2 Key Travelers

Date: February 2022

As usual, we woke up bright and early to get this adventure and travel day going. We started with a morning walk at the Sundial Bridge. We were so eager to start our day with a walk that the botanical gardens portion had not opened yet. In addition, the bridge is primarily made of glass and it was covered in the morning’s dew which made for a fun challenge to start the day.

Near the Sundial bridge are a few walking paths around the Sacramento River and a botanical garden. I could not use the Sundial to determine how long we were walking in the area because I learned before the trip that it is only accurate a few hours per day. We were in a bit of a time crunch because we needed to be at our next location by 9:15ish in order to purchase walk-up tickets for our next stop.

We learned about the next stop because I purchased the Roadside America app. Lake Shasta Caverns is a historic natural location that people can explore with a guided tour. We were able to get the last 2 tickets to view the caverns. After a long walk down to the lake, we hopped on a boat for a short trip across the lake. Fortunately, the other side of the lake had shuttle buses to take us to the caverns. The caverns were beautiful and I cannot remember the last time I climb up and down so many stairs in my life, but it was worth every steps. Our tour guide, Cave Dave, was absolutely fantastic and if you get the chance to go the Shasta Caverns, you should find a way to get on his tours. At the end of the tour and journey back to the car, we actually took the extra steps of using the wheelchair ramp instead of the stairs, which tells you how many stairs are in the cavern.

We continued our road trip by stopping at a view area to eat our lunchables. If I had been paying attention, we could have driven 15 more minutes and ate in the town of Shasta. We needed to get some gas and we spend some time doing some geocaching and shopping before heading Coos Bay.

Our drive from Shasta to Coos Bay seemed to be much longer than we thought but it was mostly due to having a full morning of activities and utilizing the afternoon/evening for driving. There were a couple of challenges before we could call it a day. The first challenge was driving through rural Oregon and finding a restaurant that was open. After passing small town after small town, we finally found a Kozy Kitchen. I had the BBQ meatloaf sandwich and Tina had the Oregon chicken sandwich. Both sandwiches were good and, once again, we didn’t have room for dessert.

The second challenge was finding the AirBnB in the dark. The perk of the location of the house was that its remoteness, but the lack of street lights made it hard to see the house numbers. With the assistance of a helpful neighbor, we found our temporary home for the weekend.

Day 1 was a typical 2KeyTravelers adventure; a full day of sightseeing and driving. Days 2 and 3 will have similar trends.

2Key Traveler Sundial Recommendation: Open
2Key Traveler Lake Shasta Caves Recommendation: Key
2Key Traveler Kozy Kitchen Recommendation: Unlocked (Open if there are no other choices)
2Key Traveler AirBnB Recommendation: Key