Beken's 9 western state roadtrip.
 

Starting from Vancouver BC,
my roadtrip took me through Oak Harbor, WA to the Port Townsend Ferry where we went around the Olympic Peninsula visiting Hurricane Ridge, and Olympic National Park. We drove down the Washington Coast bypassing Seattle to cross over to Oregon at Astoria. We overnighted at Seaside Oregon, just north of Cannon Beach. Then we we drove down the Oregon Coast, visiting the Dunes of Oregon and continued along the coast to the Redwoods of California and stopping at Sonoma Valley for a wine tasting event. We visited friends in San Francisco, Chinatown and saw a concert at Yoshi's Jazz and Sushi bar. The next day saw us drive from San Francisco down I-5 to LA and then East past Palms Springs, getting lost looking for Joshua Tree National Park, and then to Phoenix AZ. We missed the Suns game because we arrived too late. We played a round of golf in Phoenix. Then headed up to Sedona for lunch and then past Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon where we met up with a group of MINI motorers from PSMINIs (Puget Sound WA). We spent a day at the Grand Canyon then drove via Route 66 and Hoover Dam to Las Vegas to attend AMVIV. At AMVIV, we took part in a drive to Death Valley, and the Strip Cruise. I won $13 on a $1 investment in the penny slot machines. As well played a round of golf at the resort that hosted AMVIV. After AMVIV, we drove to St George and played another round of golf. I did manage to par at least 1 hole at every course we played but also fell victim to ball eating shrubs, bushes, gulleys and gorges at St George. I lost 9 golfballs in that round. Then we continued to Zion National Park (stunning scenery), and Bryce Canyon National Park. One of my alltime favourite motoring roads that I have ever driven is now the Escalante Staircase. We drove that along with visiting Kodachrome Basin state park on our way to Salt Lake City. After Salt Lake, we made a trek to Yellowstone Park. I picked up a stone chip on my windshield and we pulled into a small town to get that fixed. Davis Glass in Temonton UT charged me $16 (taxes included) to fill the crack and send me on my way. A fill like that costs $90+ in BC. My co-driver managed to get pulled over by Idaho's finest. Turned out it was not his first time paying Idaho taxes. We got to Yellowstone and ran into .... snow. Lots of it. After not having much success hoping the snow would melt, we decided to head home. We were going to head for Canada, but ran into more snow as we approached Glacier National Park so we decided to stay on the interstates and headed for Spokane via Montana and Coeur d'alene ID. We got to Spokane pretty early (for those who don't know, the speed limit in Montana is posted as "reasonable and prudent"). We went to Yakima Valley for some wine tasting, then decided to go home via Leavenworth and through Stevens Pass. I would recommend a drive to Leavenworth for any MINI club. We hit a blizzard in Stevens Pass but made it through okay. Anybody want to recommend tires for me now?

Trip pictures are currently slowly being added to this set. So please feel free to visit this flickr set often the next few weeks.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/beken/s...7623772545682/

Great Pics. Beken...Thank you for sharing, it looked like quite a Trip!! :) :thumbsup:

Enjoyed the photos of your trip, you did an excellent job of documenting where you went and what you saw. Many of the places you filmed I've been to, it was nice to be reminded of how they look. I was particularly impressed with the coverage of the Grand Canyon, what a scenic wonder that is. Makes me want to visit it again after 10 years.

Thanks for your comments. I have a few more pictures to post up, but they were taken with a film camera and I have a couple of frames to go still before I finish the film.

It was a lot of driving and I am so happy my MINI held up so well.

Just reading your travelogue a month late. That is truly a dream trip done in 9 days. I've covered most of that route in bits and pieces for work, but it took years. The west coast is blessed with such a variation of terrain and choices of roadway to motor on. To get off the beaten track just go east/west on most any twisty two lane and explore. My favorite north/south route is the southern Oregon coast and into the Calif. redwoods, right out of Sunset Magazine. The desert has it's wide horizon attractions too. I am curious about your fuel mileage. There IS a lot of heavy pedal country on your trip so it's understandable if it's not the best that can be done:)

Thanks for your comment. I was averaging somewhere between 450 to 510 kms per tank. We were running close to a tank of gas per day. Not sure what that works out to in miles per gallon but I suspect it's somewhere over 30.

Love the trip! You have inspired me to post a bit about my own trip I took last year! Just 8 states though, but still up the coast and it was awesome.