After departing from Astoria, we headed north on a beautiful, tree-filled drive alongside the coast, lakes and rivers to Port Angeles, WA. As you might remember from our change in plans in Astoria, we had switched from a tent campsite to a cool yurt and handily avoided downpours and mosquito hordes, but since the yurt was only available two nights out of our three, we headed to our hotel in Port Angeles a day early. We'd opted for an inexpensive, no-frills place, because our short stopover in Port Angeles was planned to give us close proximity to the Victoria, B.C. car ferry, which only departs from Washington three times daily.
Upon arrival, we'd been camping for more than a week, so we were definitely in need of laundry facilities (although the Oregon campgrounds had nice hot, free showers, so we were feeling somewhat clean!), and the extra night in the hotel meant that we could use the washers and dryers there, one or two loads at a time close to our room, rather than decamp for hours at a laundromat, waiting for our multiple loads to be done at once (these are the things we strategize about these days). We did some more assessing and arranging of what garments needed immediate washing and what could be worn out somewhere, and procured our needed quarters before heading to downtown Port Angeles for an Italian dinner.
And now to explain the title of this post: simply, the Twilight books. In case you've somehow missed out on hearing about this popular young adult franchise, I'll synopsize. A few years back, Arizona author Stephenie Meyer writes a novel about teen vampires that's set in the town of Forks, WA, a real city about an hour away from Port Angeles, with the claim to fame of being one of the most rainy, sunless places in the U.S. and possibly the whole planet. The book became a huge hit, spawned three sequels and (soon-to-be) four movies based on the books. We didn't get a chance to visit Forks, unfortunately (I was so curious about this odd place!), but the town of Port Angeles is definitely Twilight-crazy. The hotel, the downtown, every knickknack shop and bookstore...all have advertisements for Twilight "tours," Twilight paraphernalia for sale (mostly movie posters and postcards), Twilight references or puns in business names, etc. Driven by a craving for pasta, we stopped in for dinner at "Bella Italia," a place that we think was listed on the Twilight Highlights simply because Bella is a character name from the book.
Twilight connection aside, the meal was delicious, and our travels a way up north kept the sky so lit up at night that we had no idea whether it was bedtime or midafternoon. We meandered over to a little fountain square to let Alton run around after a day of driving and a dinner of good-boy restaurant behavior.
The next day, with more laundry tossed into the machines, we came back to the same little square to wander around before heading into a local (Twilight-bedecked) bookshop. Don't forget to notice the little peeper at the bottom right of the photo!
Despite the recent surge in vampire-focused tourist trade, Port Angeles is a really cute little town with a long history (more than 100 years old!) and industry that centered around fishing, logging, and the ferry to Victoria. We bundled up against the cool, rainy sprinkles and walked around the neatly square little blocks, admiring some of the many murals painted on buildings' rear walls that faced the street. This one touched us in particular; click to enlarge and notice the sweet black pooch at the bottom of the painting, just left of center. Miss you, Minerva!
After one more night in our hotel with the nice towels, cable, and free wi-fi, we rose early-early to prepare for our ferry ride over to British Columbia. The day was Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, which was obviously not a holiday for Canada, but we knew would mean high traffic in travelers as Americans took advantage of the long weekend. The ferry desk employee had urged us to arrive at least an hour in advance of the earliest ferry in the morning, and when we drove up to park our car in the already-forming line of vehicles, we saw two big rig-sized RVs that had been waiting in line all night long. Yeesh. Once in place, with an hour to kill we walked around the corner to a cute little gourmet doughnut shop we'd spotted the day before. Alton was only too happy to sink his fangs into rainbow sprinkles.
Our passports examined and tickets paid, we followed instructions to drive slowly onto the car ferry, packed together so tightly with everyone else that we could barely open the doors of our li'l bitty Mini!
All passengers had to exit their cars for the trip, so we headed abovedeck and Andy began scoping and snapping all the pictures he wanted to take. With a blast of the horn, we chugged off, leaving patchy-skied Washington vampire country in our wake.
Happy Memorial Day!
Our vessel was called the Coho. This bell was out on deck, and all the kids nearby took turns ringing it.
Huge section of bike racks for our 90-minute ride--awesome! It made us long for our own two-wheeled transport back at home and wish we could use a little pedal power rather than sitting in the car all the time.
This pipe near a rail was labeled "Bosun's Locker." Alton decided that the little grate covering the opening was a perfect microphone, and started crooning eerily into it. Occasionally, Andy and I will use nicknames with Alton like "Altonius Maximus," or "Altonius Rhyne." Out of nowhere on this morning, Alton decided to announce his presence to the Bosun in this way, intoning in a low voice down the pipe, "Al-TONT-ius Rhyyyyyyyne! Al-tontius Rhyne!" We giggled uncontrollably, wondering whether anyone was on the receiving end of this puzzling pipe message.
Jackets on, we took advantage of the lack of rain and strolled the deck round 'n round.
I don't know about you, Alton, but my ears are freezing!!
Our first glimpse of Canada--we've never been to this country before!
Time to hustle down to our car and pull out the freebie advertisement map of Victoria City Center that I picked up on the ferry. We need to find some LUNCH!
Onward and northward....
After we parted ways from our sweet Minerva-girl, we continued up the Oregon Coast to our next camping spot: Astoria. In our south-to-north trip, we were camping in a lot of diverse campgrounds and parks, and I was definitely curious about this one. Fort Stevens State Park was not only supposed to have all manner of walking trails and military relics, but also hundreds of campsites, making it the largest campground we'd visit on the whole trip. Farewell to the tiny unmanned gatehouse with the sign-in envelopes that we'd encountered on our arrival in Coos Bay. Here there was a registration building with multiple service windows, like a bank, and a "Please form a line here" sign as if they were expecting a crowd. I checked in and located our campsite on the MAP (yup, big enough to need directions around this place) to lead my guys to *sniff!* our first campsite without Minerva. It was gorgeous: filled with trees, hardly any other campers occupying the sites near us, and the site backed up to a small, woody hillside filled with shrubs for extra privacy. We got out of the car to examine our quiet paradise, shutting the doors of the Mini quickly because there seemed to be a lot of mosquitoes around. Scratch that; a TON of mosquitoes around. Okay, now they appear to be swarming.
I cracked open the car trunk to extract our bug repellent, being used for the first time yet. I'd searched at our local natural/organic food store for a kid-friendly, herbal bug repellent that did not contain DEET, so that we could all use the same bottle and feel free to spray wildly around ourselves if the need arose. I shook it up and sprayed, taking care to avoid Alton's face. Producing a snack for him, we quietly observed some deer munching through the nearby bushes while Andy unfolded the tent. The mosquitoes were undeterred, giggling at our weak citronella essential oils and assessing the tenderest possible patches of skin to bite. They clustered all over Alton's little granola bar and landed on our clothes, hands, hats, and hair. I put a halt to the tent setup in order to backtrack to the ranger station and see if we could switch campsites. We could, but he recommended that we cruise the hundreds of other site loops to see if there was one that suited us better. With the mosquitoes buzzing actively everywhere and many sites located near heavily bushed areas or standing water (hmm, Mosquito Mystery no more...), in the end we decided to take advantage of our dog-free status and stay in a yurt!
The yurts were a collection of tentlike, semi-permanent structures with solid floors, half-walls, doors, and a little porch. Around them, the skeeter hordes were miraculously thin, and a little table plus futon-style bunkbeds meant that we could eat AND hang out inside to stay unbitten if we liked.
No dogs allowed in the yurts, so we were super-lucky to opt in to this camping luxury on our first Minerva-free camping foray, because the pouring rain started up that night! All that first night and the next day, the showers deluged on and off while we listened to the pitter-patter on our yurt roof. Alton was unfazed and went stump hopping in the lighter sprinkles.
The next day, we were ready for a little Astoria sightseeing. Astoria is situated on the Oregon-Washington border, where the mouth of the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean. Wet, meet wetter. Besides the enormous bridge at the beginning of this post, Astoria is also known for its port and maritime industry...
...and for the Goonies movie locations!
We took ourselves on a little driving tour to visit the house from the film,
the jail,
the museum,
and the sea lions.
Wait, sea lions!?
While we stood at the Le Mansion de Goonies high on top of a hill, incessant barking drew our attention to the marina far below. We decided to investigate the harbor to see if we could find the source of the noise (expecting maybe one or two big, vocal bulls), and came across dozens and dozens of bellowing sea lions! Hope nobody needs to board a boat anytime soon.
