My friend Jane said it best. “Portland is probably best known for its food and its beer!”
Having now visited all three of the “weird” cities, that is, those cities who have adopted the marketing slogan of “Keep XXX Weird,” – Asheville, Austin, and Portland, it’s interesting to ponder how a movement like this gets started. It’s hard to say what constitutes “weird” when defining a city. Continue reading
I had more social interaction during my time in Portland than the past year all put together. From seeing old friends to meeting new ones, I find myself wondering what happened to my introverted self? I am feeling a little like the Kim Kardashian of the RV community. Continue reading
Since it is now long after dark, I decide to go for the cheapest option, so I pull into the Motel 6. The clerk behind the desk is helping a man who is angry because his TV does not work. He asks to move to a different room, to which the clerk replies, “You got the last room. We are full up.” GULP! I decide to wait anyway, thinking I can ask her if she knows of any other hotels that may have rooms. She hands me a list of hotels in the area, and suggests I start calling… Continue reading
I booked two weeks at the Columbia River RV Park – not only to take care of some “city errands,” but also to hunker down in a location with a reservation to ride out the holiday madness of the Fourth of July weekend. It is a rare treat for me to have a weekend in between work weeks where I don’t have to reposition the Winnie. Two whole days with no driving required, so what do I do?? Take a road trip! 😉 Continue reading
Sometimes the shift in “vibe” from being in the solace of a remote location, then immersing myself into a big city and back again can cause me to feel discord. I attribute this mostly to my work situation, and to the fact that I am trying to treat this odyssey as “life” rather than “vacation.” One wouldn’t typically go from building Excel Pivot charts in the middle of the woods one week, to the middle of a new bustling city the next “in real life.” Continue reading
My final weekend along the Oregon Coast now behind me, it is time to once again find a place to anchor for the work week. The little town of Astoria, “oldest American settlement west of the Rocky Mountains,” looks like the perfect spot to spend the week exploring before pivoting east. Continue reading
As I walk the beach of Fort Stevens during a gray, overcast sunset, I feel melancholy that my lighthouse quest is now over. It has taken me a month just to do my “coastal crawl” justice. I have had some wonderful experiences along the Oregon Coast, from bushwacking to see Cape Arago, to tide pooling with Life’s Little Adventures in Cape Blanco, to the enchanted carrousel of Umpqua River light. But it feel like it ended with such a thud. I am not ready to leave the coast…but would I ever be ready? Continue reading
I knew beforehand that my last stop in my Oregon Lighthouse Exploration was going to be anticlimactic. I could barely see it, let alone feel it. At over a mile off shore, the best I could hope for was a few grainy, distant photos. No way to come close, let alone have the intimate experiences I had had with the other six lighthouses now in my rearview mirror. Continue reading
With my beaming new 300 watts of solar now in place, I am ready to head back to the coast and pick up where I left off with my lighthouse stalking. I have loved every single mile of the Oregon coast and decide I don’t want to miss a single milepost, so I head due west to Newport where I left off a week ago to come inland for the solar install. Only the weather has now turned dreary and rainy, an ironic twist considering I am now on a mission to see how many days I can go without plugging into the pole! Continue reading
I was married for eight years to a man named Scott Eugene. When I was in a teasing mood, I called him “Euge” for short. I once read that the thing that most attracts us to a person initially is the thing that drives us crazy after eight years of marriage. Scott had a dry, sarcastic rapier wit which kept everyone in stitches. When we first met, I was enamored, until which time that wit became directed at me, and then it wasn’t so funny anymore. Leaving the marriage itself was difficult. Leaving Scott Eugene was not. Continue reading