Leaf litter: West Coast

Heading south on the Sea To Sky Highway dumped me out in Vancouver BC in late afternoon. I crossed into the US and camped in a stand of trees on the outskirts of the Seattle metro area. The next morning I passed through Seattle (I'm used to unpopulated Canada, get me out of here!) and down to Olympia to meet up with a couple of friends who live there. I was to pick up some more friends at SeaTac that night, but with the day to kill we went down to Mt St Helens for a little while:

After picking up friends and spending the night in Olympia, we all set off southward. Picked up the last member of our party in Roseburg OR, which made a group of 6 who all went to school together back at Arkansas Tech, then we headed to Crater Lake. I had hoped to make it in time for sunset, but it was an hour after dark when we got there and the light was really difficult. I gave it a try, anyways:

We camped along the Rogue River near a nice gorge, which we checked out in the morning:

Then we used a closed backroad to head over a beautiful mountain pass and get out to the coast, where we planned to watch the solar eclipse, but our plans were foiled by heavy fog. We saw just the beginning of the eclipse before the fog blocked out the Sun completely. So instead we walked down to the beach and explored the tide pools.

After a tasty dinner at a greasy seafood shack on the docks, we found a campsite in the woods next to the beach. The next morning we all walked down to the beach to explore more. Looking back up at the highway 101 bridge from the beach:

The 3 of our party who lived in Oregon and Washington headed back north, and the rest of us continued south to Redwoods National Park. Though it was still overcast and drizzling, we stopped to hike at Fern Canyon, used as a filming location in Jurassic Park 2: