An Oregon State Of Mind

I get the feeling that it takes a bit more than passing through, to absorb the angles and irritations that make living in the Beaver State so enticing. Because it is a state that attracts immigrants and tourists. I’m not sure I get it but the failing is all mine. 

Take Tillamook, home to the cheese factory, a desirable town not too fancy but pretty and just twenty minutes from the ocean. Not that you’d know as there isn’t a lick of ocean living to be seen here. But the sky? Gray and heavy and somber like a cold November day. 

We paused to buy pastries and coffee to break up the drive and of course this is where you come to eat first rate food grown locally and organic and all that. My Danish was none of that, I think but it was delicious as was the coffee. 

Across the way it looked like a scene from a Tolkien story. Retirement in Tillamook looks okay if you can stand the brisk August winter! Twenty years in Key West says many things about me but fear of sunshine is not one of them. I love sunshine. 

Rusty likes the cool air and the friendly locals who stop to make a fuss of him. 

We went past the Tillamook cheese factory and tourist trap, but it was packed with vast lines and not a mask in sight. It was the same story at another roadside factory so as much as I love cheese, we passed. It is tedious remaining Covid cautious but we are not dropping our guard. Our friends in Seattle are getting tested prior to our arrival. It’s how we go. 

Rusty fell in love in Tillamook. They circled each other and then it was all wagging tails. The other guy had to go back to work which was a shame as he shared my stupid sense of humor as we watched our dogs circling and wagging tails before they had to leave to go back to work. Rusty was bereft. He circled the building into which they disappeared and I had to cheer him up with a special treat and some tummy rubbing. I never saw that coming: Rusty liking another dog. 

They have peculiar parking rules in Oregon. I have no idea how you identify a resident’s parked car. Or an employee. I guess we are safe with a Florida tag, neither a resident or any employee be. 

Layne got stuck in the soap shop named for the owner’s rescue bull, saved from a painful death when she luckily was there to take him in. How do I know this? Because Skye owns a VW van but finds it too cramped and is converting a school bus into a spacious home. Instant connection. 

We talked about heat and humidity and insects and the long gray summers in Tillamook induced by changes in the climate that is increasing summer rain and cloudiness. Forty years of gray overcast is forcing Skye to contemplate a move to Portugal in search of sunshine. The lucky cow may find himself emigrating too as he enjoys robust good health. Race horses travel was Skye’s rationale so why not a rescue bull? Lucky bear indeed. 

The drive up Highway 101 is wearing us down. The wind mercifully is absent so 63 degrees isn’t as cold as it might be. 

But the fog is real and hangs low. “I could see how beautiful this might be with sunshine,” Layne said at one point after we had listened to John Grisham for a while in a long line of cars, residents probably, doubtless driving home to hot toddies and summer fireplaces designed to cheer you up in this bizarre climate. 

The beauty is dramatic and there are lots of pull outs to see the latest state of the waves. Gas is around $4:60 to five bucks a gallon and you’d think people would be staying home given the fuss about gas prices this summer. But Oregon is busy with crowds of people packing the parking lots and sidewalks. Come with reservations or be prepared to wild camp if you can. 

We stopped at a rest area just south of Tillamook Tuesday night. That place too was busy with cars coming and going. We had salad and a deconstructed burrito for dinner and woke to a wet landscape as though it had rained overnight. 

It was a lovely spot for a walk. And the attendant was hanging out nearby chatting with a bicycle tourist who broke out a guitar and started singing. He actually had a good voice. We told him we enjoyed it, which we did, and he glowed. 

Oregon the enigma. Great people, terrible weather, nice roads and extraordinary scenery, great food and if all this isn’t enough they offer legal euthanasia. They really do follow the beat of their own drummer! 

Some pictures: 

This place reminds me of pictures I’ve seen of Alaska. 

Dispersed forest camping is not obviously available along the coast. 

One of a number of identical fruit stands. Good fruit even though it’s a chain! 

An indented coastline with rivers and lagoons produces many bridges. 

Logging, fishing, and tourism keep Oregon healthy.  

Hot public showers in Salmon Harbor Marina.  

Fish and chips. Delicious cod in Coos Bay. 

Pick up some Covid with your cheese. Yes I’m grumpy about skipping it. 

A stretch of Highway 101 reduced from freeway to country road and as lovely as you’d imagine. 

Garibaldi, below.  The Italian revolutionary was respected around the world. 

North To Oregon

There are moments in life that take one completely by surprise. I have no doubt anyone reading these words could list a tiresomely lengthy number of such moments and only recently. But hands up anyone who shared their toilet this weekend with a woman dressed as a 19th century chambermaid? I did.

It is a great thing to travel with your own toilet and I’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve used it on city streets, in parking lots and sometimes even far from the madding crowd, on a deserted beach or lost in a wild wood. As you can see above, it is small and confined and self contained which means I have to unhook the gray five gallon bottom half to pour away the contents in some suitable place, preferably a trail head pit toilet or RV sewer dump. It’s a job I don’t mind oddly enough but for most people it is a subject of hushed dread. 

My wife photographed these cheerful seaside Mennonites from Ohio gathering beach mementoes of their visit to the lost coast. One of them came to us with a “strange request” which I figured might be a walk through of our unusual home, actually a common enough request. But no.  She immediately gained my instant respect for her bravery and utter fearlessness when she asked if she could use our loo. I fell over myself to accommodate her  and spare her further blushes. 

