Holiday to the Pacific West Coast in Aug 2006: Day 5 – Seattle to Yachats

We thought today was going to be the real start of our journey and it was.

Woke at 3am and 5am this morning. We stayed up until almost 10pm watching the US Open tennis – Agassi beating Baghdatis in the last set.

We hit breakfast as soon as we could (6am). It wasn’t much of an affair, but filled the void! We then locked ourselves out of the hotel car park but eventually headed down to Seattle Tacoma airport well before our allotted time for picking up the Mustang.

We didn’t see any gas stations on the way so we left the refuelling for Hertz to do – heck of a price as well – well over double what we would have expected to pay at the pumps!

After some sweet talking, they agreed to give us the Mustang a couple of hours earlier than agreed, and we thought we were on our way.

Unfortunately the driver’s electric seat was broken so we couldn’t adjust it so that Vick could drive. After half an hour we had a replacement Mustang and we hit the road.

We saw a yellow Mustang Shelby GT in the Hertz garage – it was gorgeous. Wish we could afford to rent one of those!

The first 150 miles to Portland were covered on the I5 and the miles flew by. We found a great coffee shop just off the main route (which wasn’t a Starbucks for a change). The owner was really pleasant and he reminisced about when he was in the UK (many years ago). All Americans seem to have a story to relate to when they had been in the UK many years ago! And they are all really friendly and pleasant.

From Portland we decided to take the scenic route to the coast and things slowed down considerably. Mostly single carriageway roads and the Americans seem to be happy to potter along at the speed limit where the roads are long and straight. I think we gave them a lesson in overtaking! The scenery was beautiful as we drove through mountain forests set off by dappled sunlight.

Once we reached the coast and saw the Pacific Ocean we were really excited to be there. We stopped at the beach and ate some plums we had bought. It was brilliant and really made us feel like we were on holiday.

We then stopped off at a lighthouse touristy thingy for photos (where we saw a grey whale just off the coast!) and finally reached the Overleaf Lodge in Yachats at 5:30pm, which is a fabulous place to stay and our room had a balcony overloooking the Pacific Ocean. It had been a long drive – 320 miles and 9 hours, but the position overlooking the ocean was perfect.

We walked along a beach trail to dinner at a nearby restaurant and watched the sun set over the Pacific – wow!

Headed to bed at just after 9pm when we couldn’t find any US Open tennis on the TV. Went to sleep to the sound of the ocean breaking on the rocks below. A perfect day.

Follow the whole story here: Holiday to Pacific West Coast in Aug 2006