Autumn In The Northwest - Day Four and Five

It took me longer to get this posted than I'd planned, so I decided to lump the last two and a half days of our vacation into one post. It appears that I took virtually zero pictures of the last day in Oregon...



DAY FOUR

Sunday morning dawned gray, drizzly and gloomy, just the way we like it. We got up and out of the hotel pretty quickly, hitting the road just before 7:30. Our plan for the day was to head up to Astoria, spend a bit of time there admiring the quirky buildings there, possibly eating lunch, before heading along the coast.
   
We stuck pretty close to that, Though we were in Astoria pretty darned early, so we left quickly, just stopping to get lost amongst the rambling three story houses that are everywhere in that town. If we ever made enough money and could be convinced to forgo the beach, Astoria would quickly rise to the top of the list of places we would want to live.

After Astoria, we cut along the coast with a brief detour when I took the wrong road and got lost in the forest for a bit until we reached Rockaway Beach. Just out of curiosity, we drove around the coastal homes there for a while, scoping out prices of the houses for sale, of which there were a lot. It was a truly mixed bag in that crazy town. We found a 17,000 square foot place with three bedrooms and views of the ocean from the second and third floors for over two hundred thousand dollars less than a house less than a block away and twenty feet closer to the surf with unobstructed views that had less than 500 square feet.

 

The beach was great that day, and we wandered for the better part of an hour, prodding jellyfish and other mysterious things in the sand with my shoe and watching the seagulls play. The surf was especially dramatic, with high, beautiful waves and lots of different colors. If we could have, we would have set up shop right there and never left. Apart from the crappy food in Rockaway, that is... We talked on the phone to my sister in law, Marissa for a bit, sent her a phone picture of the ocean, then left for inland central Oregon, an area mysterious to us.

From Tillamook, we cut south and east, through the Suislaw National forest and towards a small town below Portland called McMinnville. Which, as we discovered is notable only for it's vaguely hard to navigate streets, another Walgreens, an extremely unremarkable and unsatisfying Mexican place and a very picturesque little college campus.

Once I figured out how to get out of town, we dropped further south, towards the towns of Dallas and Salem, Oregon, first stopping in the very charming little town of Amity. From it's very outskirts we liked Amity. The streets were quiet and clean, the air was crisp and smelled like autumn should smell. Cool and dry, slightly musty and fruity, like walking through a field of leaves. We stopped at a farmer's market there and marveled at the dozens fall colors displayed, buying a bag of homemade Hazelnut Brittle, which was made by a local with nuts from her own tree. It was great - buttery and sweet, with just enough heft to be crunchy but not impossible to bite.

Beyond Amity, we rolled through broad fields that seemed to alternate between groves of nut trees and rows of grapevines. It's obvious that a lot of the farmers there have decided that it's easier and swankier to open their own little winery rather than their old farms, but we thought that both had their charms. There was a nice balance between the posh wine cellars and traditional farmhouses and even the wine places have a spunky, young upstart feel to 'em.

We had high hopes for Dallas, Oregon. It's situated just far enough away from Salem to be realistic for me to commute and is large enough that Lindsay could possibly find a job locally and not have to commute. They also have a lot of pretty reasonably priced housing and a few good restaurants. If anything, the town managed to exceed our expectations, being closer to Salem than I'd thought, only around ten minutes, and having much more of a quaint rural village feel than anything that close to Salem has any right to have. We saw a lot of gorgeous old houses, many with three or more stories and a few that were for sale and in need of some love, maybe a few big dogs too. The biggest surprise of the evening however, were the kids.

They were everywhere! In the parks, on the basketball courts, walking along the street, sitting on park benches... and this was around three on a Sunday afternoon. I know what you're thinking and no, they didn't bring their tvs out to the park with them or have wireless game controllers with good ranges, these kids were actually playing outside. Some were even talking and laughing with each other. Clearly something has taken over the youth of Dallas. Pod-People perhaps, trained to act human based off of 1950's footage. This is a mystery I will have to investigate further if we move there.

Before hitting up Salem, we took a detour to a town called Falls City, which ended up being out too far to be realistic and not nearly as cheap as we'd hoped. Cutting back through Dallas, we headed to Salem itself, a city of around 175,000 with six Walgreens. I'm always leery of larger cities. I'm a good driver, but I have a tendency to get lost or distracted easily and big cities bring out the worst in me. (That and country roads, for that matter...)

I'm happy to say that Salem is not only easy to navigate, but it never once felt as large as it is. I suppose a large part of it is that a good chunk of the population commutes to Portland for work every day, but even on a Sunday evening, the streets moved well and people were considerate drivers. The city is laid out well, we were able to get around using a tiny map on the back of our Oregon map for the most part. We stopped at a good chunk of the Walgreens stores in Salem over the two days we were there, some were nice and new, some were nice and old and one was old, trashy and across the street from a couple of adult shops. With my luck, that'll be the one I get a transfer to.

