We arrived in Lake Tahoe today and spent our first day here on a photographic tour with Tahoe Photographic Tours .
We met our guide, Robin in South Lake Tahoe and got to spend the whole day being driven to the most photogenic sights in Lake Tahoe.
It’s a big place (22 by 12 miles) and we’d have needed a week to hunt these places out ourself so it was great to have a knowledgeable and enthusiastic guide who was also an expert photographer. I got a good crop of photos and so did Jen with the little Sony compact, which just goes to prove you don’t need expensive equipment to take great photos (see the dragonfly and butterfly photos below).
It’s no wonder they’re the top rated attraction in Lake Tahoe on TripAdvisor, even if you’re not into photography I can’t think of a better way to see the best parts of the lake and get to know your way around. We’ve now got another 3 days here and lots to pack in.
Today’s drive down the Pacific coast was fairly rushed. We didn’t get going until after midday thanks to the huge breakfast we were served at the lighthouse (see my previous post).
There’s a lot to see on on the US 101 which runs north to south down most of the coast from Seattle to California, from huge sand dunes to giant redwood trees to elephant seals sitting on the rocks. We managed to pick up a map from the Oregon tourist office and made several stops along the way to check out the views.
We also got to see a rare but somewhat sad site as we drove towards California, two whales had got themselves stuck in a river estuary by swimming in at high tide and one of them is still stuck. It’s been there for a couple of months and is drawing a large crowd but realistically won’t make it back into the ocean.
Anyway, tonight we’re staying in Eureka (yes, really!) and tomorrow we set off inland towards Lake Tahoe.
If you’ve never spent the night at a lighthouse I can highly recommend it.
Last night we had the pleasure of staying at Heceta Head Lighthouse (pronounced he-see-taa) , a beautiful working lighthouse on the pacific coast in Oregon which has been restored and the lighthouse keepers lodge turned into a Bed and Breakfast.
We arrived at around 6pm and had the chance to explore the beach and take some photos before sunset. After dark we were invited to take a walk up to the lighthouse and guests are provided with a torch for that reason. It was fairly misty and a bit windy last night but walking around Heceta Head at night is amazing. The scenery is straight out of a Stephen King Book or Twin Peaks, kind of spooky but the way the lighthouse lights up the bay is an incredible sight.
As if the scenery wasn’t enough, the B&B is run by chefs who treated us to a 7 course breakfast this morning. There were about 12 guests and before breakfast each one is asked to tell the table where they are from and what they do. It sounds awkward but it really got everyone talking. The manager then rang a bell before each of the 7 courses and gave us an explanation of what we were about to eat.
We were treated to Home grown berries, lemon poppyseed bread, shrimp mousse with english crumpets, a mango and mint lassee, followed by an egg, gruyere, cheddar and broccoli souffle, sausages glazed in maple syrup and finished off with an apple, cinnamon and coffee strusel cake served with fresh cherries, apricots and local cheese.
It was just a shame we only had one night there. They serve a different seven courses each day from their cookbook (which Jen bought) and we’d have liked a bit more time to explore the area but we were looking forward to driving down the coast.
Today we made a quick stop in Portland, Oregon to visit the world’s largest book store, Powell’s City of Books .
The store takes up 4 floors of a whole city block, over 1.6 acres of floor space and has over 4 million books for sale. It’s fairly easy to get lost in.
Jen could have stayed there until September but I dragged her out of there after a couple of hours and we carried on to the coast, which means we’ve finally reached the Pacific ocean and we’ve officially driven from the east coast of the USA to the west! Now all we’ve got to do is get back.
Our drive south began today with a trip to Mount St. Helens .
Mount St. Helens is probably the most famous active volcano in North America, mainly because of it’s large eruption in 1980 . The eruption was caused by an earthquake and the ensuing blast was big enough to blow the whole north side of the mountain off and flatten 230 square miles of trees.
We visited the main visitor centre at Johnston Ridge, named after David Johnston , a geologist killed while manning an outpost 5 miles from the mountain during the 1980 blast. The area had been evacuated but he insisted on staying and his last words on the radio was “Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it!” He was never found.
The visitor centre was really interesting with some really cool exhibits, including a real life earthquake sensor which you could set off by jumping up and down on a plate (most people were able to cause the equivalent of about a 0.001 on the richter scale), a great talk by one of the park rangers and a theatre showing movies about the volcano. This led to the biggest “wow” moment we’ve had so far at the end of the movie, when the screen and curtain raised to reveal a huge window and an amazing panoramic view of the north side of the volcano right in-front of us. There was a chorus of ooh’s and aah’s from the audience, none of whom were expecting it.
We’re now in Portland and we’re driving to the coast tomorrow where we should get our first view of the Pacific.
