We'd suddenly screech into a lay-by when the views got too unbearable not to take a closer look (or when my craning my head around every new bend got too hazardous). Look at this!, we said, rock-strewn utopian clifflines, just lying around the place! If this was in the UK it would be rammed wall to wall with tourists and picknickers the whole time and here it is on a momumental scale with barely the odd dog-walker taking it in. The vastness of the US hit us again: the sheer scale of everything from bagel and coffee selection to natural beauty, to the terrifyingly mammoth off-road vehicles we confronted at every turn in the road.
The road continued in spectacular style up past Fort Bragg before we veered inland from the coast towards the 101 Redwood Highway. We'd managed to grab extra gas for the stove but not to stop at a laundry, in the way of hand-to-mouth backpack travel: just another night wearing everything I own as the temperature drops and off to sleep reeking of bonfire, I resigned myself. The Redwood Highway running alongside Humboldt is immense. Yet it is also curious, being in large part the work of a sedantry American culture which seeks to bring absolutely everything, from fast food to the great outdoors, to your car window. Why drive to a forest or beach, after all, in order to park and carry yourself off on your wee legs, when you could just motor along it all without having to expend a single calorie?
This aside - and passing by a drive-through where you can literally drive your car through a single redwood - we wound contentedly along the shaded highway, marveling at the towering beasts overhead. The sun was fading and as we found the Burlington campsite, the temperature had already begun dropping. After the ritual faffing around with payment we got our nightly routine underway. Tent up, fire started up and mushroom and onion pasta on the go. A couple of San Franciscan weekenders wandered over apologetically with an unlit log. Could they light it on our fire, they giggled hopelessly. Chest puffing up, now secure in his fire-lighting prowess, Toby took the girls in hand and rescued their woeful fire bin from its indignity. Our good Samaritan moves did not go unrewarded, with a couple of beers and an extra bag of fire-logs coming our way once both fires were roaring.
And despite being further north, Humboldt Redwoods turned out much warmer than previous US campsites - perhaps the inland location or just the complex microclimates of the Pacific coastal strips. So a couple of much better nights' sleep passed in our shaded forest camp, with the day spent walking among the prehistoric giants - photographing and nattering, driving out to different start points and meandering along the silent bracken pathways. It's hard to communicate how imposing the redwoods really are, or why it is you naturally find yourself half-whispering in their company. How alive they feel and how utterly they dwarf you - together with your whole civilisation, in fact. If you've never before felt the tree-hugger urge - in so far as this is possible with trunks that so exceed your paltry grasp - these will be the beings who inspire it. But with no time to lose - and pretty tired and matted from rounding on a full week's freezing camping - we regretfully packed Sally up for what would turn out to be the last time and set our sights north. Time for Oregon and, after a day or two's driving up its wilder and more isolated coastline, to head for Portland. And a return to civilisation, hipster bars and central heating.
First though, the southern Oregon coastline blitzed us. As we headed north, back on the 101, the temperature began palpably to drop and the fog whirled in off the Pacific. We knew there was a coastline there to our left, we knew it was staggeringly beautiful. But could we see an effing thing?? Intending to stop off for lunch and a mini-hike at the Redwoods State park just before the state border, we wandered along the wild bleached beach. Taking pictures for 5-10 minutes before I realised my camera was on black and white - barely distinguishable at first from the haunting, washed out shades of the shoreline. We took a meandering drive along another barely visible stretch of parkland, eventually stopping to eat at another fog-obscured bluff, where I started - not for the first time - to mutter about bear-danger in light of the many warning notices about messy picnic sites and we entered into another of our ongoing debates on the best course of action should one be intercepted by one of nature's more terrifying predators. Run or fight?
Thankfully never put to the test on this matter, we sped out and up along the chilly coast towards the Oregon Dune Recreation area and Reedsport. Pulling in for our first motel stop, we found a friendly, cheap little place and spent the night quite in the lap of luxury - laundry done, comfy bed and, when it emerged we had left it too late for dinner, this being a 9pm lights-out kind of town, my once-a-decade McDonald's dinner. The craft beers and TV movies went part of the way to making up for the latter. As did the following day's blustery off-road walk in the dunes themselves - all lunatic ship-wreck beach-heads and swampy thickets amidst huge, heaping dunes sweeping down towards the Pacific and oblivion.