After driving long enough that we felt we had a pretty decent handle on Salem, we decided to find a hotel for the night. We checked into a couple of Best Westerns in town, hoping to use Lindsay's negligible employee discount, but all of them, even the one that was technically a Motel and looked trashy and empty wanted more than twenty dollars more than the one in Dallas. So once again, we drove the ten minutes and stayed in a tiny, set-back Best Western, manned by an extremely bored but very friendly desk clerk who was also named Lindsay.
   
She had moved from Portland to Dallas to help out her mom and found herself staying. She said the town was pretty safe and clean, but boring. That's pretty much what we were hoping for, frankly. She directed us to Murphy's Grill for dinner, a small chain-esque restaurant that was kind of an Applebees with fishing decor. We split a Mushroom Cheeseburger and headed to bed.


DAY FIVE

Our last day of vacation, like most of our trips was more an exercise in endurance than a vacation. We woke up at seven that morning and in less than 22 hours, we'd be back in Pocatello. Most people, when travelling between Salem and Idaho, head up to Portland, then take the interstate along the Columbia River Gorge, before cutting along it to Pendleton and the Idaho border. We've driven that route a lot. Something like 13 times in the last year or so, so we decided to take an alternate route, over the Cascades and through mid-eastern Oregon, and area that neither of us had ever seen.

The drive started promisingly, cruising through lush fields of grapes and spotted with farmhouses. Eventually agriculture gave way to thick autumn forests as the road got curvier and the elevation rose. The road over the Cascades is a gorgeous one, and I highly recommend that everyone take it at least once, but I can say this; It's much, much longer and not a good idea to burn through if you're in a hurry.

I stopped a lot, just to stand on the side of the car and admire the natural beauty of the area, though the obviously invected, bright yellow pine trees were an unusual curiosity. They're obviously sufferring from a blight of some sort, something that turns their needles fall colors before shrivelling and blackening. Eventually, after the road turned to dirt and back to pavement, after some rugged signs of humanity started trickling in, we left the Cascade region behind, first stopping at a funky little service station where we bought a bottle of barbecue sauce from a hippy couple named Something (I forget his name right now..) and Sue.

A shoe tree. Located somewhere in the middle of Oregon...

Beyond that, there isn't a lot to Oregon, likely one reason that no one really considers half of the state when thinking about it - Most of the state is desert. Covered in sagebrush, scrubby pines and jagged rocks, the desert region of Oregon still has more appeal that a lot of Idaho, but after the beauty of the last few days, it was a bit of a downer to drive.

We stopped in Sisters for lunch, eating at a small deli that served up fresh, large sandwiches and excellent homemade soups and rolls. Leaving town, we noticed a shabby clabboard sign on a corner with big red letters spelling out "JERKY" and an arrow pointing to the left. We are not the kind of people that will ever pass up the chance to buy possibly questionable slabs of dried meat in a strange town, so we followed that sign. It led us to a dead end street in the middle of a vaguely industrial area. Thinking we'd been led astray somehow, we circled back and tried again, finding nothing. Finally, I stopped and asked directions at a car detailing place. Turns out, the simple red arrow failed to elaborate that you then wanted to turn left, head two blocks, turn right, then left, and it would be right in front of you. Naturally.

Totally worth it though. You know it's a good jerky place when they're loading half of an unidentified, skinned animal from the back of a truck by giant metal hooks. Meat is so much sexier when it's not connected to other meat, forming a vaguely identifiable shape. Anyway, the jerky was great. We bought some teryaki, brown sugar, original and a tiny piece of their sweet jalapeno. Then, fortified with provisions in case of a treacherous pass, we left again, a straight out burn to Pocatello.

Not much to say after that. We stopped in Durkee again around 8pm and shared a Bo's Burger, which had two patties, ham, bacon, couple of cheeses, veggies, a greasy grilled bun and a side of fries, followed up with a slice of coconut creme pie.

Just over the border of Idaho, we made the bed and slept for a few hours, waking around 12:30am. I stopped in a gas station just outside of Boise to buy a Rockstar, in the hopes of  staving off sleep for another few hours, where the clerk did something strange and vaguely annoying. My change came to $2.83 and when he handed it to me, he handed me the $2.80 first, then dug out the pennies. Instead of handing them to me, he hovered them about a half inch over the "need a penny take a penny" container, and said "You don't need these, do ya?" then he dropped them in the pile.

I didn't need them, frankly, I had probably four dollars in pennies in various pockets and containers in my car, but the way he did it stuck in my craw. I can't help but assume that he turns that penny jar into a tidy little supplemental tip over the course of an evening, there was well over a dollar in pennies already, peppered with some silver too. Bah to you, Shady Graveyard Shift Chevron Guy!

We got home around 5am Tuesday morning, sixteen hours before we had to be at work again to a couple of extremely giddy dogs and some slightly interested in saying hi cats.

All said, it was a pretty great trip. We saw some beautiful areas, many new to us and it was the first time we'd ever been to either state in the Autumn. We decided that there were enough possibilites for transfers that we don't have to be as picky as we'd feared. We drove over 2,100 miles in just over five days, averaged 22mpg, and saw desert, prairie, farmlands, the Pacific Ocean, forests and towns in every shape and size. Pretty cool.

