The sun seemed to take a long time to disappear from view but it was the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen and maybe will see again.

The sunset put us very behind schedule and the roads through the national park were twisty and slow going. We got lost and arrived after the campsite office had close. Luckily for us there was a drop box where our keys had been left for us but you can imagine the panic when we first got there. We had hired an A frame cabin on the lake front at the Log Cabin Resort. It was one of the smaller resorts with only very basic facilities and certainly no internet signal. It did have an amazing view of the night sky. I spent some time playing with my camera to get some star trails going.

By this point in our journey we had essentially completed our mission - we had driven from the bottom of California to the top of Washington State, the whole of the US West Coast. We celebrated by opening one of our bottles of champagne from Domaine Chandon and went for an explore of the site, in the dark with our champagne glasses. It was such a relief and a sense of achievement to know that we had completed such a huge task with very few difficulties or delays.