Cannon Beach – Twin Peaks

After a couple of days in Portland and its surroundings, we decided we’d earned a little beach time and headed for Cannon Beach—a small town on the ocean with a long sandy stretch of the same name.

On the way, we stopped at the most colourful petrol station of the entire trip. In a wooden building sat a small, empty café, right in the middle of which lay an enormous, phlegmatic dog. Coffee here cost $1, self‑served from a chrome urn into a disposable polystyrene (!) cup. Next door was a shop with the usual road‑trip snacks and supplies—plus, in a glass display case, an extensive selection of firearms, from shotguns to a pistol with a pink grip that Natasha took quite a shine to.

Columbia - Portland

I was guided by a compass I saw beauty to the north – Dropkick Murphys “Rose Tattoo”

From Bend – having scarcely seen the city – we headed further north. The plan was to spend the night in Portland, but first we wanted to see several waterfalls along the southern bank of the Columbia River. We set out towards Mount Hood and, hoping for some good photographs, decided to skirt it from the east. Unfortunately, as on the previous day, the highway mostly ran between two dense walls of forest, with only the snowy summit visible above. There were no clearly marked viewpoints along the way, so with hardly any stops, we reached the town of Hood River by midday (I never cease to marvel at the originality of American place names).

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”.

Northern California

Back in Dublin, I came across a YouTube video explaining why California’s north coast and southern Oregon are so sparsely populated. As usual, the reason lies in physical geography: the hilly terrain, cut through by a dense network of small rivers and lined with rocky coastline, is ill-suited to most types of human activity. Agriculture requires fertile plains, while industry needs landscapes fit for roadbuilding or navigable rivers and deep seaports.

Mendocino

From Sacramento, we returned to California’s north coast and stayed in a small bungalow, one of eleven on the grounds of a mini-hotel. Each cabin is decorated and furnished according to a theme: “Play”, “Travel”, “Create”, “Read” and so on. Ours was “Write”, complete with quotes from the biographies of great (mostly American) writers, a framed page from a thesaurus, a magnetic board with a random assortment of words to be arranged into more or less coherent sentences, and shelves packed with books.
On the table stood a mechanical Royal typewriter and a couple of sheets of paper.

Sacramento

We set off from San Francisco towards Sacramento—and frankly, we probably shouldn’t have.

ℹ️ Note

A brief lyrical aside/disclaimer. This text—like all others in this series, along with the accompanying photographs—is a reflection of my personal experience, shaped by specific temporal, weather-related, socio-cultural, political and other conditions. It is entirely subjective, and therefore completely truthful. This is not a recommendation, nor an attempt to compile a ranking or travel guide. If something didn’t appeal to me, it doesn’t mean you should avoid it too. Your mileage may vary.

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San Francisco

On the first morning, still all over the place with jet lag, we woke up at a very un-us 6 a.m., had a bite to eat, and made straight for the Golden Gate – San Francisco’s best-known landmark.
How do you know a landmark’s really famous? It gets clobbered by a meteor / washed away by a tsunami / blown to smithereens by aliens in a disaster flick.

As if to drive the point home, in the first three minutes a flotilla of boats with black sails slid under the bridge, followed by a squadron of enormous pelicans, and then – also under the bridge – a helicopter for good measure.