Now we just have to find a way to get out there permanently, sell our books, open a motel, become successful and go on to live our dreams. Easy enough, right?

Autumn In The Northwest Trip - Day Three, Part Two

After lunch, we headed into Centralia for a bit, cruising around their downtown and industrial section. Chevalis and Centralia are interesting little towns, Centralia is clearly the larger population, but Chevalis has most of the bigger box stores and retail sections. Both are pleasant though, and Centralia has some gorgeous older houses in the number street area.

When we felt that we'd seen most of what there was to see, we retired back to the hotel, where we spent a few hours napping and goofing around. I read some of my book and wrote a blog post, then we looked up ratings of restaurants online.

One we found was rated very highly overall, with just a few dissenters, most of which complained more about the restaurant's exterior and appearance than anything. So we decided to hit the Golden Palace for dinner.


Man, what a great choice. Their exterior is a bit crummy, just a simple building with a plain looking sign, but inside, the decor was nice enough, and it was pretty crowded. Their prices were comparable to pretty much any Chinese restaurant, and they have a few unique dishes, some that we'd never seen before.

After a bit of debate, we chose the Peking Dinner For Two. What I like about this place is that unlike many Asian food places, when you choose the meal for two, instead of getting one assigned meal, just in varying quantities, these guys let you choose a different meal from the list for each diner. It adds a great amount of flexibility to them and makes them a lot more appealing to me. We went with the Garlic Beef and Mushrooms and the General Tseng's chicken.

The meal also came with a dumpling soup and some assorted starters, paper wrapped chicken, egg
roll, pork, a different kind of pork, a won-ton, all of them hot and quite good. The soup blew us away too, instead of two small bowls of it, they bring you a large dish of it that you can ladle into your bowls. There was easily enough for each of us to have three bowls of it.

The main entrees were generous to an almost ridiculous extreme and full of fresh, unusual choices of vegetables, including at least four different kinds of mushrooms between the two dishes. The Garlic Beef was very garlicky, with a slightly oily feel, but not in a bad way, it just made the dish seem rich and it had really big chunks of a black mushroom. The General Tseng's was similar in sauce to General Tsao's, a typical dish in Chinese places, but in addition to the spicy sauce and battered chicken, it was loaded with veggies; Corn, peas, a couple of different mushrooms, bamboo, water chestnuts, celery, broccoli... a little bit of everything.

Overall, the meal was spectacular, an A+. We also got a couple of interesting fortunes.


"Traveling to the south will bring you unexpected happiness."


"You will attend an unusual party and meet someone important."

We were heading south the next morning and that fortune proved surprisingly accurate, and we have our Sixth Annual Brain Eaters Party hitting in a week, so we'll see how that plays out...

Autumn In The NorthWest Trip - Day Three

Day three, the day in which we had a home base and in theory had planned for a pretty simple day, yet I still managed to spend most of driving...

Started out the day getting harassed by the breakfast lady, bright and early. She made my waffles and dispensed abuse. In a good, friendly way, but still. It was pretty early in the morning, thanks to Lindsay. The breakfast at the Motel was pretty generic. All of the usual suspects for a continental breakfast at a chain. Bagels, Muffins, Hard Boiled Eggs, Bad Coffee, Keyser Soze.

After that, we headed North to check out a few of the towns that way. There's a little town called Vader that we thought looked intriguing and even further up is another Walgreens, in the small town of Chehalis, so we thought it'd be a good idea to see how far that would be to commute and whether the town was too close to the craziness of Seattle.

We fell instantly in love with Vader. It's a little village off to the side of the road, really more of a couple roads than any real cohesive unit. And the roads are fabulous. Lined with thick, gold and red trees, thick ferns, quaint buildings - many rotting away to moss and spongy wood. It had a lot of the details that we liked about Rainier so much. Isolated and quiet, pretty reasonably priced, yet within driving distance of both Longview and Chehalis.

Beyond Vader, down the same tree-lined path was a surprise. Ryderwood. What appears to be a really quiet place at the end of a long, winding road turned out to be a really quiet place at the end of the road filled exclusively with old people! Ryderwood is a 55+ retirement community, nestled away in the forest. While I kind of question socking away our elderly down a twisting road a good distance for them to travel for food and for medical assistance to reach them, the place was really charming. Mostly single level places, not many larger than a one bedroom, and all along the streets, healthy, happy looking retirees were out walking their little doggies and chatting.

Chehalis was tiny, much smaller than I'd expected of a place with a Walgreens, but had a lot of appeal. Nice, older houses and a cute downtown. Wasn't much to see, really but we did decide that we could live there happily. We stopped at a fruit stand selling some ridiculously colorful fall produce and asked the girl there where we could find some good pizza for lunch. In between adjusting something in the crotch reigion of her pants and selling us some huge apples, she sent us up the road a bit to Centralia.

