Oregon

Redwoods Park

In truth, the Redwoods aren’t a single park but four (south to north):

• Redwood National Park
• Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park
• Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park
• Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park

The first is under federal management, while the other three are run by the state of California. Aside from the administrations themselves, no one seems to care about the distinction, so most people just refer to all four collectively as “Redwoods Park”.

There are several species of sequoia, two of which grow along the west coast of the United States: the coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) and the giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum). You can see the latter in the national park—imaginatively named “Sequoia”—in eastern California, between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Despite their name, giant sequoias are shorter than coast redwoods but 1.5–2 times thicker. As for the “red” in redwood, you won’t be shocked to learn it refers to the reddish hue of the bark and wood.

Highway 101 veers inland and winds its way uphill. Overtaking isn’t allowed—double yellow lines all the way. Signs instruct slower vehicles to pull over for others, with small parking bays provided for this.

You can drive through the parks on the highway, or take the “scenic” route. Naturally, we chose the latter: a narrow, twisting road that lets you admire the giant trees without leaving your car (well, this is the US). For those willing to walk, there are small car parks here and there with signs to trails. All routes are well marked, with boards explaining difficulty, estimated time, and key sights. Each parking area has a toilet, and almost all have a drinking fountain.

As a friend of mine once said:

“What’s an American forest? It’s tree-tree-tree—and behind the tree, a toilet.”
— Andrey S.

Behind one such toilet was hiding a massive elk (or possibly a moose—‘elk’ is translated either way in Russian). Our parking neighbour spotted it first and, noticing my camera, remarked: “You might want to take a picture of this.”

Gradually, a small crowd of tourists gathered to watch the elk. One of them mused that any hunter would be proud to have antlers like those—“just count the points, wow!” Luckily for the elk, hunting is banned in the park, so it went on chewing grass, flicking its ears, and squinting into the setting sun.

We stopped at one of the system’s many visitor centres in search of a pin (we collect them, much like fridge magnets, from places we visit) and some coffee. The café had already closed, and after I bought the pin, I asked the clerk where I could find “decent coffee” nearby. The question seemed to baffle him: American coffee is just coffee—it’s neither good nor bad.

The forests were just as I’d imagined: towering redwoods with a dense understorey of shrubs, ferns, and mosses. Many trees are swaddled in moss like a thick green coat. Lichen hangs from branches, sometimes so thickly it blocks out the sunlight. It feels like stepping into Jurassic Park—or perhaps Avatar.

You could easily spend a week or more in the Redwoods. For example, the hiking route to Fern Canyon—where Jurassic Park was filmed—and back takes around six hours, and there are over a dozen trails like it. Unfortunately, we had only one day. By evening, we’d reached Crescent City and stayed the night in our first authentic American motel of the trip.

Motels like this are among the cheapest options for a private en‑suite room with parking (only some AirBnBs are cheaper). Sadly, most have low ratings and dire reviews on Booking and Google Maps—stories of dirty, smoke-filled rooms, dubious stains on the beds, armed drug dealers and customers lurking at night, and other horrors.

Whether we were lucky or things are often exaggerated, ours was clean and spacious, with white sheets and a comfortable mattress. The interiors looked unchanged in 60–70 years: if you’ve seen an American film or TV scene set in a motel, you’d feel right at home. The room had the obligatory drip coffee maker and even a microwave—but, as almost everywhere in the US, no kettle. Everything seemed fine until the fly in the ointment emerged: someone in the next room snored so loudly all night that the paper‑thin wall trembled.

Crater Lake

A volcanic mountain chain divides Northern California, Oregon, and Washington into two parts: the coastal west and the inland east. One of these volcanoes—Mount Mazama—collapsed seven and a half thousand years ago, leaving a crater (technically, a caldera) that filled with water to become the lake at the heart of Crater Lake National Park.

We headed there the next day. The plan was to drive and walk along the lake’s western rim, stay the night in Klamath Falls, and continue north to Bend the day after. At the park entrance, an information board announced that almost all the roads around the lake were closed, and hiking trails required special gear—thanks to snow that still hadn’t melted by mid‑June. This is normal here (snow can last until late July or even longer in some years), but I hadn’t thought to check road conditions in advance. We had to make do with the view from the main lookout.

The lake impresses with its size and with the almost unreal, saturated blue of its water—it’s the sort of colour children would choose when drawing water with a marker pen.

While I fended off swarms of mosquitoes in search of the perfect view, Natasha wandered off to explore and spotted a marmot under a tree. As it was her first ever marmot, she asked the animal whether it happened to be a capybara. The marmot snorted indignantly, turned, and scurried across the deep snow towards the nearest forest.

In Klamath Falls, we’d booked the most expensive room of the entire trip – at a Marriott Fairfield hotel. Spotting a sign for the laundry room in the corridor, I was delighted: we were at the “equator” of our journey, and the pile of washing had grown sizeable.

But no such luck: at a hotel where you pay $300 a night, washing and drying still had to be paid for separately – with a fistful of 25‑cent coins. Reception handed over a couple of small packets of detergent, but they didn’t have any coins. It was late, we were tired from the road, and decided we’d deal with the laundry in Portland instead, where we’d booked an Airbnb studio with all the necessary amenities.

Bend

We spent half of the next day on the road to the city of Bend—“the fastest-growing city in the state of Oregon.” A direct route would have taken around two hours, but once again we turned off the highway for a “scenic” drive in search of something interesting. Unfortunately, for almost the entire length of the journey the road was walled in by dense forest. Occasionally there were campgrounds along the shores of lakes and rivers, but unless you were stopping overnight with a trailer or tent, there was frankly nothing to do.

By midday we finally reached Bend and checked into a motel on the outskirts. On the coast and in the mountains, the temperature had been a comfortable 15–20°C, but in Bend the blazing sun had heated the air to well over 30°C. Traffic towards the centre was at a standstill—a dead jam clearly visible from our motel window—so we decided to walk to the nearest Macy’s to replenish our stock of clean clothes.

Inside the huge department store there were perhaps three times as many staff as shoppers. At the checkout where we brought our purchases, three women of pre‑retirement age gathered. Delighted to see customers, they began eagerly asking where we were from, where we lived, what Ireland was like, what was happening with Russia—and complaining to us, and to each other, about how tired they were from the day’s shift. It was only just after three in the afternoon.

The heat only eased by evening, when we finally ventured out and drove to a viewpoint located on an inselberg (a hill of volcanic origin) not far from Bend’s centre. From here you get a fine view of the city itself—which, truth be told, looks much like any other low‑rise American town—and the nearest peaks: South and North Sister, Mount Washington, and Mount Jefferson. In the distance, barely discernible in the sunset haze, loomed Mount Hood—our next landmark on the road to Portland.