Amber's Travel and Life Adventures: Some more botanical photos

I just recently took an awesome road trip snaking from the Bay Area to Mendocino, the northern coast and redwoods of California, then over to Oregon--Grants Pass, Eugene, some amazing Cascade mountain roads, a hot springs and then up to Seattle. This first photo is of the beautiful California Coast from the passenger's seat--it's not the best photo or the best view I've ever seen, but let me assure you, we took in some amazing vistas!

We then stopped for some lunch north of Eureka, California (little known fact: "Eureka!" is California's State Motto). I was taking a photo of these stumps and realized you'd never be able to tell how big they were unless we were in the photo. That me and my friend, Kath on the left.

Driving on such beautiful roads is somewhat slow, so we only made it over the border to Oregon on our second day. We camped right off the freeway in a crappy little RV park. However, Oregon and its greenery still impressed. There is SO MUCH awesome moss and lichen in this place! This was a beautiful flowering crab apple or cherry or something with lots of cool stuff growing on its branches;

There are also lots of rhododendrons, including many Azaleas. To put to rest the argument of what makes the two different, Rhododendron is the genus (of which there are many many different varieties). Azalea is one of the varieties with a distinctive smaller leaf structure and single flowers. Therefore, all Azaleas are Rhododendrons, but not all Rhododendrons are Azaleas. This beautiful specimen was right outside the latrine at the campground:

Then we drove north to Eugene, turned east for awhile along the beautiful McKenzie river and northeast into the Cascades. The roads were newly paved, and signs kept reminding us that was "Thanks to the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act." There is a lot of national forest camping and I hope to return someday to explore it more. We made a quick stop at Bagby Hotsprings just a little Southeast of Portland. On our hike in, there were a lot of amazing botanical wonders, but I'm only sharing a couple with you here. A mossy, mossy, mossy (probably not lichen?) branch and some unidentified white flowers that were very pretty and smelled nice.