The slightly butch fruitstand girl gave good directions and it didn't take us long to reach the place, a pizza joint in what appeared to have been a bar or something earlier, maybe a mexican restaurant. They served pretty passable 'za, though they used too much corn meal or whatever that grainy stuff is they put on the bottom of pizza to keep it from sticking. They also served gelato, made onsite, which was pretty great.



Sadly, I'm gonna have to split this post, I'd planned to make it all in one go, but our washer broke and we had to spend half of the morning running around to get some laundry done. Also, lazy!

Autumn In The Northwest Trip - Day Two

Now Playing -
Bang, Bang  by  Nancy Sinatra

Life - 

This was a pretty great day. Friday dawned Grey and cool, with a faint haze on the horizon. I slept well in the car, though I must have drank more water than I'd thought, or the devious coffee at Shari's was punishing me for mocking it, and I had to get up a few times in the night and stagger into the house, which was a little awkward to me. Better than staggering to a darkened corner or a port-a-potty like we usually have when we camp out in the car.

We're early risers, so we had gotten up, showered, resituated the car and read in the house for a while before Jen roused herself and we followed her on a merry chase into Portland. The roads she took were windy and pretty, lined with thick trees and undergrowth, eventually evolving into groomed shrubberies, planters, then city streets. A note to anyone that finds themselves following someone like Jen - Stay close and keep your foot on the gas! We're used to following folks like my father-in-law, who, when followed, drives 10 miles an hour, signals blocks before turning and often supplements those signals with hand gestures and sky writing. Jen however, had the uncanny talent to hit a light just as it turned yellow, forcing us to quickly floor it to keep up with her. This happened something like 3 times in the drive, and teased us a couple of other times.

She led us to the best breakfast restaurant in the world, The Original Hotcake House. Just a little, dive-styled place, this joint has some of the best food and biggest portions I've ever had in a restaurant. Absolutely heavenly! You stand in line and order first, weaving around a circular dining area, then find your table. Luckily, we arrived between rushes and managed to get a table with little effort, judging by their signage, on weekends and at other times, some folks have to wait for a table after ordering and paying. They're also open 24 hours a day. My friend Rob and I have driven 40 miles out of our way for food at 3am before. If we had grown up here, I would imagine that we'd know the cooks by name.

I ordered the biscuits and gravy with a side of hotcakes, Linz ordered the Gyro omelet with hashbrowns (That's right, a GYRO OMELET!) and Jen got the chicken fried steak. All of our meals were amazing tasting, complimented by some excellent coffee and big enough to stretch the stomach of a grizzly bear after hibernation.

Sated, bloated, gravy spattered and ready for a nap, we once again braved the streets of Portland following the red blaze of Jen as she led us to our exit, and we left, heading Northwest towards St. Helens.

Our main goal here was to look at areas that had Walgreens that I might be able to transfer to and see if there was an area nearby that we liked and could afford to live in. St. Helens and area certainly fit that bill. Picturesque and fairly quaint, it was almost hard to believe that those towns were theoretically close enough to commute into Portland for. Other towns in the area, like Ridgefield and BattleGround have slowly been taken over by the tract housing and cookie cutter housing complexes, but St. Helens and Rainier have managed to keep the ramshackle homes and crusty shoppes that make them feel original and special. We especially loved Rainier, cruising along their hilly roads, admiring the varied Autumn colors.

Then we hopped over the bridge to Longview. Since the first day we started looking into moving out this way, we'd considered Longview/Kelso pretty high on our list of potentials. There was something about it that seemed like it had the best aspects of Pocatello without a lot of the negatives, the housing was still pretty doable and it is in such a great location, an hour to Portland, an hour to Astoria... A long, but doable drive to the parents back in Idaho... Plusses all around!

We'd been here a few times before, but never spent more than an hour or two, just stopped into a Target, bought some beads, got gas, that kind of thing, so our plan for this trip was to really spend some time getting to know the place. Walk the streets, drive around looking at houses, get lost, talk to some locals, see if we could spend the next 2-15 years in this area.

Longview and Kelso are a couple of towns straddling three rivers, so close together that they may as well be one town. It's not overly picturesque, there's a pretty good amount of industrial area and according to the internet, there's a problem with Meth, though not to the extreme of Pocatello. It (By 'it' I mean Kelso and Longview) does have a certain charm though. There are a lot of parks, the trees are plentiful and especially colorful and gorgeous in the Autumn, and so far, the residents have either been slightly goofy and helpful or crazy and friendly.

We spent the afternoon and evening wandering and driving around the towns. A couple of our favorite things -

The lake. There's a long, narrow lake in the middle of town, ringed by a gorgeous, similarly narrow park. Though it's lined on both sides by fairly busy streets, it never really felt loud or surrounded. We walked around it a bit and drove the length.

Especially charming is a tiny island in the middle, carefully groomed and planted as a Japanese garden. We spent quite a bit of time here, wandering the paths, playing with the Gray sqirrels, looking at perfect spiderwebs and relaxing.

Though I'm sure it's far busier in "nicer" weather (It was drizzling and around 60 degrees, perfect weather as far as I'm concerned) it was impressive how tranquil it seemed and how clean it was.

