Just for fun, I’m launching What If Knit’s first contest. Here’s what you have to do: guess the mileage for our road trip. The prize: your choice of two of these five skeins of Oregon yarn, which I purchased at the Latimer Quilt and Textile Center in Tillamook, Oregon.
Just leave a comment on my blog between now and next Sunday at noon, Pacific Daylight Time, with your mileage estimate and yarn choices. The yarns are 100% wool in skeins of 50-75 yards each, so two should be enough to work up a hat or a pair of wrist warmers. (To identify your choices, just assume the skeins are numbered 1-5 from left to right.) The prize will go to the person who comes closet to guessing our actual mileage.
By the way, your submissions may not show up in the Comments section immediately. Do not worry! We do get them all; it just sometimes takes a little while.
Here’s a hint: We began our trip in Napa, California; from there our route went through Ashland, and east to Crater Lake, on to Portland via Roseburg; we next crossed northern Oregon to Cannon Beach, and finished by taking Highway 101 South back to Oakland. (We did a bit of tourist-y driving, as well, exploring the Columbia Gorge, driving around Portland, and making a quick jog up to Seaside.)
To inspire you as you work on your estimates, here are some of the sights we enjoyed during the first half of our trip (all photos courtesy of Melissa).
Castle Crags State Park, California
We’d like to make this park our destination for a camping trip sometime soon.
Outdoor Quilt Exhibit, near Ashland
Crater Lake, Oregon
Crater Lake’s chipmunks are completely unintimidated by the paparazzi.
Accustomed as we are to California’s summer weather, we marveled at the snowy patches that linger year-round at Crater Lake.
Umpqua River
Clearwater Falls was one of our first stops along the Umpqua. The falls aren’t high, but the dense green colors and wild spill of water charmed us.
At Toketee Falls we hiked a short, steep trail, leading to the falls. We could hear the falls during the entirety of our walk, but only caught sight of them as we rounded a final curve.
We spotted this ghostly plant on our walk back to the car at Toketee Falls.
Columbia Gorge
My knitting instincts led me straight to some locally spun yarn in the gift shop at the Columbia Gorge Vista House.
We took a short hike past a waterfall along the Columbia Gorge and continued on under this bridge into misty, silent, green woods.
We took another short hike up to the bridge at Multnomah Falls.
For the moment, I’m off to bury my face in the new Harry Potter—my first stop at home was Bookshop Santa Cruz—but I have lots more to share: scenery from the second half of our trip, roadside oddities and attractions, and yarn shop reports. Stay tuned.