Ready for Portland now: for exotic foodcarts, micro-brews and padding around town centres in search of culture. We spent two nights at a motel on the outskirts, taking the excellent European-style bus and light rail network into the centre: visiting Deschutes, the Tugboat Brewing Company and Bridgeport brewpub; eating pho, chickpea curry and softshell crab from the foodcarts that line the squares and visiting the brilliant Oregon Historical Society and its exhibitions on Oregon life, black history in the state and the anthropology of its First Nations. We had one wild night out tasting the ever-potent and ever-carbonated Portland microbrews in the vast, Weatherspoons-redolent bars of town and back over towards our neighbourhood in more comfy local dives. T pursued the rugby through a couple of frightening Irish bars welcoming the third-generation, emerald green-clad St Paddy's weekend crowd in as the real Irish, desolate from their 6 Nations defeat, abandoned the bars by late-morning. One of our best finds was the Dan and Louis Oyster Bar where T soaked up the morning's rugby-viewing 'refreshments' with platters of oysters from northern California to Washington while I set about the Cabernet Sauvignon.
After a few nights we drove, improbably, across to town to park our car at a strange house before bussing over to meet a random couple I had sourced via Couchsurfing for a beer. Owen and Terra had gamely agreed to put us up for a night and, after vetting us in a low-key way over a beer, extended the offer to an extra night. Afterwards, we headed to the hipster-tastic Doug Fir to catch the spectacular Hillstomp rock their hillbilly punk roots and behold the epic cultivated beards of the Portland area.
We liked Portland a lot. Though strangely, were never quite as taken with it as we had expected to be. It felt like one of those places where you need a key. Where wandering around in search of doesn't quite work to get the feel of a place. The streets always felt pretty quiet - and while we had some great meals, some great drinks and a very enjoyable couple of days, we didn't quite feel the connection we'd expected beforehand.
No matter. Owen and Terra were thoroughly generous hosts, cooking up breakfast and dinner and providing smart dry banter and a tonne of great local knowledge both about our onward drive and our final daytrip out into Oregon wine country. Dundee, to the south, to be exact. Taking one for the team, I took on driving duties and we had one of the most enjoyable wine-tasting days of our trip. However good an experience we'd had with California wine, we'd never been entirely bowled over with the exception of Ridge. The Pinot, in particular, had been a bit under-whelming - and having previously thought of myself as a fan I'd come to think that perhaps I could take it or leave it (or indeed that our Malbec days of South America had ruined most other grapes for us!). Turns out, no. There is, quite possibly, a Pinot for everyone, sensitive and variable as it is, and ours turned out to be of the Oregon persuasion. Heading only 45 minutes south out of town into the Wilamette Valley and, with Owen's instructions, we toured Duck Pond Cellars, Sokol Blosser, Domaine Drouhin, Argyle and wound the day up at Erath before hitting the sublime pizza of Redhills Market wine shop and deli. At each stop we sampled Pinots that actually hit the spot, as well as enjoying the famed sparkling whites of Argyle, picking up a dessert wine for a friend's engagement at Duck Pond and enjoying the best US Chardonnay I'd yet tried at Burgundian-owned Domaine Drouhin Oregon. But the highlight was really Sokol Blosser, set up high on the Dundee hillside and a welcome refuge as the rain began to pour on our leaving the car. The wines were already impressive and as we got further involved in a fantastically interesting and geeky conversation with the the Tasting Room sales associate on tasting notes, viticulture and Oregon and Californian wines at large we could quite happily have bedded in for the afternoon. We were treated to a 'vertical tasting' of their 2009, 2010 and 2011 Dundee Hills Pinots and, even among a day full of bright, knowledgeable and thoroughly warm Oregonian tasting room staff, Jim at Sokol Blosser stands out as a star.
Admittedly, being the sycophantic freeloaders we are, we managed to slip our overwhelming preference for local Pinot Noirs over those of their attention-grabbing southern cousins into the first 5 minutes of every tasting conversation. However, these warm, charming Pacific Northwesters were genuinely among the most welcoming wine hosts we met on the whole trip. With or without the free extra tastings...
In fact, in general, we got an altogether Good Feeling for Oregon. Even if we'd not fallen quite in love with Portland, as we'd expected, both the city and the state in our limited time had captured our affection. The autumnal hues of Portland buildings, the friendly, dry warmth of the people we met, the wild windswept coastline, the tasty food, strong hoppy brews and quietly winning wines were quite captivating in their own understated style. Those pioneers had to be on to something after all.
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