Purple ZR-1 Road Trip to Yellowstone and the Pacific Northwest

[8cam]

I just love your threads, and this one is fantastic. Please keep posting! I have been trying to talk my wife into doing a similar trip, but she's just not a road-tripper. She's about the destination, not the journey. I tried to tell her trips like this, the journey IS the destination, but that didn't fly. Oh well.

[ghlkal]

Awesome. I appreciate you guys sharing your adventure with us.




Is the Z in your license plate just coincidence?

[Racinfan83]

Originally Posted by 8cam

I just love your threads, and this one is fantastic. Please keep posting! I have been trying to talk my wife into doing a similar trip, but she's just not a road-tripper. She's about the destination, not the journey. I tried to tell her trips like this, the journey IS the destination, but that didn't fly. Oh well.

Sounds like my wife. Anything over 2 hours in a car and she ain't happy.. I'm one of those who could drive a lap around the country and be lovin it. I don't think I would want to do it in my Z though. Not enough room for stuff...

[QB93Z]

On Wednesday, after visiting Smith Rock State Park, we stopped in Bend, Oregon for a Road Trip Maintenance Day (RTMD). I took the PurpleZ to a Jiffy Lube and supervised an oil change, mailed home a box of souvenirs, and washed the Z. Lyndi did the laundry, and repacked all our clothes.

On Thursday morning, we left Bend early and headed south. Our first stop was Lava Lands at the Newberry Volcanic National Monument. Lava Lands is run by the Department of Agriculture. We arrived at about 6:45 AM and found the roads gated and the Visitor Center closed. We had to look over the gates and wonder at what we would have seen:




Our experience has been that the National Parks that are run by the National Park Service (Department of the Interior) are always open to some extent.

Next, based on a suggestion from a man I met at the Jiffy Lube, we visited Sunriver Lodge. The lodge is in the community of Sunriver, Oregon. The lodge is a beautiful pine construction building built before World War II and used by the Army as a training post for soldiers destined to fight in extreme cold weather. Today the Lodge is privately owned, and it's beauty is still visible:




We continued south and turned onto the Volcanic Legacy Oregon Scenic Byway, heading for Crater Lake National Park. The road to the north entrance to the park runs straight as an arrow for most of the way to the park:






We drove up the side on the mountain and got our first look at Crater Lake:




Lyndi took a picture of me next to a stone that clearly shows the scrape marks left by the glaciers that covered the top of the mountain before a catastrophic eruption about 10,000 years:




to be continued....

[XfireZ51]

Jim,

Have you made it to the Oregon Coast. Astoria, Newport, Ecola Park?

[QB93Z]

Originally Posted by XfireZ51

Jim,

Have you made it to the Oregon Coast. Astoria, Newport, Ecola Park?

Hi Dom, We did not visit the Oregon coast. I choose the "inland" route because I wanted to visit Mt St Helens and Crater Lake, and there are only so many days available in this trip.

As we travel, our bucket list gets bigger. We are compiling places to see that will last us a lifetime.

Jim

[XfireZ51]

Originally Posted by QB93Z

Hi Dom, We did not visit the Oregon coast. I choose the "inland" route because I wanted to visit Mt St Helens and Crater Lake, and there are only so many days available in this trip.

As we travel, our bucket list gets bigger. We are compiling places to see that will last us a lifetime.

Jim

I know, the Northwest has tremendous number of choices. We lived in Portland for 2 years and visited the coast several times. Just breathtaking. Put it on your bucket list.
My wife and I would love to do a run up the coast from Portland to Seattle and then Vancouver BC

[QB93Z]

On Saturday, we left Arcata, CA and drove south on US-101. We didn't want to drive east and risk being affected by the fires so we abandoned or plans to visit Lassen Volcanic National Park. We stopped at the Avenue of the Giants in Humboldt Redwoods State Park. The park road is in excellent and the trees are amazing.

It is very hard to describe or photograph the magnificence of the giant redwood trees. It was like a special privilege to be in the presence of these trees:






We moved the PurpleZ near the root mass of a fallen giant to demonstrate the size:




We left the Redwood Groves and headed for the Pacific Coast. We took CA-1, the Shoreline Highway, from Leggett to Rockport. The highway is 22 miles of turns and grades. The Shoreline Highway rivals the Tail of the Dragon that we drove during the Mountain Run last May.

We stopped at a little grocery store along the coast and got a picnic lunch then sat on a rock overlooking the rocky Pacific coast and enjoyed the view:






We drove as far south on CA-1 as Mendocino and went out to the headlands :



Jim

[QB93Z]

From the top of the mountain looking west, we could clearly see two major forest fires burning:




We watched a hawk circling over the lake. Lyndi got this beautiful photo of hawk's wings:




We took some glamor shots of the PurpleZ with the blue water behind it in the morning sun:




We climbed the trail to the top of Watchman Peak for the high-level view of the lake:




Then I took a picture looking down at the parking lot:




We drove around the rim road, and stopped at the Crater Lake Lodge area. With the sun higher in the sky, the views of the lake were even more stunning:




to be continued...

[QB93Z]

We left Crater Lake NP and headed south west on OR-62 and the air was showing the effects of the forest fires we saw and a larger fire near Prospect, OR:



After all of the driving up and down the mountain at Crater Lake, I was in need of a fill up. There are not very many gas stations in this part of Oregon, so we were glad to see a station. However,




A little later we found another gas station. The didn't have premium, but they did have an ice cream bar:




The haze continued. We found out later that were had been about 15 miles from the Prospect fire:




By the time we got to Grants Pass, OR, we drove out of the haze for the evening.


Jim