Alaska Highway, Day 1: San Francisco, CA to Coos Bay, OR

Today: ~490 miles from San Francisco, CA to Coos Bay, OR.

Approximate route map:

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The plan today was to start out from Casey's apartment in San Francisco at 8am. Of course, breakfast didn't even happen till 9, and then we had to set up our timelapses. That's right - TWO timelapses, for this chunk of the trip. Finding space to hang cameras without obscuring vision was hard! The situation was further complicated by an apparent failure of one of my cameras (or its power supply, unclear); luckily, I had spares for both.

The workhorse Powershot S45 in the center of the dash; Casey's DSLR hanging from the top.

After finally heading out at 10:30, we drove nearly nonstop until lunch at the Lost Coast Brewery in Eureka. Big dish of spinach dip was big, and nearly ruined us for our sandwiches thereafter:

While driving through the various parks on the way up into Oregon, particularly Redwoods National and State Park, there were a lot of signs warning us about elk crossings. We never saw any elk crossing the road (nor any individual elk), but we did spot a massive herd of them in the park:

Shortly after crossing the border into Oregon, we were compelled to stop by an absolutely stunning bit of coastline:

As a consequence of this bit of driving, we decided that sunset had to be observed from the coast, so we continued driving and pulled over to a lookout point just south of Bandon, OR with about 10 or 15 minutes to spare. The car was left on and idling so the Powershot could capture a time-lapse of the sun setting:

Notice the ND filter rubber-banded onto the front of the lens.

Meanwhile, I got a picture of myself:

Because we got in late and weren't ready to get dinner until about 10, the only thing open was the Kozy Kitchen restaurant, sort of like Denny's. I got a fried shrimp plate that was about what you'd expect. Casey wins the value for money award with a $9.25 dinner that included a chicken fried steak nearly a foot in diameter, 4 pieces of toast, eggs, and a full plate of hash browns:

Needless to say, at the end of the meal, more than one bite was left over:

Tomorrow: Coos Bay, OR to Seattle, WA