The library. Man, what an amazing building. Built in 1926, it's the original building with a few additions. High ceilings, a pretty good selection of books and a quiet, slightly ominous feeling made it one of my favorite libraries that I've wandered around. Only the banks of computer tables marred the feeling.

Longview's downtown is really nice too, full of amazing older buildings,most of them in use. We wandered up and down most of the streets, sipping a coffee and eating a ridiculously rich almond chocolate bar we bought from a chocolatier. There was an old, abandoned theater there however that made me wish I could baby it back to life.

We're staying in the Super 8, which we got for a great price and while it's a basic room, generic as all get out, the desk/waffle maker at breakfast is manned by a truly batty older lady that wont stop giving me a hard time. I dig her.

We also wandered around the mall for a while and I can't decide if it was truly that lame or if I just don't like malls any more. Either way, there was very little to recommend.

For dinner that night, Lindsay decided she wanted pizza, so we stopped into the Rite Aid near our hotel to ask about a pizza place. (The one in the same strip mall was closed down, which was just as well, it looked crappy.) The clerk looked at me like a deer in the headlights and finally paged his manager to help. She was a little Hispanic lady and recommended us to a place that she'd never eaten at, but some of the girls that worked there liked. This made me a bit leery, but I figured it would be a start, if we didn't like it, it was on a busier street and we could just find a place.

The restaurant she sent us to, Nikki's, was a revelation. It won't be for everyone, but it should be. It's in a little bit of a shady building, the name painted on the front window a little sloppily, and the parking lot is poorly lit. Inside, there's a hodge podge of things that shouldn't work at all, and maybe some nights they don't but last night, they were great. They have a family dining section, just a few tables, a group of four pool tables, a small lounge section, a tiny second dining area and a stage with dance floor attached, beyond that, they had a room filled with gaming tables, where people were playing poker and blackjack. And in this place, they served very nice quality Italian food.

Our server, dressed in a white shirt and black vest was polite and friendly, with just the right amount of sarcastic humor. He let us chose a romantic little table by the stage and offered us a daily special that they have exclusively for couples. An entree, salad and dessert for twenty bucks. That night it was Roasted Garlic Pork Chops and red potatoes. We jumped on that.

It was freaking great. The cook there knows how to use a small amount of seasoning to let the natural flavors show through and everything was cooked just right. The Blue Cheese dressing was made there and perfect, the garlic on the pork chops were roasted like a coffee bean, hard and crunchy, adding an amazing flavor to the meat and the potatoes had just enough seasoning that all they needed was a little pepper. We also had a Chocolate Truffle Ice Cream Cake with Rum/Caramel drizzles for dessert. Twenty bucks, man. What a deal!

We left incredibly satisfied. Bravo, Nikki's!

After dinner, Linz crashed hard, asleep before 9:30pm, only waking up when her sister called from a Karaoke bar asking about a singer's name.


On to Day Three!

Writing - 

Yeah... nothing again. Maybe tonight!

Autumn In The NorthWest Trip - Day One

Now Playing -
Mulder and Scully by Catatonia

Life - 

Thursday morning, I picked Lindsay up from work and we took off for our promised land, the Northwest. Specifically the roughly rectangular area between Long Beach, WA, Portland, OR, Salem, OR and Lincoln City, OR. Our plan is to check out the area, looking specifically with an eye towards living there full time. Previously, all we've done is head out here with the intention of hitting the beach and enjoying ourselves, but this trip is different. We want to know if we can happily live out here full time.

Day one, like any first day of vacation when you live in Idaho and can't afford to fly, was spent driving ridiculous distances. I picked Linz up from work at 7am, we grabbed some unremarkable and over priced breakfast at Taco Johns and left town by 7:30. Apart from a couple of gas breaks and an enjoyable if mean-spirited game of "Don't let him pass" with a pissy speeder in a pickup, we didn't stop until Durkee, OR - Home of one of our favorite stops, The Redneck Cafe. Love this place. Huge portions, a good sense of humor, sassy waitresses, decent prices and some of the best pie I've ever had.

This time around, we went with Bo's Sandwich. Bo is the proprieter, cook, repairman, and barstool warmer there, and is exactly how you would picture a dude that owns a diner and is surrounded by coffee and excellent pie all day.  His sandwich is swiss, corned beef, sauteed onions on grilled rye bread, served with a side of fries. So awesome.

After sharing that (The above photo, taken with my new phone, a habit I'll likely create on this trip) we had to have some pie, and after a bit of debate between it and the Sour Cream Butterscotch, we decided on the Creamy LemonCake Pie, which was a heavenly concoction of lemon filling, some sort of creamy, yet cakey layers, candied lemons and real whipped cream. Wow.

After that, with a very full stomach, we drove again... for a really long time. The drive from Pocatello, ID to the Portland area is a very pretty one, but even the most attractive thing can get boring after staring at it for so long. We stopped just outside of Portland, where one of Lindsay's friends lives, freshly returned from a stint in the UK cutting up bodies. She was meeting with some other friends for dinner so we fended for ourselves for food, unwisely choosing a Shari's, due exclusively to the fact that Troutdale is deceptively small-looking and closed up to the uninitiated in the dark, and because the only other restaurant, another "Family Dining" place had some very shady looking characters lurking outside of it.

