A landscape photographer's tour

Lakeport, CA to San Francisco

Keith's travels in California and the Pacific Northwest - April-May 2007

This photo-diary covers a driving trip up the coast from San Francisco in April/May 2007 along the Pacific highway

Now I've returned, I've included some of my travel photography from this trip in the main Gallery, and updated any info that may be of help to people who come across these pages as part of their planning for driving tours of the California and Oregon coasts, looking for places to stay or sites to visit.

It's a great place for a vacation, or just a road trip up the Pacific coast to photograph some of the scenery. If you've any questions about the hotels/inns/motels where I stayed, then please do feel free to drop me a line.

There are other photo travel diaries covering trips to:
Washington and Oregon in Fall 2007 and Colorado in Spring 2006 and Fall 2008

Daily pages 19th April: UK to San Francisco 20th April: San Francisco to Jenner, CA 21st April: Jenner, CA to Fort Bragg, CA 22nd April: Fort Bragg, CA to Eureka, CA 23rd April; Eureka, CA to Crescent City, CA 24th April: Crescent City, CA to Bandon, OR 25th April: Bandon, OR to Florence, OR 26th April: Florence, OR 27th April: Florence, OR to Pacific City, OR 28th April: Cape Kiwanda, OR 29th April: Pacific City, OR to Cannon Beach,OR 30th April: Cannon Beach, OR to Shasta, CA 1st May: Shasta, CA to Lakeport, CA 2nd May: Lakeport, CA to San Francisco 3rd May: San Francisco to UK

What's the Californian weather like? What's the Oregon weather like?

National Weather Service radar (Pacific Northwest) What are the roads like? (CA)

Why not create your own customised A3 size wall calendar from some of Keith Cooper's photographs. Choose your own images for your own custom printed calendar - 12 months starting any month of the year. Choose from nearly a hundred images - many not yet in our main gallery.

An early start from Lakeport. At least the sun is out.

Bright early sun at the Anchorage Motel

You can see some of the overnight rain on the windscreen (or 'windshield' to US readers ;-)

a quick detour to the lake to see a much calmer lake surface today.

Heading(west) up over the hills towards Hopland, there are some very nice looking oak forests.

However, just over the highest point, the weather changes very quickly (note rain drops)

just high cloud though, as the road winds back down again

Here, it's back on Hwy 101 heading south

and west again - suddenly it's more like driving through parts of France, with vinyards everywhere

I'm following the Russian river back to Jenner on the coast, where I stayed at the beginning of the trip.

I stopped off for a coffee in Guerneville.

Lots of people standing around waiting for work. Judging by the looks I got walking past them earlier when carrying a camera, I'd suspect some might not be entirely legal. That said, the last time I had a camera and a big obvious lens at Leicester market, there were a surprisingly large number of people 'working' who were not too keen having a camera pointed in their general direction

I popped into the local safeway to pick up a few items...

The blur is Barbara (below) hastily packing my stuff for me, expressing disbelief that we don't have people to pack our bags for us back in the UK...

The blue item in the bag being one of the odd items (Oreos) that I was requested to bring back from the US.

The Russian river is a nice drive to the coast.

At least it's not raining :-)

This B/W shot below actually shows a bit too much noise in the darker parts of the sky. It's a combination of the quick conversion I've done (using CS3 B/W adjustments) and the JPEG compression

There are lots of wild flowers all along the cliff-tops

and after a while the sun came out, giving a deep colour to parts of the sea

Not a bad day to finish off my visit to the States :-)

I stopped off in Pt. Reyes Station to have another coffee and check my email.

Coffee at Toby's where I was told there was WiFi connectivity - unfortunately no-one knew the password. However there was an open network in a business further into the shed. It's the first time I've checked my mail drinking coffee andsitting on some sacks of fertiliser...

In the picture, Brian, also using a Mac :-)

And so, back across the Golden Gate bridge - much clearer view today.

I'm back at the Millwood Inn, in Millbrae, now waiting to head off in the morning.

19th April >> 20th April >> 21st April >> 22nd April >> 23rd April >> 24th April >> 25th April >> 26th April>>27h April>>28th April>>29th April>>30th April>>1st May>>2nd May>>3rd May