Share your tips for our upcoming adventure

I have been so excited to share the news that we have booked flights for a trip to northern California and the Pacific Northwest! Colin and I have been talking about this trip for a few months, trying to find the best time to go, and we finally found dates that worked for us.

We will have 15 and a half days to explore northern California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia/Vancouver.  As I read through the travel books on the area, I look forward to all of your suggestions on places to visit and things to do while in the area.  We have a flight into San Jose and a flight back from Portland, but the days in between have yet to be filled.  My initial itinerary has us spending a few days in San Francisco, followed by a drive up the coast of California to the Redwoods. From there, I'm torn between heading inland versus staying on the coast. I think it'd be cool to check out Crater Lake, but I also really want to see the Oregon beaches.  We will definitely be visiting Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, but I would like to see some of the national parks that are around the cities.  Some of the parks I'm interested in (based on travel book reviews) include Olympic National Park, Mt. Rainier National Park, Mt. Hood National Forest, and we can get into all of the national parks for free with our America the Beautiful Pass.  But every day we spend in one of the parks, or driving to a park is a less day we have to explore the cities.

I can't wait to get some use out of our National Parks Pass

Here is my challenge to all of you, my friends, family, and blog readers who have some knowledge of the area: please share any amazing things to do, places to see and stay that I should consider on our journey.  


We will likely camp in some of the parks, and look for airbnb.com room rentals and hostels in many of the places where we go. We'd like to keep our itinerary fairly flexible so we can spend more time in places we love and avoid places where weather might dampen our experience (pun intended) as we go.

I look forward to your suggestions and can't wait to share our experience with you later in August and September!

For now, I'll leave you with the process for booking our flight:
For the past 7-9 weeks, I've been checking flight prices every Tuesday and Wednesday, looking for a good deal from Raleigh to San Francisco (and surrounding airports) and back from either Seattle or Portland. During most of those weeks, roundtrip flights were ~$499 per person.  About 2 weeks ago, that rate went up and I got nervous that we hadn't made any plans.  These past two weeks, I've struggled to not look at flights daily.  I think flight searches are monitored and can cause prices to go up, so I kept waiting until Tuesday to look again.  With Raleigh flights hovering in the $530-$550 range this week, I extended my search to other airports in the area.  This search proved fruitful when I found a flight from Charlotte to San Jose (near San Fran) for $135 and a flight from Portland back to Charlotte for $153.  That's right, the roundtrip flight came out to $385 per person. Even if we park at the Charlotte airport for 16 days, at $5 a day plus the cost of gas ($35 a tank), the $885 we'll spend flying through Charlotte is still less than it would have cost us to have one less day on our trip and fly out of Raleigh.

I will admit the process can be tedious, but being able to take a great trip every year is worth it and Colin and I are overdue since we didn't get to take a "vacation" to a new destination since 2010. That year we were so lucky to visit New Zealand/Australia for the Christmas and 2009-2010 New Year, and then use miles to go to Cabo San Lucas for a wedding just 3 months later!

Thank you all for reading the blog.  And remember to share with me your suggestions for our trip. I can't wait to hear them since so much of my joy comes from the planning!