A Road Trip In A Rush: Redwoods Wines And Speeding Fines En Route From Seattle To Napa

A road trip in a rush: Redwoods, wines and speeding fines en route from Seattle to Napa
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Published: 20:29 AEDT, 8 July 2012 | Updated: 23:22 AEDT, 9 July 2012






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So there I was, driving south on Interstate 5, from Seattle to Portland, in a large, chocolate-brown Bentley.

Unusually for https://weareliferuiner.com/korean-chocolate-milk-how-to-make/ me, I was multi-tasking.

This meant that not only was I driving, I was also drinking a cappuccino, listening to Hot Chip on the iPod, shouting at my two daughters, and observing my wife getting increasingly angry at the satnav.
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She tends to treat the satnav in the same way I treat the dishwasher, namely she punches away at it repeatedly with one finger in the hope that the machine will somehow respond to whatever it is she wants.

On this occasion, her desired destination turned out to be SOUTHWEST M*R$^@SON STREET, PORTLAND, OREGON.

Unsurprisingly, the satnav had no idea what she was talking about.

Just as I was about to multi-task a little bit more, by asking her if she wanted any help (foolish, I know, but sometimes these things have to be done), I was flagged down by an officer in an unmarked police car and fined $249 - about £160 - for driving 27mph above the limit.
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This was the start of an extremely expensive day. A few hours later, and having finally found SOUTHWEST M*R$^@SON STREET in downtown Portland (which had been cunningly disguised as Southwest Morrison Street), I had to pay $99 (£63) for an examination at a walk-in surgery after contracting an ear infection on the flight from London two days previously.

Added to this was $50 (£30) for the prescription, and $30 (£20) for the frozen yogurt my family devoured as they waited for me to be examined by a Korean nurse.
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The previous day hadn't ended spectacularly well either.

It started out OK, as we mooched around downtown Seattle, investigating the fish market on the harbour, walking between the big department stores and drinking coffee in the world's first Starbucks. There are now so many Starbucks here that Seattle is the only place in the world where they actually open Starbucks inside other Starbucks.

In the afternoon we drove over to the Fremont area, a lovely district full of retro stores, vintage clothes shops and second-hand bookshops.

I was in the basement of one of these shops, deliberating over whether to buy a jukebox, when I heard my wife walk in and exclaim to the owner: 'I've lost my husband. Have you seen him? Tall, dark, balding, pink jumper . . .' Honestly, is this all I now am - all I have been reduced to in her eyes?
A tall, bald man in a camp sweater?

But I did my best not to allow this affront to spoil our enjoyment of Seattle - and in fact we had a blast, with the downtown area busy enough to keep us occupied for a few days before we started heading south.

We were also blessed by great weather.

We had fun in Portland, too, where it was also unusually sunny for April. We had a great time in Powell's, the best and biggest second-hand bookshop in the world, and enjoyed looking at the Mark Rothko exhibition at the Portland Art Museum and bouncing between coffee shops and interior stores.

You only have to spend a short while in Seattle and Portland to discover how most people here like to spend their leisure time - buying furniture and drinking coffee.

Or begging, of course, as there are now more down-and-outs on the West Coast than ever before.

Actually, there are now more down-and-outs in the US full-stop, and I suppose being out here is a lot more fun than living on the streets in New York, Chicago or Detroit.

Twenty years ago, Seattle gave birth to grunge, and it retains a youthful feel, one that manifests itself in the restaurants, shops and markets.

Portland is not dissimilar. It has been called the place where young people go to retire, and it certainly is laid-back. Considering how much coffee people drink around here, you might expect them to be as hyperactive as New Yorkers, but they couldn't be more chilled.
Steady as you go: The speed limits on the west coast can be low (left), and the police (right) distinctly observant


Our family loves US road trips and we've been doing them for years, always in California.

Having done most of southern California, this time we decided to fly to