Road Trip - June 2025 - Astoria and the Coast

After leaving Portland, we headed to the coast thinking we'd spend the next few days camping on the way back to Port Angeles. Unfortunately, it was the weekend and most of the campgrounds were completely booked and we didn't want to take a chance on either not finding a campsite or wandering for hours until we did. Therefore, we decided to stop for the night at a more remote forest campground east of Tillimook. 

As expected, it wasn't too busy. I got in another campsite workout while Andrew went for a run and we also went for a short hike. 

Back along the coast the next day, we went for a couple beach hikes. 

Not just a sand castle but a whole village! 

We treated ourselves to one more hotel stay in Astoria at the BowLine Hotel and had supper at the Bridgewater Bistro, both of which we always enjoy. It's about a 1km walk along the water between hotel and bistro and the main attraction is the 4-mile long Astoria-Megler Bridge which connects Oregon and Washington. It's the longest continuous truss bridge in North America. 

We spent one more night camping and then still had a little bit of time to spare before catching the afternoon ferry back to Victoria. We stopped at the Elwha Beach Trail just outside of Port Angeles for a short hike. A turkey vulture was quite cooperative for photos; the deer were momentarily cooperative before mama decided she had to protect her babies and they disappeared out of sight. 

All in all, a very good road trip! 

Road Trip - June 2025 - Portland, Oregon

We had a couple extra days to spare so decided to stop in Portland and visit the Oregon Zoo and Japanese Garden. En route, we googled for "winery with restaurant" and found Andante Vineyard which was really nice and both the wine and food were excellent!  Our server, Abby, provided so much information about the wines, was able to answer all our questions about the winery, and did so in a "not rehearsed" or memorized way that many others at wineries do. Highly recommend! 

The egret is the "symbol" for the vineyard and is on the main door, the wine bottles, and in several photos throughout the restaurant. 

Part of the vineyard flower garden. 

From there, we headed into Portland and had just enough time left in the afternoon to visit the Japanese Garden. 

We stayed overnight at the Hyatt House Hotel in Beaverton. We picked it somewhat randomly as we didn't want to go into downtown Portland but still wanted to be fairly close to the zoo. After dealing with major traffic trying to get to the Japanese Garden the day before, we were extremely happy to see that there was a light rail station right beside the hotel. It was just three stops to get to the zoo and we came up from underground immediately across the street from the zoo entrance. Perfect! 

We got there just before it opened at 9 am and started off in the opposite direction of all the other early birds. It was pleasantly quiet for the first hour but by the time we left, just after noon, it was crazy busy with kids and families. 

The Oregon Zoo is definitely one of the nicer and biggest ones we've visited and has very large enclosures for the bigger animals such as the elephants, giraffes, and polar bears. 

Mouse trap!

I liked this unique design on a building across from our hotel. 

Road Trip - June 2025 - Yellowstone National Park

After six days and eight paragliding flights for Andrew, we left Five Springs and headed to Cody to spend the night and get cleaned up again. We couldn't get into the historic hotel we usually stay so went to the Best Western Ivy Inn which was very nice and also had guest laundry facilities. Another much needed re-fresh after hand washing clothes for the past couple weeks.

We had time to spare in the afternoon so, in addition to a coffee stop, we found a short hiking trail along the Shoshone River. 

The drive through Yellowstone National Park was slow and meandering with lots of stops for wildlife. We saw bison close to the road, bears so far away that even with a zoom lens on the camera they just looked like brown lumps, Harlequin ducks, a fast flowing river and big waterfalls.

Just the other side of West Yellowstone, we stopped for the night at Coffee Pot Campground (which we’d been to before) where there are tons of pelicans along the river. We spent a lot of time trying to get good photos of them both on the water and in flight. 

This cute little guy was our friend at the campsite. And the Huckleberry Spritz was a very nice impulse buy to finish off the day!