PNW Trip: Day 6 - Goodbye, Portland!

Last night, L and I decided to get up early and take "The 101" along the coast up to Washington. This meant that I would see the Pacific Ocean for the first time!

Bright and early, we rose and gathered our things. While loading up the car, L discovered that an egg had been thrown at his car. (Bummer.) My car was recently vandalized (but it was much worse than an egg), so I could relate to his anger. Still, he wiped it up, we ran through a car wash, noticed some scratches from the eggshell, and got over it because it's not like it's a brand new car or anything. (My boyfriend is such a calm, rational person. So unlike me!)

Before leaving Portland completely, we gathered at the Cup & Saucer on Killingsworth for breakfast with friends. I ordered the Garden Omelet with tofu, which I had hoped would actually be in an omelet form, but alas, it was a tofu scramble. It came with fried potatoes and spelt toast. It wasn't jaw-dropping delicious, it was a pretty standard tofu scramble, but it was still good.


Breakfast was enjoyable and I was glad some friends could make it before we continued on. Thank you again to Joe and Nur for letting us take over their living room floor for 2 nights!

From Cup & Saucer, we hopped on to the 101 to Seaside/Ecola State Park. I was feeling very excited to be near the ocean! We stopped at a viewpoint in the park, then headed down to Cannon Beach (also known as, The Goonies beach).




Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

Pressing on (back on 101), we stopped in Astoria because L says there are sea lions there(!!!). We stopped at a couple docks until we could hear them from the adjacent parking lot. My excitement grew. When we approached the docks, there were several "No Trespassing" signs hanging and we thought this was as close as we could get. From there, we could hear them, but not quite see them. As an older couple (who didn't look like dock workers) were leaving, I asked them if they knew where we could go to get a better view of the sea lions. Turns out, they're just tourists, too! They insisted that the man operating a crane was really nice and wouldn't mind if we went in. We ducked underneath the chain and slowly, hesitantly walked toward the man. When he noticed us, he waved us in. Walking about halfway down the dock, we found them: the lazy, barking sea lions!





This was such a fun stop. I had a ridiculous smile stretched across my face the entire time we were there! I'm so glad a nice dock worker was there that day! As we were leaving, he had waved in a whole FAMILY to see the sea lions.

Back on the 101.



Cruising along, we noticed a sign for a lavender farm, which sounded promising, so we quickly U-turned to check it out. It wasn't quite what I had imagined: no endless, sprawling fields of sweet-smelling lavender as far as the eye can see. It was actually a woman's house, and she had a few manageable lavender gardens. Her house was nestled behind some trees and was, seriously, a wonderland. I'm afraid my pictures won't convey all the mystique of her home, but it will hopefully give you an idea.
outdoor bathroom (under construction)

view from the treehouse

chicken coop

one of the lavender patches

funny tree ornament

patio

What a beautiful, dreamy place. You really have to see it. I want to live in a place like that!

101 continues to wind through small towns. Our next stop is Olympia, Washington, where I did a quick Yelp search and we headed to Darby's Cafe.



We each started with a colorful side salad (and they had housemade, vegan Goddess dressing - yum!)

We split the Black Bean Balls appetizer.

These were wonderful! The balls had a perfectly crispy, flaky crust, holding in the warm, soft, flavorful black bean mash. It came with wonderful garlic bread (I only ate one piece, due to my wheat restrictions, and L happily devoured the rest) and their housemade ginger-BBQ sauce was the perfect amount of sweet and smoky. They should bottle that sauce and sell it!
Next came our burgers (oof). I ordered the Vegan Delight Burger, which truly was delightful! The housemade patty was made with grilled veggies, pecans, tofu, breadcrumbs, and an awesome blend of spices.

It was wonderful! This burger has me no longer writing off all veggie burgers as created equal. The Vegan Delight Burger makes me want to give more veggie burgers a chance! Viva la Veggie Burger!
We were totally stuffed after this fantastic meal, as you can imagine. I wanted to wander around Olympia a bit because it looks like a really cool town (made me think of Lawrence, Kansas, in a way), but we didn't have time. We had to get to L's sister's house, which is two hours north of Seattle, so we still had quite a bit of driving to do.