3000 miles on the road (from Los Angeles to Seattle)

19 Jul 2025

I just returned from 3000 miles¹ on the road, and now I need a break from my break (which means I'm puttering around the blog).

An abbreviated travel log

• 12-day round trip from Los Angeles to Seattle
• Drove up the 101/1 and down the 5
• Rented a car from Costco (booking at 3 a.m. gave the lowest pricing)

Food & drinks we liked

Except for the dinners in Seattle, the rest were quick dine-in stops or brunch to-go.

• Buena Onda in Santa Barbara, CA (empanadas)
• Bear and the Wren in San Luis Obispo, CA (pizza)
• Revival in Monterey, CA (ice cream) — Bee's Knees, waffle cone, toasted marshmallow topping (enthusiastically recommended by the kid standing in front of me in line, so how could I not?)
• Witness in Eureka, CA (coffee + café, vegan)
• Café Komi in Brookings, OR (some mix of Asian)
• Broder Strand in Astoria, OR (Scandinavian brunch)
• The Owl's Nest in Olympia, OR (coffee + café, vegan)
• Kin Len in Seattle, WA (Thai)
• Revel in Seattle, WA (Korean)
• Obon Shokudo in Portland, OR (Japanese, vegan)
• Provisions Market Hall in Eugene, OR (coffee + café)

(Portland was an unplanned stop and Obon Shokudo was a delightful find. I enjoyed this wall of cat art + Raveena's Asha's Awakening playing in the background.)

Where we enjoyed staying most

We slept somewhere different every night until we arrived in Seattle, where we spent two evenings.

• Monterey Plaza in Monterey, CA
• Sea Rock Inn in Mendocino, CA
• A cabin in Manzanita, OR (walking distance to a quiet beach)

Moments & impressions

Small thoughts, words, and little notes I jotted down along the way.

• Arriving in 15 minutes for two hours — unexpected traffic confused the GPS
• How to eat artichoke? Mistakenly ordered thinking it was asparagus (they both start with 'a,' and I'm not confident we figured it out)
• When indecisive, select the option with an animal in its name: bear, owl, rabbit
• I do not like these ultra-manicured, lollipop-shaped trees
• Searching for a birthday gift for A (the reason we are visiting Seattle), who likes his gummies flavored the way they are shaped — picked up frog-shaped gummies
• "These flowers are real!" — after sticking face in hotel lobby floral arrangement
• The pianist
• “What’s so special about this bridge?” re: Bixby at Big Sur, after passing a crowd, parking down the road, and walking back at the edge of a cliff for a while to see it
• Solkiki So Woke vegan chocolate bar
• "What is this fog DLC?" — playing this game in hard mode: driving to and from Mendocino in dense fog (the 128 was closed and we had to turn back; we took the 101 to the 20)
• "You have to commit!" re: passing large trucks and parallel parking in tight spots
• Desaturated little towns along the coast of northern CA — faded, peeling, in disrepair
• TIL about the Emerald Triangle
• Tillamook is a place
• That bridge in Astoria is very long and skinny
• Ai Weiwei retrospective exhibition: "Art should be a nail in the eye, a spike in the flesh, gravel in the shoe."
• A stretch of the highway in mist, alone on the road — no cars before or behind us. V says, "This is how we enter another world." "Liminal spaces," responds E.
• Pacheco Pass is gusty

The drive itself

I feel these words in my bones:

Is there a route to Mendocino that isn't high, narrow, twisty, and terrifying? Any way there that doesn't require driving along skinny roads carved out of soaring cliffs? [...] (First and last time I ventured onto Hwy. 1 was in 1981. My knuckles are still white.)

I am grateful for turnouts. And I have leveled up my driving skill.

Lessons learned

• Drive stretches during daylight, arriving at destinations before sundown
• Plan for stops approx. every hour — rest breaks & leg stretches for driver safety and passenger comfort
• Airbnb rentals remain hit or miss — the Baggu blanket came in clutch for questionable-looking beds

But what about the cats

We found a cat sitter to drop by on the days we were gone. His daily photos captured our cats' personalities well:

(An eager Calliope flopping belly up, desperate to have her face smooshed.)

(A cautious Dione peeking around a corner in the distance.)