We lunched at a fun little health food cafe, with Alton happily chowing down on his meal. Proud of his appetite, we promised him a special treat after lunch since we'd noticed a small bakery case near the cash register. Andy went to go check it out and returned looking skeptical. "They only have bittersweet chocolate truffles and some kind of ginger cookie--he probably won't like anything there." I assured Andy that Alton had a sophisticated palate and would enjoy the chocolate, bittersweet or no. Yum! He munched it down and licked the unsweetened cocoa powder off his fingers!
That was the end of our sojourn in Astoria, our last stop in Oregon. The tradeoff for bunking down in the yurt was that we could only stay two nights instead of three, so after a home-cooked yurt meal, we spent the night and awakened ready to drive north. The sun was shining on a really beautiful drive through Washington state as we cruised past forests, rivers, lakes, and more trees, stopping for food and a milkshake in Olympia.
Our next destination was Port Angeles, WA. Originally we'd planned to just spend one night there in order to be close enough to catch the Victoria Ferry early in the morning, but with our Astoria trip cut a night short, we'd end up staying two nights in a Port Angeles hotel before our camping reservations in B.C. would begin. Surveying our dire need for clean laundry after checking in to the hotel, we saw that our extra night would definitely be advantageous in the washing machine respect!
Minerva, we didn't forget you! You are a seniors' waterside community on Highway 101!
After we left our adorable campsite with its rain/sun mixture in Coos Bay, OR, we hit the highway early in order to make a date with our good friend, Elizabeth, and her two munchkins *B and *F. We were meeting up for lunch at a place located halfway between the 101 coast highway and Elizabeth's house: Spirit Mountain Casino. Not too many choices of where to nosh out on those winding country roads, and we knew the casino would have food and gas AND be easy to find. The purpose of our appointment was to complete a handoff of Minerva, who would be spending the remaining two weeks of our trip with Elizabeth's family at their home.
In the days leading up to our rendezvous, it was hard to imagine leaving Minerva behind. She'd really been a model of good doggie behavior so far on the trip, and never once complained about all the long hours riding in the car.
But we had some big stuff ahead of us, namely some further international travel to Victoria and Vancouver, British Columbia, to get that 2nd "BC" in our trip. These destinations involved taking two ferry rides (dogs are allowed, but you have to ride with them on the exterior decks of the vessel--no fun if it happens to be rainy or high winds), and in Vancouver we were leaving our camping gear sheathed in favor of staying in a downtown hotel and hitting the tourist attractions. Finding a dog-friendly hotel meant extra bucks, and leaving her stuck in a room all day while we had fun seemed pointless. Instead, Minerva would get to go on her own doggie vacation. Chris and Elizabeth live on a big rural property, where their fenced backyard/play area is larger than our house and yard combined, several times over. Minerva can run as long and far as she wants, find a place in the shade to drop down and rest, watch Elizabeth plant her garden, stick her nose in corners to look for the cats, and cuddle up snugly at Chris's feet when he gets home, because she LOVES him.
So with the first departure of a member of our party, I wanted to shine a spotlight on our good girl and some of the fun times she's had on the Inaugural Rhyne BC to BC Run.
The vacation/party atmosphere for Minerva really got going in LA, where Andy's Uncle Scott lives. Southern California was experiencing a heat wave, and our four-legged companion was off and running in Scott's backyard, leaping into the pool to swim and then run all over to smell the places where Scott's son's dog had last been visiting.
Ah, then Mexico. The community where the family vacation house is located has a nearly-private beach, with the sand stretching empty all around save for a few walkers or joggers from the nearby hotel. This, in addition to Mexican laws being more lax or completely nonexistent when compared to ours, meant that Minerva could run and leap and play and fetch off-leash around the shore as much as she wanted.
She was actually very obedient and trustworthy, never straying too far away from where Andy was snapping pictures, or where Scott was fishing. She loved to dive face-first into the waves after the biggest sticks we could find, screwing her eyes shut against the salt spray and only putting down the object of her attention when she wanted to plant her feet and shake wildly, launching sandy, wet-dog droplets in every direction. Usually right next to me.