How she sorted herself out in our tiny space I don’t know but I closed the sliding door assuring her she was invisible inside and stood guard outside with my back to her out of her sight. Our outside windows allow no light in and she also had the wooden door to assure her privacy. 

I find myself at a loss to understand the range of eccentricities this country encompasses but I have met Mennonite farmers and missionaries all over the place in the Midwest and Belize most notably and my mind boggles thinking of them dressed for a Polish winter in a Belizean summer while doing hard manual labor. I was pleased to be able to help out a very poised and cheerful member of this oddball community in distress. It felt like one oddball helping another and I greatly enjoyed the convergence of our two very different but equally marginal lifestyles in a country packed with suburban conformity. 

I think we caused some confusion when we took a dip. Swimming is not a thing they would do in public certainly but like I said the US accommodates a range of eccentricities and Layne and I wanted to see what the water temperature was at this far north latitude, after the Mennonites wandered off looking for sea shells.  

The seawater was clam and flat yet cold to a degree hard to imagine and after a minute of desperate paddling up to our necks we were back on land absorbing all the sun’s rays we could. I have to admit the endorphins released by this encounter with the water were quite pleasant but not enough to make me want to do that again.  

After our second night parked alongside Mattole Road we made a u-turn and drove north up the hill toward Ferndale 25 miles and 90 minutes away. The road was pretty awful, not as bad as the southern approach through Petrolia but it was a rough unpredictable ride mixing newly paved bits and ghastly potholes in rapid succession.

It was a 15 to 20 mile per hour road with sudden braking for the bad bits and lots of pulling over for locals with no regard for their vehicles’ long term integrity.  The views were excellent. 

Ferndale, the terminus of this wild hour long drive is a pretty town, a place I’d like to visit after Covid if we find ourselves bowling along Highway 101 again. I seem to come to this region once every 35 years on average so I expect I shall run out of time before my next s hiked visit to Jefferson Country. There is a vocal but small group of libertarians who want to create a separate state in Northern California and southern Oregon dedicated to supposed Jeffersonian principles of small government. No action so far on their part but they do have good weed which may be slowing them down. 

We re-joined the main coastal road and they’ve named US 101 the “Redwood Highway” around here  so we knew what to expect.

Actually we did not expect salmon jerky of which we bought a sample and it was quite excellent, like smoked salmon but not slippery like lox. Recommended. 

We found the redwoods, though I have to say we lived among them for twenty years in Santa Cruz, and still they are awe inspiring. There is a short diversion called the Drury Parkway off Highway 101 and we took the turn with our loot from a brief stop at the Eureka Costco and had roast chicken sandwiches for lunch.  

If you’ve never seen the redwoods, so called owing to their bark, you owe it to yourself. They have two enemies: fire and wind. Otherwise they live forever and some of these trees were around when Methuselah stalked the Middle East. They make excellent lumber and early US businesspeople tore through old growth stands to build equally indestructible homes with their wood. That practice has been banned but old growth trees are rare.

Redwoods (Palo Colorado in Spanish, and those early explorers were equally intoxicated by these trees) grow on this coast as they water themselves from the moisture of the marine inversion clouds that come overhead. Far overhead. They are astonishing, such huge trees living off mist drizzle.  

To give you some perspective: 

It was cold so I walked Rusty for a short while and I photographed the memorial commemorating brothers killed in World War Two. I assume the two names were brothers…All I could find out was that the grove was established in 1965 by their uncle a judge originally from Kentucky.  

I can’t imagine how their mother coped but that was a different time and stoicism was the order of the day. 

It was a somber moment standing submerged at the bottom of the long shadows cast by these vast trunks.

We rejoined Highway 101 and turned north. Crescent City, the last major town in California and county seat of Del Norte County was a long line of box stores lining a four lane highway. 

Billboards promising the best of Oregon weed distracted my elderly brain from the moment we were about to pass the Stateline but I half caught the store itself stuffed with modern legal cannabis on the California side of the creek that separates the two states.

The first pleasant change was the vast rest area we found just north of Brookings. Oregon offered us a free dump site and free water to fill our tank. And a vast spacious rest area to walk our dog. Nice. 

In Oregon US Highway 101 becomes the coastal scenic highway where California runs its own state Highway One up the coast. 

Aside from the fresh scenic views along the coast we also reverted to having our gas pumped for us just like in Mexico. We thought we did well finding regular for $5:05 in Oregon but it was even less expensive the closer we got to Washington State. And we saved a lot by paying cash. Weird. 

A little afternoon sun, a break in the heavy clouds cover cheered us up a little as we drive north. 

63 degrees and heavily overcast was not our idea of a pleasant August day. We turned the heat on in the cabin and were glad of it. I had been re-reading about Webb Chiles sailing Cape Horn freezing cold and wet and the thought of it chilled me. 

“No Overnight Parking ” is the mantra of course. Nothing daunted my navigator found an isolated open parking space three miles up in the hills among the trees far from the hectic coastal traffic. 

It was silent and perfect and free. We had beans and steak and tortillas and cider and slept the sleep of the just. Our first afternoon out of California at last. 

The blue dot marks the spot.