Alaska Highway, Day 2: Coos Bay, OR to Seattle, WA

Today: ~420 mi from Coos Bay, OR to Seattle, WA

Approximate route map:


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Plan today was to start out from Motel 6 at 8:30. We left at 8:40, which might make it the timeliest day I have ever had on a roadtrip. We had breakfast at Portland Bagel Company, which has delicious bagels (protip: the jalapeno and jack cheese bagel is AMAZING), great coffee, and chalkboard tables so you can draw while you eat.

420 miles doesn't sound like all that much over the course of a day's driving, but it's a lot longer when your average speed is a hair above 45 mph. High-speed interstate this is not, folks. I still think it's a worthwhile and very scenic drive, because when 101 opens out onto the coast it really is spectacular - but know that there will be circuitous forest segments where you'll be trapped behind an RV doing 15 under the speed limit, and won't be able to do anything about it for 15 minutes. Just...accept it.

We neglected to bring any way to play music over the car stereo on this segment of the trip: no FM modulator, no tape adapter, and the car certainly didn't have an aux jack. Normally, I hate the loudspeaker on phones: it's low-quality and usually is just a way for someone on the bus to annoy everyone by playing really awful music just loudly enough to be irritating. But on this trip, that same speaker was a godsend. Casey loaded up the top 100 songs of each year from 1998 to 2004, sat his phone in the center console, and off we went. Listening to the evolution of pop over a seven year stretch is interesting, I'll give you that much. Also, the fact that we enjoyed listening to tracks of that age probably means we're officially old now.

Lunch was at the Rogue Ale brewery in Newport, OR. More delicious fried seafood, and then we continued northwards. No terribly interesting photos from this section of the drive, sadly - where there was the rare turnout, we were too scared to stop for fear of losing our spot to all the slow trucks we had already passed.

By far the best sights are to be had as you cross the Columbia River into Washington State, and continue along 101N by the coastline. At least when we were there, it was beautiful, sunny, and the roads were mostly empty. Colors shine and water sparkles. I only wish I hadn't been the one driving; then I could have taken proper pictures of it all. You'll have to live with the following timelapse shot as we descended the high span of the bridge over the Columbia:

View out the windshield as you cross the Columbia River

As you continue towards Seattle, along US-12 E from 101 towards Olympia, you'll see something strange pop up over the fields and forests: two gigantic nuclear cooling towers: 

Up and atom!

What's weird about this is that if you look up nuclear power plants, it doesn't exist. The nearest nuke plant is hundreds of miles east, in Hanford. It turns out the the "plant" is now the Satsop Development Park, just south of Satsop, WA:

From 1977 to 1983, a nuclear power plant was under construction in Satsop, but cost overruns forced its cancellation when it was already about 3/4 complete - hence the cooling towers. It was never completed and is now targeted as a business park.

A few hours after Satsop, we arrived in Seattle, where we drove around downtown for a little while to capture some cool timelapse footage. There are a number of striking buildings downtown, perhaps none more so than the Seattle Public Library:

Finally, we shut down the timelapse cameras at the waterfront and drove over towards the University of Washington. Casey's friend picked him up from there, and I went to meet up with Nola, who had prepared a sign of welcome:

Now that's service.

Tomorrow: Seattle, WA