She leapt into the surf over and over, so intent on her play that she paid no attention to the spot under her foreleg where her harness had rubbed away the hair and left a raw patch of skin. We doctored her with a dab of neosporin later that afternoon when we cleaned her ears--a chore that we'd come prepared for, since it must be completed every time she swims to prevent ear infections. Usually a docile girl during this wet-tissue-down-the-ear-canal process, Nerve was nearly comatose after her morning's exertions and we had to hold her up to get the job done! She would spend the latter part of each day on the patio, snoozing and alternating her damp black doggy body in the sunny and shady spots to regulate her temperature. She couldn't even muster a glance for the monster truck rally taking place inches away.
All this fun, of course, meant that she was completely ruined for the rest of the trip in terms of behaving herself around bodies of water. At the KOA, we couldn't even walk her near the pool. In Mendocino, we gave in to her incessant barking and whining and finally took her off the leash in a secluded spot, crossing our fingers that the park ranger would be too busy regulating the abalone divers to notice a black streak rolling for joy in the sand across the way.
The only aquatic zone she would not touch was the outdoor spa tub at Grammy and Grandpa's house, a small but deep tub of warm water with bubble jets that all three dogs agreed belonged to the devil. When pacing the yard, they'd practically tuck their tails and run to get by the spa gazebo. I think I even saw Minerva touch wood and spit after getting too close to it, like a superstitious village granny. The dogs managed to keep their distance from it during their yard-romping (or in Tye's case, barbecue-begging), and their dislike of the steaming cauldron of doom was the only thing they all had in common besides their color and love of a good bed.
Besides her frantic desire to jump into water anytime (when we first arrived at the house in Mexico, she walked to the edge of the patio, spotted the ocean beyond, and leapt from the low surrounding patio wall about eight feet down to the street below), she was a good camping team player. Fresh from the habit of letting her wander around off-leash as she pleased in Rosarito, we continued this method at the first few campgrounds we visited, allowing her to hunker untethered beneath the picnic table while we prepared or ate dinner and the like. At our first campsite in the San Diego valley area, it was so hot and dry after the warm, misty coastal air of Mexico that she didn't even notice her leashless freedom and just sat panting in the shade. By the time we got to Mendocino, our fourth camping location, she was finding her own creative ways to get comfortable. We were unpacking and I was in the tent when Andy called, "Katie? Did, um...you put Minerva here?" Confused, since I didn't know where the dog was, I emerged to see what he was talking about.
In years past when we've been camping, we've always kept her restricted, tied to something sturdy in some way (We can't forget the time we went to a park and wrapped her long woven leash around a tree and she busted it. The leash, not the tree.), but we were very proud of how well she did in every situation. When you're spending 7 weeks on the road, traveling a total of nearly 5,000 miles and constantly staying in unfamiliar places, you're out of your comfort zone a LOT. I would say that you don't even have a comfort zone, but for us we savored the familiarity of our Mini and our tent, the two places we spent the most time no matter where we were. Minerva would get squished into the front seat, the back seat, the rear hatch; she'd jostle for space with Alton's toys, groceries, bottles of wine, her own food bag, camera accoutrement...and she'd just curl and twist and turn to make herself comfortable, resting her head on bags, the armrest, my arm, or anything else nearby. On long driving days, the doggie would definitely get the short end of the stick as we pulled in only briefly at gas stations and rest stops, giving all the humans in the car an opportunity to use the facilities before someone would hastily clip on the Nerve's leash, run her quickly through a patch of grass, upend a water bottle into her little plastic dog dish and then open the car door for her to leap right back in.
But don't worry, she got her rewards from Daddy.
No, not beer. But each night in the tent, we'd position her dog bed right next to Andy's sleeping bag, only to have her sneak onto, under, or even into his sleeping bag at some point while we all slept. Andy would awaken to find his legs immobile, pinned in place by fifty pounds of dog getting comfy on top of his sleeping bag and pinching down the excess fabric between the tent floor and her inert, snoring body. Andy was insulated by a layer of dog hair clinging to the fuzzy fabric inside his sleeping bag (so I took care not to mix up my bag with his), and Nerve was cozy and warm every night. She would sigh a doggy sigh of happiness and cuddled ever closer to her beloved Daddy, even when snuggling with him meant that she laid on the bare floor of the tent because her pup bed was shoved too far away.
