Vacation Report - Day 5

I’ve told you before that riding with Jean mostly meant watching her horse’s tail disappear over the horizon. The short little lady sometimes needed a step up onto her horse, but once she was mounted she was gone. She is a high octane lady with strong opinions and lots of grit. My kind of gal. When she was my age, she finished the Tevis. That’s an endurance ride that’s 100 miles, from Squaw Valley to Auburn, in less than 24 hours.

It has been very hard for this self-reliant dynamo to be dependent on a walker to get around and on other people to help her. Boy, do I know how that feels! And I’m pretty much a gutless wonder in comparison.


I wore my lavender blouse just for Jean. When she rode, she was the Lavender Lady. She not only had lavender clothes, she had a lavender bridle, halter, and saddle pad. It’s still her favorite color.


Jean has some great help. Her caregiver Maggie is an ex-teacher and a thespian. She’s fun.


Even the dog is fun. This is Ralph, a former pound puppy. He’s devoted to Debbie, but he’s willing to let the rest of us think we’re his friends.

Jean and I took my car and explored the peninsula. This is the northern tip, just past Oysterville. You could park and walk to the beach, but we didn’t try that.


Back at the far south end of the peninsula, at Cape Disappointment, is Fort Canby. It was activated in 1864 and deactivated in 1947.


There is a Lewis and Clark museum here. Jean pushed her walker up and down the hill to the museum the same way she used to ride, full steam ahead, don’t use the brakes. (I wore the brakes out twice on my walker, and I live on flat ground.)

We found this beautiful big rhododendron in the town of Ilwaco. I hobbled out and stood next to it in the drizzle and Jean took the picture.


I got to stay another night in the comfy bed, and left in the morning. I decided that as soon as I got home I’d pack up my pedal thing and send it to Jean. Maybe it would help her legs like it did mine.


As I got in the car, I spied one of Rudy’s bright neck feathers I’d been carrying around. I left it tucked into a bush. If the sun ever shines, its bright blueness against the yellow Scotch Broom will bring a smile to whoever discovers it. If not, it made ME smile.

Vacation Report - Day 4

Luna is her name. Thank you, anonymous person.

Luna and Rufus are both great dogs, they both get A’s for good manners, friendly attitudes, and being soft and cuddly. (High on my list of requirements.) Somehow their names don’t fit. How did your dogs get their names, Sarah? Maybe if I knew that I could remember them.

Cort and Sarah’s house is in an older part of Corvallis that has big trees and feels comfortable. The houses don’t all look the same. It reminds me of the place where Calvin and Hobbes live. It’s in a city neighborhood with sidewalks, but there are empty fields nearby for adventures. It seems to be a great place for kids to play. Which is a good thing because Sarah and Cort are expecting one.

Their huge back yard has a well-tended garden that provided tasty lettuce for salad at dinner. Lettuce doesn’t grow well in the hot climate here at home, I'm envious. There were some odd things growing in the yard, too, like gooseberries and a hop vine.

Sarah helped me plot my course for the next day. I got to sleep in the guest house, then left early. I route was north on I-5 ato Hwy. 26 just south of Portland. This took me back through the woods toward the coast again. It was still foggy and I still didn’t see the ocean. But I did find something fun in Seaside:


A Liz Claiborne outlet store. I got a couple of blouses, which meani I’d have enough clean clothes to be on the road two more days!

The sun broke through as I got to Astoria, just in time to see this imposing bridge hanging up there in the sky.


When you get to the top, the bridge stretches out across the Columbia river. Way far.


I couldn’t see the other side because of the fog, so just went across on blind faith. I mean, where are the cars coming from the other direction? How do I know this thing doesn’t just dead end in the ocean somewhere? And it’s pretty close to the water down there, couldn’t a tsunami go right over the top of it? Geez, I hate bridges.

The Astoria bridge is very long, it seemed like 10 miles. I’m sure it wasn’t. At the end of it, on the Washington side, it did dead end. You could turn right toward Dismal Nitch (sp) or left toward Cape Disappointment. Oh my, where has my dear friend settled? I was hoping Jean doesn’t have a neighbor named Ichabod Crane.

I turned left and ended up on Long Beach Peninsula. It’s 3 miles wide and 28 miles long, with the ocean on one side and a saltwater bay on the other. It's heavily wooded, though, and in the fog you just think you're in a forest. My directions said turn left on 272nd street. It never occurred to me the streets would start at 1. I had a long ways to go.

It was a beautiful drive, through the forest with bright yellow Scotch Broom and lots of huge rhododendrons blooming. I made my turn off 272nd and onto a side street. The pavement very quickly ran out.




