 All of my road trip plans seem to stem from weird things, this trip included. Last year, I was obsessed with a TV show called Top Secret Swimming Holes. In one of the episodes, they showed a few swimming holes in Oregon, and I fell in love. Ironically, we didn't end up visiting any of the swimming holes once we actually ventured off to Oregon. But that show also introduced me to the beauty of Oregon that I hadn't known existed.  1) Sacramento, CA 2) Burney, CA 3) Bend, OR 4) Portland, OR 5) Neskowin Beach, OR 6) Gold Beach, OR 7) Santa Cruz, CA 8) Morro Bay, CA. For a detailed map of all of our stops, click here. I started planning over Spring Break 2018. This was to be our longest trip yet, a total of 9 days. I had a really hard time trying to space out our stops for the night so that we would have a pretty equal drive time each day. My mom and I packed up the car and ended Day #1 in Sacramento for the night. This day wasn't much more than a travel day, we didn't have any stops on the way. Lassen National Forest & Lassen Volcanic National Park Day #2 was another 5 hours of driving. We headed north to Burney, California and stopped at Lassen National Forest before heading into Lassen Volcanic National Park. Once in the park, we went to the visitors center to begin the patch collection. During the road trip, I picked up around 20 patches as souvenirs of all the places we visited to start putting onto a denim jacket! We drove around the park and were surprised to find one of the lakes in the park (Lake Helen) was still frozen over quite a bit despite the 75-degree weather. Lassen Volcanic National Park is absolutely beautiful and I highly recommend to visit if you are ever in Northern California.  Burney Falls, CA Before heading into our hotel for the night, we stopped at Burney Falls. Just a couple miles outside Lassen Volcanic National Park, stands a magnificent and powerful set of waterfalls. Burney Falls isn't the kind of stop I typically make while on a trip but I had visited almost 12 years ago with my family and wanted to sort of pay tribute to that by visiting again, with my camera. The next day was the day. We were officially Oregon bound. The geography around Northern California and southern Oregon is truly stunning; we pulled off the highway multiple times to stop and take photos. My favorite place we stopped was in Fall River Mills at a small church situated next to a huge field of yellow flowers. The flowers naturally contrasted so nicely with the blue sky and snow-capped Mt Shasta in the distance (see first photo). After shooting in the field for a few minutes, we continued on the road. Painted Cove Trail, OR We arrived in Bend, Oregon around 1pm and realized we had the rest of the day with nothing planned. Rather than staying around the hotel, we decided to continue driving north east to the Painted Hills at the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. It was another 2 hours to get there, but once we arrived we realized it was totally worth the extra drive. Maupin & Multnomah Falls Day #3 was the day that we saw the most geographical change. We left the city of Bend and drove north through small-town Maupin in a desert similar to the Oregon Badlands. We stopped in Maupin when this yellow bronco caught my eye from a parking lot up ahead. I love all things vintage, especially cars, so I had to stop and take photos of it. Afterwords, we continued on the road to northern Oregon along the Columbia River. Many of the waterfalls around the Hood River and Columbia River Gorge are huge tourist attractions because of the scenery. This area seriously looks like you are driving through the set of Twilight. Unfortunately, most of the waterfalls and surrounding trails were closed due to fire damage. The only open waterfall in the area was Multnomah Falls, the most well-known waterfall in Oregon for its height. Here, water flows from 620 feet up the face of the cliff into a small pool, where visitors can view and take photos. Additionally, there is a bridge across the waterfall right about the first tier that visitors and walk across. From the bottom of the falls I set up my tripod and took a bunch of slow-shutter images of the falls. That night, we stayed in Portland and happened to pick up the iconic Voodoo Doughnuts. Their vegan doughnut is incredible!  Ecola State Park, OR Day #5 was my favorite day. While driving from Portland to Astoria, I fell in love with the Pacific North West. As I shared on Instagram, I'd never seen so much green. As we drove to Astoria, we entered Washington. The air up in PNW is so refreshing because of all the oxygen the trees are producing. We then stopped in Astoria for lunch. If you've ever watched The Goonies movie, then you would recognize Astoria as an area where "town" scenes were filmed. After lunch near the docs, we started heading south towards Ecola State Park and Cannon Beach. These are 2 more iconic spots where the movie was filmed, as well as fantastic photo ops. There are beautiful trails around Ecola State Park, some that even take you all the way down to the beach. We walked the trails for a bit before heading down to Cannon Beach. Cannon Beach is well-know for it's long stretch of flat sand and huge rock, Haystack Rock, jutting out just offshore. This is a really pretty beach that I totally want to revisit someday and stay for sunset. Rather than missing sunset completely, we continued south to Neskowin Beach for sunset. Like Cannon Beach, Neskowin Beach has a large rock just offshore that it is well known for. Behind Proposal Rock, there is also a "ghost forest". When the tide is low, almost one hundred tree stumps sit in the sand as the waves crash around them. The stumps are from 2000 year-old spruce trees that were destroyed during a storm in 1997-98. At sunset, they act as a great foreground for photographs.  Yaquina Head Lighthouse, OR At this point, we were just about half way down the Oregon Coast. Day #6 was mostly a travel day, aside from a stop at Yaquina Head Lighthouse in the Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area.  Avenue of the Giants, CA I will say, Day #7 was a brutal drive day. Every day of the road trip prior had all been between 4-6 hours of driving- very doable to split between 2 drivers. Day #7, on the other hand, was a whopping 12 hour drive. We left Gold Beach in southern Oregon at 7am and traveled south all the way to Santa Cruz, California. Luckily, this is a very pretty drive through a bunch of state parks and national forests. We drove through Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park and stopped at Humboldt Redwoods State Park at the Avenue of the Giants before arriving in Santa Cruz at 7pm that night.  McWay Falls at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, CA Day #8 was our last full day of road tripping, and we were headed down central California on Highway 1 through Big Sur. Big Sur is a beautiful stretch of rugged coastline from roughly San Simeon to Carmel. Unfortunately, not all of Highway 1 is currently open due to road construction this summer to rebuild bridges and roads that were destroyed during the spring of this year. If you are planning to visit Big Sur this summer, be prepared for some scary roads. The detour around the construction takes you up a one-way road with no barriers on the mountain side. After an hour of 15mph cliffside cruising, we reached flat ground and headed on south to Morro Bay. Morro Bay is a small town just north of San Luis Obispo. The main attraction of the town is Morro Rock Beach, yet another beach known for its huge rock situated on the sand. We spent the morning walking around the shops before hitting the road back down to Southern California and home! Every day I managed to take a jumping photo at one of the places we stopped at. Details about each photo as well as extra photos can be found on my Instagram @emilyimbach I'm so glad I got the chance to head off on another road trip this summer. I love road tripping because of the fact that every time you look out the car window, you have a totally new and unique view. Get out and go adventure!
xx Emily
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