I'm on a fast trip over the Rockies to Cheyenne, so I've been on I-84 since Portland. As interstates go, it's a pretty nice route with plenty of variety. Even the driving comes with challenges now and then to ward off the usual mind-numbing that you usually find in the west on the interstates. The Wildhorse casino in Pendleton has set aside RV parking in their lot, marked off spaces on asphalt, which was better than paying to stay in their RV...
Regular readers know how much I dislike the perpetual and sad goodbyes that pretty much are the part of the rules of this lifestyle. Just the other evening I had to say goodbye to my grandkids for the second time in about a month. And the goodbye at Burning Man was particularly tough. My ancestors-in-travel following the Oregon Trail crossed the Snake River here, a beautiful bend in the river suitable for easy fording. But from here, the trail...
The wedding in Portland was very nicely done, exceeding what I had anticipated. It was for the marriage of my nephew Rob and his partner Matt. They themed the venue, the ceremony, the food, and the bar "Spain", a place they visited and enjoyed. It took me a while to realize we were drinking Spanish wine, even Spanish beer. There was no cheating by using Oregon products, which impressed me. I almost didn't go because of my travel plans, but I'm...
If you can ignore the traffic problems, Portland has a lot to offer the tourist. It's a dense city, things are close together. And everywhere you go there's a new neighborhood with it's own personality. I checked out Hawthorne Street today, a neighborhood in the Southeast quarter. Powells Books has a big store there (I picked up three more titles), I checked out the grocery store, and on a tip from a local visited the Third Eye Shoppe, a classic...
This is the largest book store in the universe, or some such superiority. The number of titles on the shelves is massive, they seem to strive for at least one copy of every book published. And they get closer to that than any other book store I've seen. I did well there, a shopping bag of titles that I've been searching out for years in some cases. And I picked up several on-sale items, as well as some new to me authors. The drawback is that the...
When I got up this morning, the rain coming in that I'd been watching for three days seemed to have sped up a bit. I got a move on quickly to try to make it to Portland before it hit. And I just made it. Now it will rain until Thursday. This is the first rain of the season. The last will be July 4. I'm at Jantzen Beach on an island in the Columbia under the airport flight path, next to a railroad line, across the street from a monstrous shopping...
The measure to legalize marijuana in Oregon comes up for a vote on November 4, but state and local agencies are ramping up fast to be ready for it. It appears as if folk think it will be a sure thing. Cities and towns are passing ordinances to tax the businesses and jigger their zoning and permitting codes. The measure explicitly prohibits such stuff, but there's a feeling that the laws they pass now might be "grandfathered" when the measure...
Sutherlin is pretty and quiet, but it's not very exciting. Roseburg has plenty of services, but generally speaking timber towns don't offer much. The reason for going to Portland (I'll be parked at the Jantzen Beach RV park) is a wedding on Saturday night. The second reason is to mine Powells Books, "the biggest book store in the world" or some such nonsense. And I need a trailer tire, so I'll be busy but it will be sales-tax free. I can get...
A New York paper described the legal marijuana market in Colorado and Washington as "wacky" and "puzzling". I started off interested in investing these businesses, but backed off when I saw the conditions. As I've said before, the agency in charge of implementing the WA law is doing it's job quite well. It issued 11 licenses for retail sales in the last month, which seems low until you consider that of the 57 it's issued, only about 30 are...
I'm at the Escapees park in Sutherlin for a week. When I left Nevada I decided to veer west of Klamath to avoid a fire there. When I got to Redding, a fire to the west broke out. When I left Yreka the other day, yet another had broke out on the nearby ridge. Meanwhile a fire was started up north of me. And this morning a fire went through Weed, where I was just a few days ago. Except for few days, I would have had to evacuate. So I'm surrounded...
A neighbor camp to ours went through a ritual every day of going to the top of one of their rented RVs. The most I counted was 23 people at once. The odd thing was that all they did was sit there or stand around, few carried drinks. I think if you look closely you'll see the bend in the roofline near where the refrig vent is.
This place is nice, pricey, and big. I first saw it several years ago while it was under construction, and since I've been moseying along I-5 I stopped for a night to look it over. The hitch is that after paying the parking fee, they still take your money in the casino. Doesn't seem fair. Tomorrow I'll move into the Escapee park in Sutherlin, OR for a week.