Hitting the road

We're a bit slow with the updates, but we have spent the last couple of months with friends in Oregon where we are finishing up selling the house, car, etc. to get ready for a life on the road. We spent two weeks in December driving our car with all of our possessions from Los Angeles to Corvallis, Oregon. Here's how the road trip went...

First stop, Santa Barbara to visit Sheri's long time friends Sue and Bruce.

Breakfast on the beach in Santa Barbara

A walk on the Santa Barbara pier with Sue.

Spent an afternoon wine tasting at Sheri's favorite winery, Fess Parker, where Sue and Sheri got all the fun of tasting:

And Brad and Bruce got to talk about cameras and eat cheese:

Leaving Santa Barbara, we had to stop at Ostrichland to feed the Ostriches, of course:

Note Brad's new friend peeking over the top of the sign.

We stopped at the Monarch Butterfly Grove in Pismo Beach which usually hosts over 10,000 monarch butterflies each year, mostly in the winter. They are having a much slower winter than usual with only a couple of hundred butterflies, but we were still able to see bunches of them in the trees.

Pismo State Beach Monarch Butterfly Grove

Next, we headed back across the state to Brad's favorite place on earth, Sequoia National Park.

Big heads and big trees.

The largest known living tree on earth, by volume.

Plus a stop for some mini-golf (Sheri won):

Somewhere in Visalia.

The hunt for more big trees to hug sent us north up the middle of the state and over to the coast above San Francisco where we stopped at the lovely River's End Inn in the small town of Jenner to catch the sunset, a glass of wine (yes, that's a Fess Parker that traveled with us from the winery), and a night's sleep with a view:

Fess Parker Viognier at sunset.

A stop at Fort Ross, a Russian military settlement from 1812 to 1841 and Point Arena Lighthouse:

Many more big trees were seen along the Avenue of the Giants, a 31 mile scenic highway drive. These coastal redwoods are part of the Humboldt Redwoods State Park.

It rained the whole time, but that didn't stop us from getting out and hugging the trees.

The rain followed us as we turned inland and crossed the border into Oregon and all the way to Corvallis, our home for the next two and a half months. In fact, it rained for two and a half weeks straight after we got there. Fortunately, our friends had a warm meal waiting for us the first night and for many nights after:

Next up, Pacific Northwest adventures!

Sheri & Brad