I’ve written (ad nauseum) about the planning and cancellation of our trip to Vietnam you can read about it here, here, here, here, here, here and here, following my accident, which you can read about here. We planned on being gone for two weeks; with Vietnam postponed until 2013, we now have two extra weeks of vacation to use. We are taking one (plus) week in Europe, visiting the UK (Olympics), Spain and France.  We’ve got another week we need to use (technically we have more than a week to use, but we have a week we planned to use in Vietnam that we didn’t get to use).

MS has always been a big fan of the State and National Park System — and to be quite honest, I haven’t visited many. He also loves a nice road trip.  Me not so much. Let’s see if I can plan a trip that incorporates some of these things — passions of his but things that I haven’t really experienced.

Last year we spent a weekend at my alma mater (Linfield College) for the International Pinot Noir Celebration. This is a 3 day event full of wine tastings, winery tours and amazing food.  We didn’t opt for the full three day package last year, but we did attend the main event – the Salmon Bake on Saturday night, followed by the Sunday afternoon wine tasting.  I initially didn’t want to do the full weekend package, which includes lectures/seminars — I was afraid these lectures/seminars would be a little too stuffy and take away from the whole experience.  Two friends (EAD and JFB) did the full IPNC weekend last year and loved it.  We absolutely loved the Salmon Bake and the Sunday Tasting.  Let’s do the full weekend package this year!

I figured we could combine these two trip ideas (National Park Road Trip and IPNC) into a nice 10 day trip.  Since we’ve both got friends in Seattle that we’ve wanted to see for a while we figured we should tack this on too.  We are still working on the logistics for the whole week, but so far the plan is to spend the weekend at IPNC, the head down to Crater Lake and spend two nights. Then we’ll head to the Oregon coast, since I haven’t been there in probably 11 years, for a night.  We’ll then head up to Seattle with a day (no night though) in Portland. We’ll see some friends and visit Multnomah Falls.

I haven’t been to Crater Lake or Multnomah Falls before. I know, I am a bad Oregonian, eh?  I think we’ll stay in either Newport or Lincoln City — because we’re coming from Crater Lake and we don’t want to spend all day in the car. I think Cannon Beach is just a bit too far.

What else should we do on this 10 day road trip? Have you been to IPNC? Do you have any suggestions on alternate attractions around Crater Lake or on the way to Newport? What is your favorite destination along the Oregon Coast?

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