She was very content in the tent, a fact that came in very handy for us on a few occasions when we needed to go to a no-dogs-allowed zone. Knowing that she'd just tuck in, stay warm, and quietly await our return, we'd kiss her good-bye in the tent, locking the zippers closed to protect against any would-be petty thieves accidentally letting her out. It was nerve-wracking (no pun intended) the first time we did it, but knowing that she would be fine by herself helped us to take better care of ourselves, like giving up on the campfire and dinner when the wind wouldn't let us light a match, and hightailing our chilly selves to the nearest Applebee's. Minerva, thank you for putting up with all this upheaval, with the new places, with getting your needs met last, with not getting to go to Applebee's...all in exchange for a few hugs. (For this picture, Alton walked over to Minerva to give her a hug, then asked me if I would take their picture. Awww.)
Back to the present day, we met Elizabeth and the kids at the casino for cigarette smoke-filled air and a great big buffet. We ate quickly while the Nerve bided her usual time in the car (comfortable on her blanket, with tinted windows and the sunroof open), then trooped everyone back out to the parking lot.
In days to come he'd repeatedly forget and ask where Minerva was, but on this day he was head over heels with happiness that he got to have lunch and funtime with his buddies.
We prepped Minerva's bed in the back of Elizabeth's van, and the kids hopped up for a quick picture.
We'll miss you, girl! Enjoy your time romping in Oregon, and we'll be home to you in a few short weeks. (Don't be too sad; she always looks like that.)
Trees, moist air, and overcast skies. Well-stocked rest areas, low highway speed limits, and no sales tax. The gatehouse at the campground is unmanned, with an honor-system "envelope drop" when you check in. The next day, the ranger at the Nature Center sips from her stainless steel water bottle as she waves you hello. We must be back in Oregon! Later than we would have liked, we pulled in to Sunset Bay State Park in Coos Bay, Oregon. One campground set-up M.O. we liked to follow sometimes was to have Andy begin setting up the tent and sleeping bags (with Minerva sorrowfully tied to a picnic table), while I would drive toward the nearest town with Alton and grab either takeout or grocery essentials or both, depending on what we needed.
With the Pacific Northwest sky still lit up with sunlight past our regular dinner hour, Alton and I collected our necessities and filled up with gas, returning to Andy to explore our temporary home. Love! The cozy, tree-filled campground held a good couple dozen tent campers (it is early in the season for Oregon, but it was a Saturday night so more people), a smattering of RVs, and a full roster of yurts. These are the large reinforced canvas tents erected permanently on platforms in the park, which we admired somewhat jealously (no dogs allowed, so we couldn't stay in one). But the tent campsites were very nice. Although a little on the small side, they were carpeted with grass and had tall, 8-9ft shrubs growing between each one to give you privacy. Small outdoor lights illuminated the path to the bathrooms, which we visited right away. Uplifted by the large women's restroom with a handicapped stall (a nice roomy plus for the mom who often has to squat or kneel on the floor to support a little guy too small to keep himself from falling into the potty), soap AND paper towels, I waited for Andy and Alton outside of the men's room. Curious about the shower cubicle doors I was seeing, I checked them out just as the guys were making their exit. "Andy!" I gushed giddily, "The showers are free!"
The campground is just a short walk to the beach, where you have your recreational choices of a volleyball court, sandy shore, or trails along the rocky coast with beautiful views of the ocean, the lighthouse, etc.
Our first full day at camp, Alton and Andy went on a little stroll to check out some of the walking trails and (Alton's favorite) bridges, and they came upon a small "theatre" setup, where wooden benches point to a giant white screen obviously made for a projector. Alton scurried over to hop up on one of the benches and play "movie."
At one point he even whipped out an imaginary remote control and changed which movie he and Andy were supposed to be watching.
After breakfast was over with, we decided to head into the town of Coos Bay to have a look around. While our campground was on the ocean in a cozy little c-shaped lagoon, Coos Bay lies to the east, with a larger bay surrounded by land and fed from oyster-rich streams. With a cute little downtown, waterfront walks and other touristy treats to choose from, what did we end up doing? Playing at the local playground, of course!
Some map surfing yielded a big city park in the middle of town, and upon inspection it was a perfect fit for us. Some grassy areas, jungle gym, swings...
...and bridges.