Yeah... Shari's, a 24-hour chain diner blows. They have shabby coffee, reluctant waitresses that have cultivated an air of hostile indifference due to loitering high school kids in the middle of the night, really generic food in small portions and pretty filthy bathrooms. Also, they seemed ludicrously obsessed with pie. The waitress mentioned it at least four times and in addition to the flip chart of glossy photos, they had a display of them and had notices about remembering it on six or seven places. It was like Pie had gotten killed overseas and they were running a tribute P.O.W. special.  (Pies of War)

After dinner, we met Jen at the outlet mall nearby and followed her lead foot to her mother's house, on the outskirts of Boring, Oregon. (I REALLY want to own and run the Boring Motel there. I have some great ideas for that.)

We chatted for a bit, I took a shower, in which I was reminded that not everyone has a firehose-like pressure in their showers, sadly, and retired to our car. We were both asleep within minutes, breathing easily in the cool, moist, Oregon air.

Writing - 

I drove for something like 16 hours... no time to write!

Vacation - Oregon Coast - Day Eight

Last day of freedom. Tomorrow, we both return to work and start unpacking our house from the aborted near hit on our last gasp attempt to run a motel this year. (Speaking of which, our last official "No" has come back, so I can start posting that portion again...)

We woke up bright and (really) early on day Eight, primarily due to a deflated air mattress and an inflated bladder. One of the drawbacks of sleeping in your car on some random street, bathrooms are pretty scarce. We'd planned to grab a pastry and get on the road, but the coffee kiosk we stopped at had nothing, nor did the next few places. Annoyed, I continued on until Biggs Junction, an odd little place in the middle of nowhere, and found a gas station that was serving some pretty adequate Biscuits and gravy and potato logs.

Not the most auspicious start, but the day turned out well, with the drive going fast, and conditions great. Lindsay typed on her little netbook and I listened to my iPod most of the way, trying not to sing and annoy her... I may have succeeded, but I was pretty tired and bit delirious, so I can't say for certain...

We stopped in Durkee for a late lunch, and drove around the little town first, which was full of neat looking older homes gone to seed, 2 nicely kept newer homes, and a lot of creepy looking shanty style structures that may have housed cannibal midgets. We ate at the Hungry Redneck, of course, and had a perfect mushroom burger and fries, and for dessert... something sublime. We debated for a while on the choice of pie, they had 8 choices, and while I had a soft spot for the strawberry, it didn't look as fresh as last time, so we went with the Butterscotch Pie. It was possibly the best thing I have ever put into my mouth. It was possibly the best thing that anyone has ever put into anyone's mouth. Surprisingly heavy and thick, it was rich and buttery, with a hint of real scotch flavor. It had a solid crust that perfectly held it together and complimented the rick copper filling, and had a thin layer of white cream across the top.

I could die tomorrow, and when the Hellions get a field day up in heaven and we get to eat in the cafeteria while we're up there, I'll feel safe skipping the pie, knowing I've had better in a weird little diner in podunk and slightly creepy Durkee, OR.

We made it home around 8pm, cuddled the dogs, made the bed and crashed.


All in all, it was really fun trip. As always, we wished there wasn't such a long drive on either side, naturally, we want to move closer to the ocean. Next time we'll undoubtedly stay in Sylvia Beach, and I think it is worth the splurge to stay someplace nice for longer. As nice as it was saving money by camping and sleeping in cheap motels, the 2 days in Rockaway were easily my favorite because we felt like we were comfortable. Maybe next time we'll rent a vacation house in Gearhart or something.

All told, here are our stats:

Miles - 2166.9
Gallons of Gas - 86.675
Average Mileage - 25.00MPG
Best Mileage - 27.27MPG
Worst - 21.78MPG
States Visited - ID, OR, WA
Meals Eaten Out - 24... all of em...
Meals Shared - 20 We ate our own meals at 2 Mexican Restaurants, the diner in Toledo, and the Thai Food
Nights spent sleeping in Strontium - 3
Nights in Motels - 4
Bookstores Visited - 8
Books Purchased - 37


Money:
Admissions into places - $0
Gas - $180.26
Books - $135.00
Lodging - $248.80
Misc Snacks and crap - $167.30
Souvenirs - $15.15
Gifts for others - $85.60
Meals - $295.12

Total - $1127.23

That's not bad at all! While I've inevitably forgotten something, and the book costs are estimated, that's not bad for an 8 day vacation on the coast. Go Frugal Us!

Vacation - Oregon Coast - Day Five

Our last view from the window of our room at the Getaway.

Farewell to Rockaway beach. Sigh.

We woke up pretty early, and took a nice walk on the beach, one last time. It was quite stormy again, a change from last night, but still a nice walk. Then we ate some leftover pizza for breakfast and checked out of the Getaway.

