Journey across the Pacific Coast

This was one of the most exciting thrilling and tiresome journey ever I had taken. But it was worth many ways. The journey was planned from San Diego to Seattle. San Diego California is at the South-West tip of US near to the Mexico border city of Tijuana and Seattle is on the North-West tip of US, near to the Canadian city of Vancouver in British Colombia. Most of the route is straight forward without twists and turns, straight from San Diego to Seattle and one has to to catch the Interstate -5 all through the journey. But still we went into some trouble due to the GPS system errors and sometimes due to our bad decisions. But still overall it was a pleasant journey without much troubles.


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The total journey is of almost 20 hrs by car. A total distance of 1256.2 miles (2021 kms approximately)was covered in three days taking two breaks , one at Coalinga in California and another one in Portland, Oregon. This is almost like cutting US into two across the pacific coast.



We started by evening around 4 PM from San Diego and reached Los Angeles in around 2.5 hrs. As we cruised thru the I-5 on the right hand side we could see the Camp Pendalton which is a US Marine Base. On the left side you will be having the Pacific ocean shores. Across Los Angeles we had to go thru traffic rush so had to slow down. Cutting across the Los Angeles city thru the Interstate - 5 route was a hardship but we could compensate it during the journey from Los Angeles to Coalinga.
After Los Angeles its a journey thru less populated areas and some portion is thru forest area. It was dark around by the time we crossed this section but still figured out that we are surrounded by mountains. About 11 PM we reached Coalinga and stayed overnight at the hotel. We started early the next day (5.00 AM) from Coalinga.

The route from Coalinga towards Portland is scenic and beautiful. We were lucky that weather was also sunny throughout our journey. The places from Coalinga to Sacremento was having lot of herd farms. We could see many horses and Cows grazing in the meadows surrounding hilly regions. Lot of cultivations are done in this region and its very scenic to see this part of the countryside.


Most of the places are of hilly terrain and was covered with sparkling white snow. The routes were thru the snowy mountains and we saw numerous water bodies surrounding all through the region. Our GPS made wrong calculation of the route and we had to circle around the Shasta Lake region. But it was like a boon than a suffering since this gave us chance to see the beautiful mountainous region surrounding Shasta Lake We took a break just near to Portland , Oregon at Willonville.

Next day we started the journey from Portland and downtown Portland was full of cris-cross over-bridges and even God will get confused which way to take to the destination. Once we crossed the Portland part it was again scenic journey but there were no snow covered mountains. We reached Renton in 2 hrs time and we reached Redmond near the Microsoft HeadQuarters in another one hour and we stopped the journey for the day there.