All about my vacation road trip…

Monday morning, I accompanied Anxiety for her registration at her new high school. Louise — er, Lyse, that is — and I left about 9am on Monday, and had a great road trip!

The trip south
Well, aside from one little kerfluffle involving stopping in Albany because Lyse’s “check engine” light came on. After she had been reassured by a professional that it was just a cylinder misfire issue that could be ignored temporarily, and that the car was not in imminent danger of exploding or anything, Lyse most unfortunately relied on my memory of some 10 years ago on how to most easily get back on the interstate. So we wound up in Philomath instead…for those of you lucky enough to be unfamiliar with Albany or Philomath, that’s an 18-mile drive. One way. Oops.

The drive featured many, many trees. Eventually, however, we arrived at the Oregon Vortex and enjoyed it lots, although Lyse wasn’t entirely thrilled that I used her as a pendulum without asking first. (The Vortex has a spot that, if you stand on it and relax, pretty soon you’re swaying slightly in a rotating motion. Kind of like I do when I have too much sake, actually. It’s fun!) We would have liked the tour more if a woman who apparently didn’t have full command of the English language hadn’t kept belligerently demanding to know how it all worked. Lady, the rest of us are here because we want to be amazed and intrigued. Just enjoy the goram mystery and SHUT UP.

Anyway, we also managed to find the only witch within 20 miles, with whom we chatted for a bit. (No, she didn’t say she was a witch. But she mentioned decorating her tree the previous winter for Solstice, and let slip that her cats’ names were Loki, Hecate, and Lilith. Yes, really. Lyse kept snickering about that for quite a while.)

The trip west
After the Vortex, we headed for the motel. Of course, first we had to find Highway 42. Despite Lyse’s delightful super-phone, which has GPS and Internet and probably can beam you up to the mothership if you push the right buttons, it was a challenge. When you take the I-5 exit marked “Highway 42,” you then find yourself on a road that is unmarked and has no signage to tell you which way to go! The super-phone made suggestions, which we followed anxiously, still finding no signs — and then we drove right PAST the intersection where Highway 42 is marked only on the road that you turn ONTO. The only reason we even saw it at all was that we were looking down every road we passed, in the hopes of finding a street sign somewhere that we could type into the super-phone for additional suggestions. It’s as if they don’t WANT you to find Highway 42!

There were a few incidents on Highway 42 that spooked us just a little. First, we had to stop for gas at a hole-in-the-wall station, which was creepy all by itself. As far as we could tell, there were all of 6 people in this “town” (all of 4 buildings that we could see from the road). The lady pumping gas started telling us her life’s story practically as soon as we exited the car, as if she was desperate for human company. She was nice enough, just oddly talkative…and eerily friendly. The gas pumps were so old that they had rolling (non-digital!!!) number indicators, and the minuscule market attached to the gas station (which we had to enter, because of course the pumps themselves had no way to pay with a debit-card) had several freaking deer & elk trophy heads on the walls. Upon discovering there was no restroom at the station, Lyse was directed next door to the nameless diner. (I suppose you don’t actually need to name a restaurant when it’s the only one within 20+ miles, but it was still kinda creepy.) When she came out, Lyse mentioned to me that not a single customer was inside (and in fact, the sole employee went outside to smoke while Lyse was inside the restroom). As we drove off, we saw there was a painted word on the nominal front of the diner, nowhere near centered as you might expect, but rather all the way to one side and just above one of the windows…it said, in foot-tall magenta script on a turquoise background, “JESUS.” We drove away quickly, before the banjo music could start.

The next eerie occurrence was the Middle Fork of the Coquille River. Highway 42 is apparently nothing but a series of switchback loops, because over the course of about 20 miles, we crossed ELEVEN consecutive bridges with signs that stated “Middle Fork Coquille River.” The first few were amusing, and by the time we got to the seventh or eighth one, we were kinda creeped out. By the time we hit number 11, we were completely expecting to hear banjo music.