The bridges were courtesy of a picturesque little Japanese garden at one end of the park, created in honor of Coos Bay's sister city: Choshi, Japan. Alton was definitely in awe--do you get how much he loves bridges? He loves to look at them, go over them, go under them.... He calls freeway overpasses "bridges" (which they technically are, I suppose) and gets excited when we approach one. He intently studies his Bob the Builder program about bridges and can therefore identify beam bridges, arch bridges, and suspension bridges. Appropo that we live in the Portland area; one of the city's nicknames is "Bridgetown." Back in Coos Bay, we went over each of the five adorable bridges in the garden. Twice.
Finally it was time for lunch. Food had become a definite source of issues at this point of the trip. Our economical plan had been to acquire groceries and prepare our own meals at the campsites, but this was proving to be difficult with our continual moving around. It was hard to carry a lot of food around with us because of myriad limits: shelf-life, space in the car, space in the cooler, ice needed for chilling, etc. We had staples that we carried from place to place, but it seemed like with each new campground, we'd arrive with our stockpile of eatables dwindling and immediately need to flail around the local commercial district, hunting down grocery stores and trying to come up with semi-original, diverse menus so that we weren't pulling up a picnic bench to the same old burgers 'n scurvy every night.
So we came up with a new plan. We decided to loosen our frugality strappings a bit and allow our first day at camp to be a "restaurant" day: rather than stress through our first 24 hours in the new place hunting and gathering, we'd simply enjoy ourselves, get the lay of the land (and proabably spot a grocery store or two while we were at it), and dine out. A great plan!...except that it was Sunday, and Coos Bay is apparently small enough to be nearly downright deserted on this day of rest. Many places were closed or devoid of customers, we drove by the Red Lion and couldn't see their alleged restaurant from the outside, so we were hesitant to hop on board. Then we spotted the Kozy Kitchen, kozily packed with customers and sporting all the right diner regalia: vinyl booths, faux wood paneling, coffee advertisement posters, fake flowers on the tables. It gave me the familiar feeling of being at Jack's from my hometown (which has recently undergone a modern makeover I'm not sure I like).
So with breakfast served all day and nary a skinny waitress in the place (so you know the food is good), we settled in to make our selections. I decided to go the breakfast route, and ordered a breakfast burrito with a biscuit on the side. The waitress taking our order hesitated over her pad and leveled her gaze at me to make sure she had my attention when she said, "The breakfast burrito is big." Her stare did not waver and she did not crack a smile when she continued gravely, "So's the biscuit." Appropriately warned, I proceeded with both orders.
She was right. The jumbo biscuit looked like a tugboat next to my ocean liner of a burrito. The largest tortilla I'd ever seen was simply draped over and pinched around a longshoreman's mound of filling; no tuck-tuck-fold required. I wish I could say I ate it all (or do I?), but the leftovers made a great lunch the next day.
After a carb-coma nap for Alton (a giant, Mickey Mouse-shaped pancake had been demolished off his plate), we went on a nice beach walk to climb rocks on the windswept shore. Minerva whined and looked anxiously down the beach to where another dog was eagerly leaping around off-leash after a ball, but it was too late in the day to get her all wet with no means of drying her off, so she made do with some intense stick chewage and hole digging.
We also walked across the little bridges to and from the beach area several times.
Alton found a long stick and insisted on going "fishing."
We turned back to get ready for dinner. It was still technically our "dine out" day, but seeing what a ghost town Coos Bay was, we decided to eschew a return trip to the Kozy Kitchen in favor of a golf club in another town. Before we'd arrived to check in to our campsite the day before, we'd noticed signs on the highway for a golf resort with a restaurant in a town just south of us. We had no cell reception, so without calling ahead or the ability to check a detailed online gps map, we aimed south on the highway and crossed our fingers that it wasn't some kind of members-only country club. "Why," we argued, "would they have a sign out on the highway about a restaurant if they weren't open to the public?" Let's hope we're right.
We exited the highway and followed a few twisty country roads to the place, noticing that one of the roads bore the same name as one nearer to our campground. "Huh," we mused, "looks like we could've taken a back way to get here." We followed signs until we got to...a gatehouse. No guard, but some splendiferous signs pointed us in the direction of a Main Lodge for the property, leading us past enormous landscaped cabins that were clearly out of our price range. The hilly driveway curved up to a series of gigantic buildings, erected in the architecture style of "sexy log cabin," with golf carts buzzing around driven by snappily dressed caddies. Posh. This place was posh.