We’ve taken quite a few videos along the way and we haven’t put them all on the blog yet so I thought I’d do a catch up post and upload all the videos we haven’t posted yet.
Just a quick post today. We drove back down from Vancouver to Seattle and had lunch in the revolving restaurant at the top of the Space Needle . It’s actually an excellent restaurant as well as a great photo opportunity.
We’re now back in Seattle for one night before we start our drive down the west coast tomorrow.
Another early start this morning and after having our trip cancelled yesterday we were glad to get on the boat for our whale watching trip with Prince of Whales (yes, that really is what the tour company is called).
It takes about 2 hours to get from Downtown Vancouver to the straight between the mainland and Vancouver Island . There are hundreds of small islands in the strait which host a variety of wildlife including seals and eagles so we spent a while sailing around between them and taking a few snaps.
The captain of the boat had been on the radio to the other tour boats and they’d located a pod of about 80 Orca whales (although that would have been made up of many smaller groups of 4 or 5 whales), so we headed south into more open water to see them.
Seeing whales in the wild is incredibly impressive, but they don’t like having their photo taken. They spend most of their time underwater, coming up briefly every couple of minutes for air and the boats aren’t allowed within 200ft of them, so getting photos is hard. Having said that, at one point the whales decided to swim towards us and the only thing the captain can do when that happens is switch off the engine and wait for them to pass by. At this point a couple of whales surfaced about 50ft from the boat and then swam right underneath us which was hugely exciting.
After seeing the whales the boat carried on to Vancouver Island and docked at Victoria which is the capital of British Columbia. Victoria is a lovely place and we could have spent more time there than the hour we had, but the trip included a drive to Buchart Gardens , about 40 minutes drive from the capital, so we left after lunch.
I’m not the biggest fan of horticulture, but the gardens were very impressive and probably the most relaxing thing we’ve done in the last 3 weeks. It also gave me a chance to practice my photography on something that wasn’t moving.
Our day ended with the boat picking us up from a small cove next to the gardens and a 2 hour ride back to Vancouver. We weren’t the only ones on the boat that wanted to sleep on the way back. The Seattle/Whistler/Vancouver area is another area I’d like to revisit in the future, you can’t move for amazing scenery and there’s so much to do we could easily fill another 2 weeks here.
I think today might have been our most tiring day so far.
The alarm rang at 6am because we had to be in Downtown Vancouver by 8:30 to board the boat for our whale watching trip. We left plenty of time because this was Monday morning rush hour and we were heading through Downtown Vancouver. Strangely, there was no traffic at all and we got there an hour and a half early.
We waited to be called for boarding until about 9:20am, by which point we were starting to wonder what had happened. Unfortunately the captain came out to explain that their boat was out of action and today’s tour would have to be cancelled. Luckily, we have one more day in Canada tomorrow so we swapped some stuff around and decided to bring forward our trip to Whistler .
So, we got back on the road and did the 2 hour trip to Whistler, the home of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics , where we had a date with the world’s longest zip line .
Ziptrek organise zip line tours down the side of the Blackcomb mountain . Basically they drive you up the mountain (right next to the start of the bobsled run) and let you make your way back down the mountain using a series of treetop bridges and zip lines. Our tour consisted of 5 zip lines, a small one to start with, leading up to the one we’d really been looking forward to, which is apparently the longest in the world.
It’s 2000ft long and over 20 storeys high apparently, and it looked it. They say you can get up to 80 km/h, although I think that’s fairly theoretical.
There’s a great video below which Jen took. She managed to be the only person to “bounce” off the landing platform and slide back across the canyon, requiring the guide to scoot back out there on a harness to rescue her. She kept the video running throughout the “rescue” though which is entertaining.
She managed to redeem herself on the last zipline though which was the only one you could hang upside down on. Unlike me, she managed to flip herself completely upside down and hold her arms out!
If you’re going anywhere near Whistler/Vancouver at any point you really can’t miss this. Brilliant fun. Another 2 hour drive home and we’re about as tired as it’s possible to be. Good job we don’t have to be up at 6am again for our whale watching tomorrow…
Before leaving Seattle for Vancouver this afternoon we visited the Museum of Flight .
Highlights of the day included a look round one of only 4 Concordes still viewable by the public and a tour of an Air Force One plane used by presidents Nixon and JFK. We also got a ride in a 2 person 360° fighter jet simulator which Jen quite enjoyed pulling barrel rolls in.
I’ll be totally honest here. Unless you’ve visited the museum or you have a particular interest in aviation the following photos aren’t going to be particularly interesting, but I thought I’d include them anyway.
We’ve now back in Canada again and looking forward to the next 2 days in Vancouver before heading back down to Seattle again.
today and spent our first day here on a photographic tour with Tahoe Photographic Tours 
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