Uh oh. I hoped there was somewhere to turn around. In a hurry, if I had to. There was a very nice modular home just beyond this sign, though and this sign in the window made me laugh.


But I hadn’t brought Bob.

No one was home. So I called Jean. I was following old directions, I was at her previous home. I needed to turn around and go about halfway back down the peninsula to find the new one.

I finally did. It was a nice cozy house that Jean’s son David built. He is a building contractor. Jean was in her special chair. This is her view through the huge window that looks across the deck and out onto the bay.


The bay, I learned, is very shallow. When the tide goes out it leaves a mudflat where clams and oysters are farmed.

You may wonder, as I did, how evergreen trees and grass can grow so close to salt water. David said the fresh water table is very high, there is no saltwater intrusion. The center of the peninsula is even boggy, and that’s where cranberries are grown. These bogs produce 10% of the cranberries grown in the United States. Dave, his wife Debbie, and Jean know a lot about the flora and fauna on the peninsula and about world events. David inherited a talent for debating. I love to find people like that.

My room had a supremely comfortable bed. I was a happy camper.

Vacation Report Will Resume

right after this message. Sorry about the delay, I ran off this weekend to put another 400 miles on my car before June 21. So now I have 2 more days of vacation to report on. Once I get caught up with the first batch.

Vacation Report - Day 3

The third day I drove for many miles on Hwy 101 on the Oregon coast. A person MUST be able to see the ocean from this road when it’s not foggy. There are restaurants along the route that advertise “Every table has an ocean view.” And there are motels with names like See Vue. But all I saw was fog. It was like driving to Lodi in the winter. Finally I decided to investigate at a “Wayside.” From the parking lot, there was a drop off and just barely through the fog I could see white stuff swirling around some dark blobs. This picture actually shows more than my eyes saw, the camera has a polarizing filter.


I didn’t need gas until the third day. I pulled into a station, put my card in the reader, and immediately a lady wearing a cap came up to me. “You’re not from Oregon,” she said. Wow, I thought, do I look that different? She continued, “It’s illegal to pump your own gas in Oregon.” Yeee hah! I immediately think, is it illegal to wash your own dishes? Mop your own floors? I like this place.

Do-it-yourself gas in California is no cheaper, so what is being accomplished there? It’s no cheaper to check out your own stuff at Walmart or Home Depot, either. You should at least get a discount for that. (I wonder if some people don’t take their own 5-Finger Discount when they check themselves out.)

In Coos Bay the fog cleared enough so I could see the lumber millyard next to the road. A ratty, rusted old ship was at its dock. There’s something about ships that makes me want to grab my suitcase and see if I can go along. I get the same urge in airports, even if I’m just picking someone else up, I want to fly somewhere.

Just beyond the shipyard was an Indian casino with an RV park at one end. Seeing Winnebagos does not trigger my wanderlust. No thanks. And isn’t it ironic that a big box named after one Indian tribe is sitting in a parking lot owned by another tribe?

Before I got to Newport I saw a sign for Oregon Coast Garden Center. I stopped to look for native plants. Didn’t see any of those, I was hoping for some native rhododendrons like the ones blooming along the way, but I did see these:



A lot of plants are the same kind that are sold in California, but they don’t look the same. Petunias. Lupine. Clematis. Their flowers are huge and gorgeous in Oregon. Even their California Poppies look better than ours.

In the parking lot there was a raven checking up on everything. I left it a handful of the puppy chow I always pack in the back of my car for crows and jays at work.

Leaving the parking lot I saw this:


A house with the plainest, most forlorn yard. How could you live right smack next to a huge nursery and not be inspired to plant something in your own yard? I knew immediately the inhabitant was no relative of mine.

At Newport I turned East toward Corvallis. A half mile along the road the fog ceased. Shucks. Oh well, I’ve seen the Pacific ocean before. And the further I got from the coast, the further I got from these signs:


and the closer to these happy faces.


This is Sarah with her two dogs Rufus and ?. I had a terrible time remembering Rufus’ name, so I wrote it down. Now I can’t remember the other dog’s name. Someone, please remind me.

Captain's Log Supplemental

I want to make it clear that I was quite prepared to be the navigator on this trip. I brought a map, some money, and my passport in case Jan decided to go to Canada. You have to be prepared for any eventuality when you’re traveling with a pilot who refuses to file a flight plan.
Jean Luc

Vacation Report - Day 2

Tuesday morning was sort of sunny coming down the ridge from Forest Ranch. Capn P needed SPF 25 on his head. In most of California the grass is already dry. The trees are not exactly lush.

