Arrived in Kirkland, Washington

Whew, after 1600km, we've made it to Kirkland. We've driven through spectacular forests, and past breathtaking coastlines. It's been long, but gee it's been worth it!

Friday we got through San Francisco no problems, despite leaving at 6pm through the big city on the Friday of a long weekend! Friday night we stayed in a motel, then Saturday morning we backtracked a bit to get to the coast road and drive up the coast as much as we could. The coast highway was literally right on the coast, so we got great views of the ocean on our left, and rivers and forests on our right.

The Redwood forests we drove through were amazing. The trees were literally right next to the road (you wouldn't want to lose control and go off the road, because you WILL hit a large tree!!), and the forests went on and on. We got photos of course, so will share them when we get them up.

We camped on Saturday night in the Redwood National Park amongst the Redwoods which was lovely. The campground was really well set up, and each site had the persons name and arrival and departure information on it which was useful, and the tent sites had parking for your car, a fire pit, wooden table and chairs, bear proof food locker (!!), then a nice big softer area to pitch the tent. Each site was also surrounded by trees and bushes, so was semi closed from the next site which was nice. It started raining just as we got near the camp site, but never got too heavy which was fine.

Sunday we actually managed to sleep in until 9am for some reason - I didn't sleep well, but as soon as it got light I seemed to sleep like a log, despite people waking up, breakfasting and packing up all around us! So we wanted to go walking through the forest a bit, but we still had a longish drive ahead, it was sprinkling and we were a bit behind schedule, so we just packed up and pressed on by about 10am.

Driving through Oregon, the landscape changed to big fir trees which were also beautiful. There was aso lots of big soaring hawk/eagle type birds out constantly circling, so they were impressive to watch as well.

We made it to Portland by about 4pm, and had dinner with Steve and Patty, some lovely people Andrew knows through Debian, and they were kind enough to take us into downtown Portland as well, and we went to an awesome book store called Powells which was huuuuge and had an amazing range of books.

Then Monday morning (this morning) I woke up at 2am with a migraine which was painfully horrible. I got blurry vision while I was driving on Saturday morning, which for me in the past has been the first sign of a mgraine, so Andrew drove for a while, and I took some drugs, but it was just a headache which mostly faded away a few hours later. I think concentrating on driving for so long, tense shoulders because I seem to clench my arms when I drive, sleeping badly while camping, then more driving set the migraine off this morning. I noticed my eyes going fuzzy while I was reading in bed last night, but thought maybe it was just tiredness, so put the book straight down and went to sleep. When I woke up I rolled around in agony for an hour or so before I managed to get back to sleep, and my head and shoulders have been very stiff and sore today, and my head's been all fuzzy. I finally got some migraine drugs this arvo, and took some of them, and my head finally feels a lot better. Hopefully I can get a massage to release some of the tension in my neck and shoulders and just take it easy tomorrow and I'll be back to normal.

Today we managed to do a harbour tour of Seattle, and I've got lots more sightseeing planned, and plenty of evening stuff to do with Andrew after work (it was still light at 9pm this evening!), so hopefully we'll have time to squeeze it all in!

Signing off from Kirkland...