Oregon Trail Round 2

On the road again! Oregon Trail Round 2 from May 16-May 24, 2024

New Orleans was our first stop on this trip. On our first trip out in May 2020, we skipped NOLA as this weirdo new pandemis was wreaking havoc in that little Cajun town. But this time around, we had a great stay at the Creole Garden hotel with the most colorful patio. We had a lovely rainy walk to dinner and an entertaining walk down Bourbon with everyone's intuitions just thrown to the wind. What a place. 

San Antonio was next, where it was certainly a pretty little riverwalk and we got some delicious street tacos, but was kind of one of those blooper kinda nights. It was a loong drive, we were starving, we made a rash decision for street tacos and realized we missed out on the tex mex we were so stoked on. No rice. No beans. No chips and salsa... Ugh. We couldn't get over it haha... the dogs got hot and we couldn't find water, our skin was wackily dry and uncomfortable, we thought we'd left our toiletry bag at the last hotel... It was just a whole slew of silly little things. 

Next stop was Silver City, NM with the pitstops making all the difference. We went to Frederickburg for lunch, free beer and funny Texas styles. Those girls love their sun dresses. A detour to see a mining ghost town was well worth it! We drove way off the road through a winding hilly forest to get to it, impressed with the old pioneers back in the day. 

Our spiciest TexMex dreams came true in El Paso with a nice little mountain view. From there, we decided to take a sunset detour/scenic route with US 9 that went right along the US-Mexico border. We started off stoked, then looked around noticed there were 0 other cars joining us on this route. We got a little curious worried about our choice, keeping an eye out and all. We did see a couple cars... and then they'd strangely turn back around or stop on the side of the road... But we made it through with some epic desert sunset skies with purpley blue toward Mexico and orange sherbert in the US. We did go through one border check, but there was no one there to check us? Silver City's Motel 6 did not give us good vibes and reading the reviews did not help whatsoever, but we also made it through that and quickly headed on out of there to Sedona. 

Sedona was one of the prettiest places we've ever been. The drive through the forest with striking orange mountains to each side, then entering the downtown with even better literally jaw-dropping views of those rocks, Those ROCKS. Those colors. I mean gah, they were unreal. The next morning we got our first (and actually only) hike in at the Boynton Canyon trail. No vortexes were felt nor palms read unfortunately-- I'd hoped to delve into psychics in New Orleans and then Sedona to get those experiences, but missed out on those.

Oh and before we hit Sedona, we took another detour to the Grand Canyon! Hobie seemed to especially love the view. 

From Sedona, we headed to Dylan's aunt and uncle's in Riverside, California. We had two lovely, relaxing (other than the dogs barking at way too much) days with them and Dylan's cousin's kids... I believe that's his 2nd cousins once removed, right, Coe family?! The girls were a lot of fun and it was great getting to wonder at old family photos, share in stories... 

Riverside--> Ventura, California. Ventura was amusing. Kind of like a... how do you describe this place? I think you just have to go there and the other spots in Cali to understand. It was all so different than I expected with much drier mountains with cliffs near the coast. The best part was when we got more north, we stopped off to see the beach at Davenport Landing Beach where you walk through what felt like a little farm field to get to the beach. And there were a lot of areas with farms right next to a steep cliff down to the sea. 

Dylan almost got a surf in at Santa Cruz, but we kept on driving to San Francisco. Japanese Town was the place to be with not one, not two, but three ramen places right next to our hotel (ramen is Dylan's favorite and he has to try it everywhere if you didn't know. Like I think we had it 3 times on our honeymoon in Portugal/Spain). But I was thoroughly impressed and amazed by the area leading into San Francisco that was just so built up, then the streets just exceeded my expectations. The houses were so elabrate and intricate. Anyone biking those hills has my full respect.

We had planned to take three-four more slow-rolling days to get to Portland to camp, surf and hike up the coast, but we got a call on Thursday that the moving truck was getting to our new place on SATURDAY. By around 8am. So we had to actually leave San Francisco on Friday morning and book it all the way to Portland. But not without our car battery dying that morning and getting a nice little three hour delay waiting for USAA. In that wait, I even jogged on over to an Ace, got some jumper cables and jogged on back  only to have the USAA guy get there right then. The jumpers didn't work anyway. But we got on the road and made it all the way in. Also thank goodness to my new boss that happened to be in town on Memorial Day weekend and able to grab our keys-- otherwise we coudln't have gotten them until TUESDAY. Anyway, what could have been a MESS wound up working out quite well and we are all settled into our new home. That roadtrip was another that did not go as planned, but was of course, a very memorable time.