View from Cox Bay LookoutThis was definitely a spontaneous trip quickly thrown together, but sometimes these are the best kind.

We were supposed to go to Burning Man this year, something that Herb has wanted to do since the 90s. In fact, we even had highly-coveted tickets. However, I’m not exactly the “Burner” type and I hate the heat, so about a month before it was to start, I told Herb I didn’t think I would survive 10 days in the desert heat. Knowing I would be miserable - and therefore he would be - he agreed to return the tickets and get a refund, which we did.

This was all before Hurricane Hillary hit the West and basically turned the Black Rock Desert in Nevada where Burning Man is held into a muddy, slippery mess where people couldn’t get in or out. It was the major headline in the news. I felt pretty smug about our early selling of tickets, as people weren’t able to even give them away anymore. How prescient of us.

Sunset along the Lighthouse LoopHowever, in return for Herb canceling our Burning Man adventure, I agreed to replace it with a desert trip - Herb loves the desert. The choices were either trailering our boat to Lake Powell or a 4WD trip through Utah. But the deserts were still a mess from the Hurricane. Death Valley was closed and didn’t plan to reopen until mid-October.

So, I suggested a trip up the coast to Vancouver Island, a place we had never been to and had always wanted to go. I quickly did some research and threw together what I thought was a pretty awesome itinerary.

Parliament BuildingsIn retrospect, we should have flown to Seattle and rented a car and started from there. Instead, we drove 860 miles from Santa Rosa to the Port Angeles ferry (both there and back), stopping to do things along the way.

Much of the things we wanted to do along the way were thwarted by the horrible smoky conditions in most of Oregon, but we made due with other options.

We would end the trip with a week in Bishop, California where our son and daughter-in-law live, a world-class destination in its own right.