In the morning, there was a knock at the door around 7am. It was the owner of the lodge. He pointed at a car in the parking lot and asked us, if it was ours. In half opened eyes we said “yes that silver car is ours”. He informed us that the trunk of our car is open. Our eyes got completely wide open now to look at the car. And oh yes, the trunk of our car was about 1/3rd open. We panicked.

Running towards the parking lot we inspected the car of a moment and concluded that it was not a break in but rather Aman forgot to close the trunk completely at night. Everything was in place and without any worries we walked back to our room to doze off for some more time.

All our tiredness of last day was now gone and we felt fresh. After getting ready we had a quick breakfast in our room today. Seattle was not far now. It was 9:30am, if we drove for 8 hours non stop we could reach Seattle by 6pm in the evening. Since we had time, and its been 2 long years, we thought of meeting our friends in Hillsboro for dinner on our way.

With a positive reply to meet from our friends, Sangeetha and Vishal in Hillsboro, I started driving on I-5 north. Its been completely 3 days when I last drove (except the last night 30 mins of drive). It was a relaxed day, we didn’t wanted to visit any place specifically. So, we thought of doing some shopping in Oregon from the famous Woodburn premium outlets (after all Oregon is a tax free state).

Just after leaving the lodge in Mt Shasta city, we parked our car at a rest area. I wanted to check if we could see any view of Mt Shasta from there so that I could take pictures. There was a view, but not very interesting. I peeped in through a fence between the rest area and a small airport’s runway and looked at Mt Shasta standing tall.

After that we drove for most of the day with just one stop for gas. We reached Woodburn premium outlets at around 4pm in the afternoon. Both of us not being shop-alcoholic shopped for only the things we felt the need for, things we lost during our trip. Spending two hours at the outlet we started driving towards Sangeetha’s place in Beaverton, OR.

We reached Sangeetha’s house at 6:30pm. After chit chatting for a while we started to find a place for dinner. I was hungry for Indian food – Roti Sabzi Dal. So we all mutually agreed to go Swagath, a fine dining restaurant in Hillsboro, OR

Vishal came directly to the restaurant from work. Aman and me shared our stories of the road trip  with both of them. We were talking a lot and were not able to order food fast. Finally, we ordered a lot of food and ate all of it on our talks 🙂 The food at Swagath was very yummy and filled my hunger satisfactorily of so many days. Since it was not enough for us, we all decided to go Coldstone Creamery for eating deserts. At the Coldstone we all again ate too much, 2 big scoops of icecream per person. It took us almost an hour to finish up.

We decided to stay the night at Sangeetha’s place and go for a hike in hike to Dog mountain in the morning to see the wild flowers with Sangeetha and Vishal. Oh yes, we are in now in Pacific Northwest 🙂

Summary of the Day – Miles travelled: 375 ; Hours driven: 6; Time zone change: From PT to PT; States crossed: California and Oregon; Cities visited: Hillsboro.