I parked our dusty Mini with its bug-spattered cargo box on top, left the AJs in the backseat and headed toward the biggest building of the bunch, grateful that I'd combed my hair at the campground instead of shoving a baseball cap on my head. I obviously looked lost, so one of the Caddy Clones approached me and asked if I needed help. I talked to him about the restaurants (yup, more than one) at the resort, and after getting directions, I turned back to ask one last question: "Is there a dress code?" "Oh no," he assured me. Nothing to worry about. He glanced at my brown Columbia hiking pants with the zip-off legs. "I mean, you aren't wearing jeans, which is the only property-wide rule." Crap. Andy was wearing jeans. All our clothes were back at the campground, which was probably only 15-20 miles but forty minutes away down the slow roads.
We decided to follow the signs down another quarter-mile of manicured avenues (nearly steering the Mini onto a golf cart path by mistake--hey, we would've fit!) to the restaurant and send Andy in to see if the maitre'd would make any comment about his hideous leg coverings. I mean, it's Oregon; we're a pretty rustic state, after all. How fancy could they be? Andy smoothed down his mohawk and went in, then emerged a second later flashing the thumbs-up. We were in!
Our delicious meal afforded us a view of the ocean sunset over gently-rolling sand dunes that were the resort's only neighbors. The restaurant had a patio anchored by a huge fireplace with a fire roaring away inside of it, so while we waited for our food we made some trips outside to take pictures, sit by the fire, and watch the deer that meandered lazily in the grass near a golf hole (Thirteenth? Seventh? It's all the same to me.).
After dinner, we noticed that we had cell reception and so decided to check maps for our route home. The gps confirmed our ability to take that country road all the way back to our campground area, with only one major directional omission: "Turn off the paved road...." A huge section of the wiggling, curving, aptly-named Seven Devils Road was just dirt & gravel, which meant that our tight little Mini suspension was hopping and juddering through the dark tree tunnels ahead with whiplash setting in to all three of us, and bears (or at least deer and rabbits) expected to leap onto our path around every corner. We eventually made it to our tent home and dogeared an important lesson about "shortcuts."
The next day was our first rain of the trip! We knew it had to happen at some point, and it was good odds that Oregon would be the campground where that hammer would fall. The nice, steady downpour had started in the night and kept up in the morning, so we lazed awhile in our sleeping bags while we evaluated the weather, then I took our hotpot (a very useful purchase of this trip) to the power outlets in the restroom to boil water for oatmeal (and coffee...coffee...) and served up breakfast in the vestibule of our tent. Rain pitter-pattered over our heads while Andy shored up the edges of the tarp that were aiming rivulets of water underneath the footprint of the tent. We let Alton snuggle in his sleeping bag and watch a movie on one of our expensive electronic devices while the morning showers expended themselves, then after lunch we got some nice afternoon sun filtering in to dry off our gear and "lawn." Alton woke up from his nap in good spirits and was happy to loll around as we cooked dinner.
He also showed off his woodsman skills to help get the campfire ready.
Once the fire was going, it was time for us to cook dinner. Sometimes we'd use our stove, but in the cooler camping climates where we lit a fire, we would try to take advantage of it and cook dishes that way. Sometimes the meals would turn out impressively tasty, like our pear-arugula panini night. But to be completely honest with you, Readers, we had some flops, like this night. We got the fire going late and tossed the chicken breast on the grate while the flames were still leaping and licking high, not low and hot, which is how we should have been cooking on this squat little grill. I laid two big heads of broccoli alongside our meat and went to drizzle them with olive oil, as you see...
...but my hand slipped and I doused the flames, causing a small flare-up that bathed one side of the broccoli in sooty tracks. We've "grilled" broccoli like this several times before, but always on large barbecues, not flimsy state park grates. We brandished our tongs and turned broccoli and chicken to cook them evenly, properly stoked the fire, continued cooking past our points of hungry...and still ended up with undercooked chicken and blackened, raw broccoli. The baguette from the grocery store was delicious, however.
A night of packing stuff up to get ready for our early morning departure and drive up the Oregon Coast!
