Haceta Sea Lighthouse is one of the most photographed lighthouses on the Oregon coast. It has been aiding sea folk since 1894. Its light shines 21 miles into the sea and is rated as the strongest lighthouse in Oregon. The assistant light keeper’s house was built a year before the lighthouse was first illuminated and …
Sea Lion Caves in Florence, Oregon is the largest sea cave in the United States, and the tenth longest sea cave in the world. Visitors have been observing sea lions at this location since 1932. Now travelers take an elevator 208 feet down into the cave but when it first opened they walked down a …
North Jetty Beach is located where the Siuslaw River enters the Pacific Ocean, part of the watershed directly north of the Umpqua River. Oregon beaches are so different than what we are accustomed to in Southern California. There is often a hike to get to the beach, there aren’t a lot of people around, there …
The Umpqua River is one of the Oregon Pacific coast’s main rivers. It is 111 miles long, so as we drive to Florence on Umpqua Highway, there are plenty of opportunities to take in its beauty. We could have spent hours here, days maybe, but you can’t stop forever when you are trying to get …
Since Oregon welcomed us we decided to get on its third longest river, the Rogue. The Rogue begins from a spring in Crater Lake National Park and meets its destiny mixing with the ocean’s water of Golds Beach. We booked a tour with Hellgate Jetboat Excursions (best decision of the trip) in the middle segment …
En route to Oregon along the 5 is the town Mt. Shasta. Within Mt. Shasta City Park is a spring known to be the tributary of the Upper Sacramento River. The water comes straight out of the rocks after traveling through underground lava tubes from Mt. Shasta (the stratovolcano, not the town). The water is …
Pope-Baldwin bike trail is a 7.2 mile paved trail that runs along the south side of Lake Tahoe, over streams and amongst pine trees, firs, and snow plants. There are some lake access points from the trail, which we took advantage of. There is nothing like biking around Lake Tahoe, breathing in all of that …
We are visiting Lake Tahoe, the largest alpine lake in North America. On our first full day in Tahoe, we headed to Sand Harbor State Park, located on the northeastern side of Lake Tahoe. Lake Tahoe East Shore Trail starts/ends (depending on how you look at it) at Sand Harbor State Park. This trail is …
Mono Lake is a 65 square mile terminal lake located right off highway 395. The preserve was created to protect the tufas, prominent calcium carbonate spires which are formed by the fresh water under the lake mixing with the salt water within the lake. Mono lake was created over a million years ago, it is …
The Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the White Mountains of the Inyo National Forest is home to the oldest trees on the planet. The oldest tree thought to grow here, Methuselah, has been determined through core samples to be over 4,789 years old. Bristlecone Pine trees have the ability to survive very harsh environments, high …
A favorite place of ours to stop as we head north from the 5 to the 395 is Red Rock Canyon State Park. It is located at the southern most tip of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, where it meets the El Paso Mountain Range of the Mojave Desert. Usually we pull off on the …