Roadtrip to Oregon!

We are in Ashland, Oregon tonight!  We have been driving for two days, and as you'll see, we are enjoying the drive.  Tomorrow we will continue to Portland to my sister Tracy's house.  Kelly did better last week with chemo.  We realized how important one of her premeds is.  It is the only one of her anti nausea meds that is pill form instead of IV.  The last couple times she took it, she threw up right after.  So this time, her nurse had given me one of the  pills to take home, and she took it before she got to the Infusion Center, before she could start feeling nauseous.  It really helped.  She did pretty good, right until she sat up to go home.  So she had a rough evening, and didn't feel very well the next day, but on Friday she was determined to go to school and she did.  She even walked to Chronic Tacos after school with Megan and some friends. (They had early dismissal, so they went out to lunch.) Our whole family went to a Christmas party that night for the staff of our dance studio.  All the girls (and adults!) had a fun time.

Then early the next morning, we left for Oregon.  We were excited to get on the road.  We had decided to take the scenic route instead of just going up I-5 the first day.  It was a beautiful day and we drove along a lot of the California coast.

The coast along Big Sur is just stunning.  We hadn't done this in a several years, so it was great to take this drive again.  This is definitely one the of prettiest drives we have ever taken.

Shannon and Murphy at one of our stops along Big Sur.  We stopped at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park and went for a walk overlooking this waterfall to the beach.  Did I mention we brought Murphy?  He is doing great on his first big car trip.  

We stopped along the coast where these gigantic elephant seals were sunning on the beach.  See the two big blobs on the beach?  They were huge!

This is the sunrise view from our hotel we stayed in the first night. After driving through  darling  downtown Carmel just as it was getting dark and the Christmas lights were coming on, we stayed on Monterey Bay and had an ocean view room!  It was beautiful.  It would have been a nice place to stay longer.  We could hear the seals barking in the harbor from our room.  This was a very nice hotel that doesn't allow pets.  Good thing Murphy is small and fits in an empty piece of luggage.  He was very well behaved.  Kevin didn't realize Murphy would be traveling with us when he made this reservation, or we would have chosen a hotel that allowed dogs.  Tonight in Ashland, we are in a hotel that does allow dogs.

The second day, we took a scenic drive from Monterey to San Francisco.  We drove around a little bit, but it was raining, and we wanted to get to Ashland before dark because we knew the weather might be bad ahead, so we didn't stop anywhere.  It was fun to see the pretty townhouses lining the streets of San Francisco.

This is  Shannon and Murphy taking a walk on one of our stops.  Notice his Christmas sweater.  It was quite chilly for this little Southern California dog.  He is a bit of a wimp.  He is really in for a shock when we get to Portland.  It is much colder there!

We saw our first snow close to Mt. Shasta!  It was snowing pretty hard for a while.  Luckily, that didn't last too long.  There is a lot of snow in Portland and we are excited to see it, but it is nice to not drive through it too much.  (Kevin and I both grew up in snowy climates, but we are sure not used to driving in it anymore.  We are so spoiled by our Southern  California weather!)
We are very excited to get to Portland tomorrow!  It will be so nice to be with family for Christmas. Diemers and Radfords, we are really looking forward to seeing you too!  We wish everyone a wonderful Christmas!