We headed towards Newport, stopping in at most of the little towns along the way, driving through neat little rows of cottages and ugly clumps of new construction. It was depressing to see how many previously cute older motels had been bought up by the big Motel next to it and incorporated into their big, ugly group. Every time that happens, our chances of finding a place to run gets slimmer, and the chance of finding a little independently run motel to stay at gets slimmer. Unfortunately, they're essentially extinct in Newport, all that remains are large, corporate monsters and swanky independent places that are very nice, but closer to $200 a night.

Pacific City
Great place, if you like Time Share Condos.

At any rate, we got list in Oceanside; a strange little place built on a hill with a lot of great houses and what appears to be a pretty vocal and close minded group of full time residents, Pacific City, which was quickly being overrun with huge time shares and expensive new houses, but had a lot of gorgeous beaches, and a few other little towns that all fell somewhere in between.

On Cape Foulweather, home of the lookout point gift shop, we bought a couple of souvenirs and marvelled at the view below. Great location, run by some people that have a good sense of humor about things, which is great!

The Lookout Gift Shop at Cape Foulweather

We spent a good amount of time in Depoe Bay as well, a nice little town that manages to balance tourism, fishing and beach life while still feeling small and welcome. We ate at the Spouting Horn, and had some of the best fish and chips we'd ever had. Fresh fish, lightly battered and fresh cut potatoes with lots of malt vinegar on the side. We ate looking out the window at the bay and fishing ships, while a seagull made faces at us through the window. A great meal. Then we strolled along the main street, stopping in to sample freshly pulled taffy, shop for awesome nautical brass and got lost in a used bookstore so overflowing with books that they started to form their own rooms.


Once in Newport, we quickly became depressed at the lack of fun motels that were in our price range and eventually stopped in a stretch of cheap ones. After seeing the type of people residing in the motel we stopped in, we jumped to the next and were very glad we did. The desk clerk at the America Inn & Suites, Gary, hooked us up with a decent little room for a great price, just over $90 for two nights. It wasn't a block from the beach or anything, and was a nice, simple motel with a bed and mini fridge, but it worked for us, and was still centrally located and clean. It also had wi-fi and boasted a continental breakfast, which was a nice bonus!

After relaxing for a second, we headed down to the bay district to look at a few shops. Unfortunately, it was nearly 6pm, so most were closed, but we still had a good time wandering the streets and looking at the sea lions on the docks below. We spotted a few shops to hit on Monday morning before leaving town, then returned to our motel to relax before dinner.

Relaxing ended up turning into a 3 hour nap... Waking late and kind of grumpy at wasting the day, we tried to find a food place that wasn't closed at 10pm on a Saturday. Luckily, up the road was Super Oscar's, a 24 hour Mexican food place. After eating our greasy but pretty good food, we read for a bit and hit the sack, curious what Easter Sunday would bring in a tourist town...

Vacation - Oregon Coast - Day Four

Day four was a great lazy day. We spent most of the day in Rockaway Beach, OR, just hanging around, walking on the beach and popping into the little shops along the main drag.

First thing, we took a stroll on their phenomenal beach. We love Rockaway because of it, its gorgeous and clean, there's never anyone on it and the water is amazing. It was pretty cool and stormy in the morning so we only walked for a bit, but it was a great start to the day.

We headed into town and ate at a little diner for breakfast, eating some good, but unspectacular chowder and chicken fried steak, (A little bit country, a little bit... lunch.) then headed back to the room, where we read books and wrote for a while, before taking a little nap.

When we got up, the day had gotten quite nice, sunny and clear with just a slight breeze. The Getaway had been working on their parking lot since we arrived, smoothing it out and rolling it flat, which made everything in the room vibrate pretty wildly, so we decided to take off and spend the day in town. First stop, Flamingo Jim's, a great, crazy shop with everything from lawn gnomes to alligator heads. We wandered around town a bit more, before we decided to look into lunch. That's when we started identifying a problem with Rockaway. While its charming and has a great mix of tourist and non-tourism feels, there's not really a great place to eat there. There are a few restaurants, but they're without fail, all mediocre. There isn't a single one that you walk away happy and satisfied from. It really seems like people are running them because they want to make money, not because they love the job or have something truly great to cook. We stopped in the Tourism Info booth to ask her where she recommended, and without hesitation, she told me the Pirate's Cove was the only place she ate at. Which is in a different city. Time and time again, when we asked someone, they would name a restaurant somewhere else. Eventually we decided to take their advice, and headed back North, to Wheeler, OR. After mailing a postcard and wandering around the exterior of the Old Wheeler Hotel, one of the many that is for sale in the area, we got lost in a crazy old antique mall, where we bought a couple of great, but mildly creepy photographs and some sea glass.

After that, seeing that the place the girl at the post office recommended was closed, we decided to eat at the pub across the street. Best. Chowder. Ever. The place itself was kind of a shambles, unsure of what kind of decor it wanted to have, classy expensive stuff or old-school ocean, but the view of the bay was nice, and the chowder was perfect, creamy without being too thick, and just the right mix of clam, potato and bacon.

