The Pacific Northwest or PNW, has been on my list for awhile now and I was super excited to make a couple weeks trip visiting out there. It’s the last part of the continental US that I have yet to discover so I started planning my road trip. I was starting to race the seasons as I needed to be back to Colorado before the snow season came in full force. Challenge accepted.
Washington
Yakima
I spent the night and half a day in this sleepy and gloomy town. I was informed by my friend Tom, that Yakima is a huge agricultural producer in mostly hops. A lot of America’s beer gets their hops from Yakima, Washington.
Seattle, the city of man buns
As stated above, I was racing the seasons on this trip. Pretty much the entire time I was in the PNW, it was raining. I suppose this is part of the charm considering that’s what Seattle is infamous for. My first impression was how absolutely beautiful the suburbs are. I went along walking by myself around Seattle as I waited for my friend to get off work and it was stunning. The colors that went down every block was something I haven’t seen much in America. The city is a temperate rainforest climate and everyone’s yard shows just that.
I was lucky enough to have great friends who took me around to different bars, restaurants, gigs and a day in their life. Seattle was definitely a place I would go back to or even consider living. My only complaint is how I observed almost 50% of the male population has a man bun.
Mt. Rainer
After leaving Seattle, I spent a day exploring the Mt. Rainer National Park, which you can actually see the mountain from Seattle. Unfortunately, a lot of the park was shut down due to snow. I was able to sneak in a couple of short hikes through and see some nature.
Oregon
The beginning of Autumn had brought in mind-blowing colors and the gloominess gave it the real Oregon feel. I was excited to see a close friend of mine from high school in Portland and see what the hype was all about.
Portland
The grungiest city I’ve been to in America, but I say that with charm. Nothing feels mainstream here and everything has a very independent attitude towards it.One of the first stops was Powells Bookstore, which is the largest independently known book store. Here I loaded up on books for my future travels. Portland is also home of the food trucks. Seriously, there are corrals of food trucks no matter where you go in this city. Portland really loves its street food. Another quirky place I came across was The Tiny House Hotel. As you can easily guess, it’s a plot of tiny homes they rent out.
Multnomah Falls
Right outside Portland is the state’s largest waterfall. My buddy and I spent a day hiking there and surrounding areas. We also made a stop to the Bridge of the Gods, which connects Washington and Oregon over the Columbia River.
The Oregon coast
This was what I was really excited to see. I have seen numerous pictures of Cannonball Beach and knew I had to make my way out there. This was perfect because it started my trip down the coast to California. After visiting the Oregon coastline, I know I could move here. When you think of the PNW, you don’t think of little beach towns, but that was exactly what I was driving through here. Mountain coastlines meet the Pacific and it’s breathtaking.
