Planning San Fran to Seattle in 8 Days

Hello all!

Two and half years ago I received a lot of great help from this forum when planning a cross country road trip. Mainly, some good advice that I needed to calm down- I was being way to ambitious trying to see everything. We pared it down to a fantastic trip and now I’m planning on seeing some of the sights we had to cut out. This time I only have a week to spend, so we’re flying to the PNW and renting a car.

We have eight days to get from San Francisco to Seattle. We’ve only booked a hotel for our first night, so the remainder of the trip is flexible. My rough plan is to see the redwoods, the Oregon coast, Columbia River Gorge, some of Olympic NP, and Seattle. Here’s what I’ve mapped out:

So we're planning on flying into Oakland on Friday from Atlanta, arriving at 2:00 pm. We'll pick up our rental and drive over to our hotel in San Francisco.

We're not planning on seeing a lot of San Francisco- maybe we'll see Fisherman's Warf or Chinatown, but I imagine the jet lag/time difference will have us turning in pretty early.

Saturday we'll get up and drive north on the 101 out of SF via the Golden Gate bridge, stop and take our pictures on the far side. Our goal is the Avenue of the Giants. So we'll grab lunch in Leggett and take our time among the redwoods.
I figured we'd stop for the night around Eureka.

Day three, Sunday, we'll begin on the Newton Drury Parkway as we head north. I planned to go as far as Bandon, stopping along the way whenever the view looks good.

Day four, Monday, we continue north along the coast, making our way to Waldport before taking Hwy 34 east to I-5. We'll try to get as close to Portland as possible. Maybe we’ll stop around Albany, depends on when and where we get tired.

Day five, Tuesday, was planned for the Columbia River Gorge. The wildfires have put a damper on that plan. It looks like the Historic Columbia River highway will be closed, along with many of the waterfall access trails. We plan to go east on I84 there, cross the river and come back to Portland on Hwy 14/Washington side. Hopefully, we'll still have some nice views that make the drive worthwhile. That evening we'll stay in Portland.

Wednesday we'll go north by I5, hit up the Johnson Ridge Observatory for a view of Mt St Helens, then head north again towards Olympic National Park. We'll go as far as the day allows- probably stopping at the least in Tacoma.

Day seven: we'll head to Olympic NP to Hurricane Ridge, drive up and hike around. We plan to head back towards the north side of Seattle that evening via the Kingston ferry.

Our last full day- Friday- will be spent in Seattle before we drop our car off and fly home Saturday morning.

Does this seem a doable itinerary for some of these PNW highlights?
Anything I should consider?

Oh, for reference's sake- we leave this Friday (woohoo!)

Hello and welcome back to RTA !

It sounds like a lovely trip and although it will keep you busy with many great sights, it looks manageable. If the Historic Columbia river Gorge is not accessible you could consider heading to Mt Rainier NP, perhaps at the 'expense' of Mt St Helens as well. So many great choices and so little time ! You could actually just continue up the coast and try and get a couple of days in Olympic NP and visit Hoh rain forest. You will have a great time no matter what you decide.

You know there's only 1 restaurant in Leggett - the Peg House. It's a burger joint.

In Albany, I can recommend the Phoenix Inn & Suites Albany. We stayed there this past summer. It has a nice indoor pool, and the suite we had -- a king -- was lovely. Our only real "complaint", if it could be called that, was the lack of lights in the "kitchen" area (which had a small fridge, coffeemaker, microwave, a small sink, and a counter-top). There were a couple of places to eat just down the road, but we didn't try them -- with that kind of set up in the "kitchen", we ate "in". It was around $100 for the night, non-weekend rate.

I feel badly for you about the fires, but we had issues with those this summer, too. The smoke totally obliterated a view of Hurricane Ridge (Olympic National Park). I could have cried! Hopefully that won't happen to you.


Donna

One of my favorite destinations is Oregon. The nature of Oregon is simply amazing, this route has everything - beautiful landscapes, forest paths, mountain rivers, waterfalls. There are signs and information boards, parking spaces and recreation areas everywhere. There are many tourists, but there is no crowd, everything is correctly organized.
One of the amazing places and one of the main attractions of Oregon is Crater Lake National Park, the highlight of which is the Crater Lake itself, which gave the name to the entire park. This place is both mysterious and beautiful. It is worth visiting without doubts!