When we got back from Wheeler, we checked out a fun little shop where the sweet little hippy lady that runs it collects rainwater everyday, storing it and making beautiful little gifts out of it by putting the water in cleaned, recycled light bulbs, adding a Tibetan prayer bell on top, and forming what they call Oregon Du Drops. Lindsay and I found this fascinating, especially as we both celebrate their rain as well, and they really did look absolutely gorgeous! I did find it a bit odd that she seemed to spend the day listening to her CD of her own singing, but i suppose she had to have it playing to sell it. We got a real kick out of her, she was friendly and cool, hand fed a raven outside and had found a way to make money off of something unique that allowed them to live on the coast and write. An enviable accomplishment!

Back to the Getaway after that for more relaxing, reading, wandering the beach and a little packing, the next day we were checking out. Sigh.

That night we ordered a most spectacular pizza meal. Earlier in the day, as we wandered the town looking for food, we stopped in at the local pizza place, which wasn't open yet. As Linz looked at the window menu, the owner slipped a menu out to her. As we were driving off, he leapt out and started chatting, turns out he'd been shopping for a car and liked the Honda Element. We talked for a while about it and other things, and after meeting the charming owner and looking at the menu, we'd chosen it for dinner. We ordered a Greek Gyro pizza with gyro meat, feta, garlic, olives and more on it, and a calzone style cheesy garlic bread thing that looked intriguing. When I picked the pizza up, the owner, Chuck chatted with me again, and expressed some hope that we'd be able to move out there. A cool guy. The food was friggin' great. The pizza was every bit as good as it sounded, and the garlic bread, while initially leery, was one of the best things I've ever had at a pizza place, with just the right amount of pesto, cheese and creamy garlic sauce. Very filling, and we had enough left over for breakfast the next day.

All in all, a great day. It was going to be hard to leave Rockaway Beach the next day.

Vacation - Oregon Coast - Day Three

Day three came bright and early. Just after going to sleep in the cow field, a pickup drove past and kind of hesitated by us, honking its horn a bit as it drove on. I was slightly concerned that we'd be subject to some hillbilly harassment, but the night passed uneventfully. We did lose all air from our mattress again, and it rained heavily that night. We woke early the next day, around 6:30 and took off, heading South with the plans to hit Rockaway Beach around 1pm, where we would then spend the next two days.

Along the way, we drove past an exit for a state park and we impulsively took it. It was gorgeous. For around 20 minutes, we weaved through a primordial jungle on a narrow road, curving around thick old trees and lush undergrowth, before dropping us out in a beautiful big picnic and trailhead area. We wandered for a bit in the early morning mist, marvelling at the views of cannon beach below and Tillamook Head Lighthouse to the right. We had the place to ourselves aside from a few ravens, a half dozen robins and a woodpecker, and it was a great morning.

We followed a trail down to the beach. where we took the obligatory timer photo of ourselves, which was harder than usual, due to the sinking tripod, sneaky waves behind us and the difficulty making it to the photo spot before the timer finished.

On the way back to civilization, we had an elk leap across the road in front of us, then pause in the thicket, watching us carefully. As we continued, we happened to glance to the right and over a dozen more materialized from the woods, like magic.

They didn't even move, just one second it seemed empty, the next full of half ton animals. And people ask how Bigfoot could possibly exist if we've never found him...


We stopped and ate breakfast... somewhere, possibly Seaside, as we slowly cruised the residential areas of the cities, trying to get a feel for their non-tourist ambiance. We really liked Gearhart, a small town north of Seaside that had a great feel to it, a lot of cool houses and a city with a lot of character, but not a large commercial feel to it. We also came away more favorably towards Cannon Beach, where we'd previously found it far too tourism oriented.

We also found another little cemetery along the way, though I forget where now, that was the most unique cemetery I've ever visited. All of the plots were encircled in stone, with plants and bushes planted atop them. Everything was canted at different angles and some had sunken dramatically. There was also a section to the side that had been fenced off, for what appeared to be an anti-deer measure, but they'd easily bypassed it, and the sand around the graves was trampled and many of the fake flowers were half eaten.

The graveyard was full of gorgeous and unique monuments, many with lush bushes or little mementos on the headstones. It was drizzling again and as we walked through the cemetery with our umbrellas, there was a great peaceful feeling.


We hit Rockaway Beach pretty early, and spent the afternoon cruising around, checking rates on Motels, considering staying in a different place than our usual. Everywhere else in town however, was more expensive and had less character than our motel of choice, the Getaway Oceanfront Condos we first stayed here in 2007 with my mom and brother, in the middle of a 13 day road trip down 101, and it was one of the highlights of the trip for us. Each of the rooms is an individually owned condo, that is then rented as a motel when the owner isn't using it. That gives each of the rooms a unique feel, and all that we've stayed in have been comfortable and nice. It's also just a dune away from the ocean, and most of the room have a great view of the Pacific. We rented a room for 2 nights, unloaded our gear and relaxed most of the rest of the evening, eating some fish and chips from the Foghorn bar and watching the ocean from our window.