The road from Chico to Redding has lots of fruit stands. I stopped at a couple and got local walnuts and peaches. I bought the smallest bag of walnuts they had because I knew I’d just keep munching them until they were gone. Fresh walnuts are soooo good. When I was a kid, there were English walnut trees near the yard. Jerry and I would climb them and just sit there, cracking walnuts with our teeth and eating them. The walnuts you buy in the store are stale, they don’t taste the same.


Above Redding there are volcanoes. They’re huge, but you don’t see them from a distance, they sneak up on you. You’re just driving along I-5 and suddenly you go round a turn and there’s a volcano in sight. This one is Mt. Shasta.


We stopped at my favorite service station in Weed (near Mt. Shasta) to buy another t-shirt (Enjoy Weed). We don’t do weed in this house, but we enjoy the t-shirts. Now we have 5, in an assortment of colors. Capn P stayed in the car. I had to use the restroom. He didn’t.

I found something else at the service station in Weed - a map. LARGE PRINT - Easy to Read. This was a lifesaver. I have to take my driving glasses off to read the small print on most maps. If I pull off the road to do this, 20 minutes later I can’t remember what I saw. I have tried compensatory strategies, like driving along reciting “take exit 229 to Hwy 32.” Then I drive past a sign that says Hwy 22, or Portland 129 miles and my recitation changes to “take exit 129 to 22.” Numbers don’t stick in my brain very long except when they refer to dollars and cents.

I was really looking forward to the scenery in Oregon. It’s such a beautiful state, especially in the summer when you’re tired of the dryness in California.

I didn’t get to see much scenery. It was pouring rain on I-5, and 75% of the traffic was trucks. (You know I wouldn’t make a random statement about that, I actually counted the trucks vs. cars and did the math.)


I was usually surrounded by trucks and wouldn’t have been able to see much even on a sunny day.

The nasty weather continued for most of the trip. I hope you weren’t planning on seeing any postcard-quality photos. There is something you can do, though. My friends Lauren and Katherine made a trip up
I-5 a couple of days later and got some nice pictures. You can see them at: http://blog.katherineplumer.com/.

I know most of you have spent a lot more time in Oregon than I have, please pardon my inadequate descriptions. Or add to them, for the benefit of readers who live elsewhere.

I finally turned off the freeway and drove across to the coast. It was still rainy, but there were no trucks kicking up water. I stayed at a nice motel in Bandon, where I got to watch an episode of Star Trek Enterprise on the SciFi channel. I'd never seen STE before and was amused to see a Vulcan with Angelina Jolie lips. Capn P stayed in the car. He had no comment.

Vacation Report - Day 1

I have been gone, which is why I have not posted anything for a while.

I had quite a few days of vacation to use before the end of June. And for some time I’ve felt like I might be able to just get into my little car and take off by myself. So this was a test.

I planned to visit my friend Jean in Washington and stop on the way to see my brother in Forest Ranch (near Chico) and my niece in Corvallis. I was going to leave on Tuesday, June 2.

By Monday afternoon I had everything packed into the car. I attribute this newfound efficiency to my realization that I don’t have to take everything with me, the rest of the country IS civilized too. They DO sell shampoo and stuff in other cities. It’s even fun to stop and shop.

So I left late Monday instead. Before I walked out the door, I made another snap decision. I took someone with me. Someone who has traveled extensively, who wouldn’t mind hearing the same ABBA CD twice a day, played very, very loud and accompanied by bad singing (I know the words, it's just hitting the right notes that's the problem). Someone who has put up with grumpy Klingons and could surely put up with me — I grabbed Captain Picard out of the kitchen window and in a flash we were on our way at Warp .0001 or so.


I know, he isn’t wearing a seatbelt. I thought about using a bandaid but then I realized that the Enterprise goes a lot faster than my car and no one on it ever wears a seatbelt.

I wore mine, though.

We got to Chico just after dinner. The rest of the evening was great fun, I always enjoy talking to my brother and sister-in-law. I had no idea where I wanted to go the next day, only that I didn’t need to be in Corvallis until Wednesday. Mo decided I should plan to stay in Bandon, on the Oregon coast, and we pencilled in a route.

Next morning my little bro cooked a wonderful breakfast.


Then I jumped into the car, the Captain said "Engage" and the show was officially on the road. (The Captain really does say that. He says 2 other things, too: "Damage Report" and "Captain's Log Supplemental." He's the deluxe talking edition.