Thanks for the advice, offers, and encouragement! Currently writing this from beautiful (?) Crescent City, CA - it took me 30 years but I finally made it to California. Redwoods are unbelievable - so glad to get a chance to wander around these woods, absolutely nothing like it back east. Overall, Oregon truly blew us away with its' diverse beauty; we had the hardest time deciding how much time to spend on the coast versus the mountains, finally spent a few great lazy days working down the coast from Newport (much better than Rhode Island's snobby version) hiking and taking in the coastal views. Good stuff.
Right now our plan is to meander down to the Bay area - my snarky city comments aside, we have people to see there and it is one of the few places that does in fact actually interest me personally. Afterwards we plan to cut over to Yosemite - yes, we are missing out on places like Lassen and Lake Tahoe, unfortunately weather has become a factor. We have found that 20 degree nights is about as low as we want to go, and while we are willing to suffer temporarily for a bucket list place like Yosemite, we are going to try to bias southward for a while. After Yosemite we are thinking Kings Canyon and Sequoia - after that is a hard decision on whether to cut south for balmy weather, friends in the LA and SD areas, and Joshua Tree or cut east to Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce, etc.
There is just too much to see out here - we are trying to keep our perspective and be glad for what we can see, but it is still going to hurt to leave so many places unseen. Absolutely going to step up the brew tours on colder days as we go forward!