Joshua Tree Road Trip #3

Day 4

Napa Valley to Big Sur

We woke up early Monday morning, made a quick breakfast, packed up and headed back on the road.

We drove further into Napa Valley and for some reason there were grape vines everywhere.

 

Then there were all these big grand houses. 

We searched and searched for a coffee shop but couldn't find one anywhere.

We quickly made our way towards San Francisco

We got great glimpses of the bay going over the bridge. 

You can see the golden gate in the background. 

You felt like you were driving over the city. 

We drove around town for a bit looking for a good place to explore. 

We decided to set off on foot and just wander around. 

There's lots of amazing architecture in San Francisco

We grabbed some lunch 

Wandered around a little more. 

Then we decided to drive over to Golden Gate park and wander around there for a bit. 

We walked down to the water and looked out at the Pacific. 

We then took off after spending a few hours in San Francisco an started heading south again towards Big Sur.

The coastline was beautiful all along the drive, we managed to stop for a bit and drive around the little town of Carmel. 

Fog started to roll in along the coast, it made for some really amazing sights. 

We pulled into Big Sur a little later then we thought and we were able to grab 1 of 3 camping spots left. Tomorrow would be a long driving day trying to get down to LA not too late so we could get lost of rest for running around Disneyland the next day.

Joshua Tree Road Trip #2

Day 3

Portland To Napa Valley

We left Portland early Sunday morning and started heading south. We had a hard time starting out trying to head south as I-5 was closed down for some reason through Portland. It seemed every time we tried to get on the freeway heading south it would redirect us heading north. We eventually found our way and started through the long expanse of nothingness that is Oregon.

We stopped for some coffee and breakfast at a little cafe in Eugine, Carmel dosen't like her picture taken before her coffee.

We then headed back on the road and made quick time through the rest of Oregon.

Just as we got into California my truck went past 130,000 miles, and we needed gas.

We made it past the fruit checkpoint coming into California and managed to smuggle in a banana. California was beautiful clear and sunny.

Carmel took a lot of photos.

We got off I-5 and onto Highway 20 which would take us into Napa Valley. The road there was beautiful, it changed quickly and often from driving through long rolling hills to going through steep windy roads. It was a fun drive.

From 20 we got on 53 which took us to 29, needles to say we needed a map and a good navigator.

We camped just outside of Calistoga at Bothe State Park. Other then all the mosquitoes it was a nice little campground. We made a quick dinner and went to bed pretty early to get lots of rest for tomorrow when we would drive through San Francisco on our way to Big Sur.

Joshua Tree Road Trip #1

Day 1 and 2

Seattle to Portland

This is the first of many posts I will be doing on the road trip I took to Joshua tree a few weeks ago. I will be going through each day sharing just what went on and posting pictures of all the things we saw.

We left Seattle Friday evening with the goal of stopping in Portland for the night.

I drove like crazy. 

  

We said goodbye to Seattle and Washington for the next week or so. 

 

We arrived in Portland late Friday night and planned on spending all of Saturday exploring the city and then in the evening going to the opening at Portland Art Museum where John was in a show and one of the pieces I helped to make was being shown. 

We woke up early Saturday morning and searched for some coffee, luckily we stayed near the convention center so there was a starbucks on every block.  It was also nice being so close to the train line which took us directly into town and dropped us off in the middle of the Saturday/Sunday market.

We wandered around the market for awhile and bought a thing or two. It was raining but not too bad. We wandered the city for most of the rest of the day.

We grabbed some lunch and went to Powell's Books for awhile and for most of the rest of the day just wandered and snapped some pictures around town.

                       



I guess we got a little too caught up in our wanderings that we lost track of time and ended up missing the first part of the opening at the Museum. The first part of the opening was from 6-7 in which people could go view the pieces from the artist involved in the competition. We got there just before 7 as they were closing the gallery. We were still able to get into the reception in which they would announce the winner. They had wine and lots of little finger foods that you could eat. Then they announced the winner which was John of course, you can read about it here.

After the reception we decided to grab some more food and a resterant called Produce Row. We decided to walk over there which was on the other side of the river. On our way I snapped these pictures.











Produce Row was a great restaurant with really good fresh food, I hope I can go there again sometime.

Portland was awesome and I was glad I got to explore it more, I hope to return more often. We decided not to stay out too late because in the morning we had to make a long drive all the way down to Napa Vally, which you will see in my next post.

Update

I'm Still Alive

Well I haven't blogged in awhile. One reason is that I was working like crazy to finish one of John Grade's sculpture and another reason is after I finished it I left to go on a road trip to California all last week.

The sculpture I was working on was for a show in Portland that you can read about here.

You can see in my previous posts pictures of the whole process and here are a few more pictures of it's near completed form.

Here is a picture looking up the inside of the piece.

The last day we scrambled to do all the final little things that needed to get done. We probably could have spent a few more weeks going over it and fixing every little imperfection but after a while you just have to say enough is enough and call the piece completed.

  

We then carried the piece out by hand and loaded it up in the truck to head down to Portland. 

After we loaded the piece up I went home and slept for a long long time and then started to get ready to go on a road trip to Joshua Tree with Carmel. The plan was to head down to Portland to go to the opening at the Portland Art Museum to see John's piece and go the awards ceremony. After that we would make our way down to California.

 

Our final destination would be camping in Joshua Tree and along the way we planned on stopping off in San Francisco, Big Sur, Anaheim to go to Disneyland,  The Salton Sea and then Portland again on the way back up. I think our interest in going to the Salton Sea and Joshua tree were sparked when we watched this short documentary. 

I also remembered watching Anthony Bourdain go visit the Salton Sea in one of his episodes.

We did manage to go to those places and pretty much see all the things in those videos. I have around 2000 pictures from the trip and I'm planning on sharing each day with a blog post starting tomorrow. There are lots of pictures of driving to our destination when Carmel grabbed my camera and clicked away.

So I guess this blog post is to say that I'm back and you should see me posting more consistently over the next few weeks. So if you have been wondering whey I have been, I've been out collecting great pictures and stories to share with you.