Selma&Louis

Newport, OR - Eureka, CA

Written by Selma-n-Louis on April 9th 2007 in On the road

Outside the Best Western Agate Beach Inn

On Saturday 7th, we traveled from Newport, Oregon and down to Eureka, just across the border to California.

For the first time since we arrived, Selma had a good nights sleep. We checked out of the hotel at noon, and packed the car. Before hitting the road, Selma took the car for a short spin around the parking area - just to practice in case she was going to drive later on (but as long as Louis wants to drive, he’s very welcome!).

Unfortunately, the great weather had disappeared during the night, so we had to battle rain, mist and heavy clouds most of the day. It made for a dramatic effect along the coast, but the photos suffered from the gray light. Still, we took a whole bunch of pictures - both from the (moving) car, and from various stops along the road.

We didn’t really experience all that much during the day - we basically just drove, stopped to take photos, drove, stopped to eat, drove, drove and drove. But it was a very exciting scenery, and we were really happy that we chose to take the 101 along the coast instead of driving the inland highway straight down!

We arrived in Eureka, CA around 8pm and Kitty directed us straight to the motel. It turned out that the reservation we made online before leaving Newport the same morning, wasn’t registered - so the clerk apologized for having to give us a new (and better!) price for the room. We originally booked it for $79, he offered it to us for $69. So this could have balanced the high rate at our last hotel, - except when Selma checked her bank statements online after arriving at the room, they’d been charged twice for the stay (both from the online reservation and the one made upon arrival). The clerk later promised to reimburse one of the billings, but I guess we’d better keep an eye on the statements to see what happens…

Anyhow - the booking mishap wasn’t the clerks fault, and still he apologized left and right. And - he gave us directions to one of the local bars, the Lost Coast Brewery. So after carrying all the luggage into our room, we walked down the few blocks to the Brewery for some dinner - and beer. Well, Selma stuck to her Coke, but Louis ordered a deal with small samples of ten different beers. The food was nice, the bar was full and lively, and the decoration was… well, special (like a huge spider coming down every time someone went through the door).

Then we were ready to go back to the motel and get some sleep, as we knew we had another day of driving ahead of us (- but we had no idea about HOW much driving it would be… to be continued!)…

As we seem to have some problems uploading pictures to Flickr as we are posting this, we’ll put some pictures from our trip down the coast here in this post:

It was a rainy day along the Oregon coast…

Still, we saw many fascinating works of nature

We went in an out of tsunami hazard zones

ATV/Dune buggies at the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area

Wildlife along the road

A seagull watching Louis as he’s photographing the coast

A closer look at the seagulls

Along the Oregon Coast

A look at the dashboard after one day + a few hours on the road

Welcome to California!

Past the California border, it’s more grass fields than rugged coast. So far.

Louis with his ten beer samples. With one down, nine to go.