From October 2 to October 9 of 2014, I embarked on a 2613 mile road trip in the convertible. I circumnavigated a large swath of the southern Cascades, the Sierra Nevadas, and the coast in my 2002 Boxster S. I’d been longing to make such a trip for years, and I’ve had plenty of vacation saved up to do it.
- October 2 – Crater Lake
- October 3 – Lake Tahoe
- October 4 – Yosemite National Park
- October 5 – Central California coast
- October 6 – San Francisco
- October 7 – Northern California coast
- October 8 – Beaverton, OR
- October 9 – Home to Bothell
For the first time, I used AirBnB to find lodging. Keeping my schedule flexible, I was booking rooms only a day or two in advance. That process worked out quite well! The weather was amazing for the entire trip. California was experiencing record high temperatures, which was a mixed blessing given the drought conditions. The weather chart from San Francisco is a good representative of the whole trip:
There were some stretches of road that I refer to as “sports car crack”, such as parts of CA – 1 and CA-128 where I could push the Boxster to accelerate or decelerate to take tight turns that felt like riding a roller coaster. I collected a bunch of driving data on my GPS, I need to see if I can decipher it with an app to come up with a map that I can annotate.
Naturally, I couldn’t have made this trip without having a solid base camp at home! Marie was very supportive of me going off alone. It’s kinda funny how many people asked both her and me a variant of “You let him go off alone like that?”. I guess many couples may lack the depth of trust and respect for each other that we have and could feel insecure having their own spouse going on such an adventure solo. It also helps to have roommates like Paul and Liz to hold the fort when Marie and I are both out of the house.
A Place for My Stuff 