Finally—Heading south like we’re supposed to! Part 1

When people enquire as to what we are doing as we aimlessly drive around the Americas we tend to respond with: ‘We’re driving from Alaska to Argentina’. Those in the know often respond with ‘Oh, so you are driving the PanAmerican Highway then?” To which we typically respond with a shifty sideways glance and say “more or less”.

This shifty sideways glance is because either of these descriptions of our trip imply that we are travelling in a generally southerly direction. The second specifically implies we are actually following some sort of planned route.

Most of the time, neither of these things are actually true.

For once though, we found ourselves with a plan—drive to Tijuana before our time ran out on our United States visas—and this plan had us heading south.

How do two Flightless Kiwis know when it is time to migrate south? Well, autumn leaves and snow are a big hint. But what really gives it away is when the water in your drink bottle starts to freeze inside the tent. Right about then, some time on a sunny beach in Mexico starts to sound like a pretty good plan.

In this post I have made all sorts of wild claims about heading south. It is even in the title, but from Yellowstone, we did first drift west—so that we could drive the scenic highway 101 through Oregon and California.

This resulted in an exceptionally short visit to Idaho. As we drove west, the weather deteriorated more and more. Being big fans of a detour, we still dropped by Craters of the Moon National Monument. Because, let’s face it, with a name like that, it just sounds too appealing to pass up on.

By the time we got there, the rain was pretty unrelenting, so we just took the scenic drive and then carried on.

There is some dramatic scenery somewhere out there through all that rain.

But even in the short few seconds it took to hop out of the car to take this photo it was pretty clear that even the shortest of the walks offered would not be worth the thorough drenching that would accompany them.

We hadn’t had the best luck with evading storms on our earlier trip east. We clearly hadn’t learnt from that experience, so we just kept heading west, hoping to escape this storm. It was this plan that found us sitting in an Albertson’s car park in Mountain Home, Idaho, with torrential rain hammering on the windows. Darkness fell as we forlornly nibbled at our supermarket salads and contemplated a night of camping in the rain, again.

We looked at the rain radar online and realised we had neatly driven ourselves into what appeared to be the exact centre of a very large rain storm. A storm that didn’t look like it was planning on going anywhere any time soon.

Our house has wheels for a reason. We ignored the darkening skies, turned our backs to the nearby, but rather damp campground and made for John Day, Oregon. This was for two reasons:

1. We had been there before and knew there was a rather nice campground just out of town.
2. More importantly, it appeared to be just on the outside edge of the large, damp rainstorm.

As we drove into the night, we would occasionally question the decision we made—then the rain would become heavier and we would nod in agreement that John Day, Oregon was pretty much paradise and clearly worth the drive.

We wound our way through the mountains, passing camp spots, some free, some paid, all far too damp for our liking.

Soon the rain turned to snow.

We agreed, it was time for Mexico. But for now the goal was to escape the storm. The snow got thicker on the ground as we closed in on our destination, we started to doubt the accuracy of the weather radar. The snow turned to sleet, then back to rain as we descended rapidly. We arrived at the campground, pulling in to the same camp spot we had stayed at months earlier on our way to Burning Man, the rain had stopped, we could see stars twinkling above. Was it worth the extra four hours drive in the dark to not have to set the tent up in the rain? Absolutely.

More importantly, we were four hours closer to Bend, Oregon and all the beer we could quaff.

Sure, time was short on the visa, but it was a mandatory stop to get our craft beer fix before leaving the USA.

We spent the next night in Bend, sampling delicious beers, eating tasy food and celebrating pretty close to six months on the road. (Not quite six months, that would be when we crossed the border in to Mexico). A couple of the breweries we had hoped to visit had already closed for the evening by the time we had finished stuffing our faces at the delicious Crux Brewery. We simply settled in and tried a few more of their beers and wondered if we’d find any beer this good south of the border.

Aside from having delicious beer, Oregon has some pretty gorgeous scenery and camping. It is a state that really shouldn’t be rushed through.

But sadly, for the second time on this trip, we rushed through Oregon. This time, we had a date with the coast.

Another great thing about Oregon is that the beaches appear to have far fewer hypodermic needles than the one we visited in New Jersey.

Once we hit the coast, it was just a short, scenic drive down Highway 101 before we were in California and on our way to Tijuana.

There it is, that’s a completely different coast than the one we were looking at out the window a week or two earlier.

Onward to Mexico!

Wait—You didn’t think it would be that easy did you?

First, we had to make a short side trip to see some very tall trees—the Coastal Redwoods...