The other spooky incident on Highway 42 was just your basic near-death experience. Coming around one of the countless corners, we found ourselves staring at the headlights of an 18-wheeler who was using our lane to pass other vehicles! I was driving at that point, and stifled a scream as I hit the brakes. The truck (FedEx, btw) swerved back into its own lane instead of smashing us flat (obviously), but it did come within just a few short seconds of making us roadkill.

Speaking of roadkill, I have a (possibly sick and twisted) little habit of keeping track of roadkill on a journey. Sometimes I do it silently (especially if I’m traveling with people who might be grossed out by it) but this time, we not only did it aloud, we Twittered it too. Grand total for the entire trip? 4 raccoons, 3 skunks, 2 possums, 1 nutria, and a string-style mop head (the kind that look like fat strands of yarn sewn together on one end). Lyse insisted we must not discount the suffering of the mop head.

We arrived at our motel in Myrtle Point (which I won’t mention by name because I wouldn’t recommend anyone stay there, strictly because the bed was horribly uncomfy, although the view was gorgeous and the elderly gentleman proprietor was charming) and had a sadly-lacking dinner at a local diner, then grabbed some snackfood & breakfast pastries at one of the smallest grocery stores I’ve ever discovered.

Also, the drive along Highway 42 featured many, many trees.

The critters
Tuesday morning we went to the West Coast Game Park Safari, seven miles south of Bandon, OR. If you’re expecting something along the lines of Wildlife Safari (which is a magnificent drive-thru wildlife park that everyone should visit!), you’ll be disappointed. West Coast Game Park is a walk-thru park, which means it’s not huge. However, nowhere else that I’m aware of in the Pacific Northwest gives you the opportunity to be truly up-close and personal with several wild animals, of the non-dangerous variety. You can even hand-feed the free-roaming pygmy goats, sheep, donkeys, llamas, deer, and peacocks. (Hell, the animals practically demand that you feed them, although none of them looked like they were the least bit underfed. But they will crowd you a bit, until they figure out that you have no food for them.)

Wildlife Safari is great, and awe-inspiring and all that, but at West Coast Game Park Safari I got to be 3 inches from a mostly-grown cougar (with heavy-duty mesh safety fence between us), and he purred and tried to scent-mark me when I “spoke” to him with the trills I talk to my own kitties with! A full-grown caracal (who was behind a barrier so that people couldn’t get close, similar to what you’d find at a typical zoo) seemed to respond to my trilling, as well. Caracals have always been my favorite wildcat because of their striking beauty and fairly close relation to domestic cats, with whom they can be (but rarely have been) bred. They look like enormous Abyssinians (which, like all other domestic cats, are direct descendants of the African Wildcat, another of my favorites). The paired lynx adults in the next enclosure were entirely disinterested in my “speaking” to them, however.

Lyse and I got to pet and hold a baby ferret, a half-grown opossum, a friendly descented skunk (who was still musky, but not nearly as bad as the ferret!), and a baby coatimundi. We also got to pet a 7-week-old lion cub, a 4-month-old black leopard cub, and a 5-week-old lynx kitten (which Lyse got to hold!), who was about the size of a 4-month-old domestic cat but had paws larger than my biggest adult kitty’s feet! None of the wild cats have soft fur, even as babies, but it was an astonishingly wonderful experience. I simply can’t express in words how enchanting they are, other than to say that Lyse spent more than a little time scheming up ways to smuggle them home.

The trip north
The drive up Highway 101 was interesting. There were many, many trees. Lyse suggested at one point that the state of Oregon must have at least a thousand times as many trees as people, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she was correct. (We only have 3.6 million people, after all, and almost one-quarter of those live in the Metro tri-county area alone, which consists of only 3,000 of the 98,000 square miles of the state! Clearly the rest of the state is filled with mostly trees.) Of course, there were other sights to see — among them, the largest expanse of coastal sand dunes in North America, the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. It’s startling to be driving along a highway, go around a corner, and suddenly see a HUGE hill of sand with many large evergreen trees growing out of it. Hey, it’s just not something you ever really expect to see!

Also there were many bicyclists on 101. Unlike the bicyclists in Portland, they seemed keenly aware that the motor vehicles on the road out-massed them by hundreds — if not thousands! — of pounds, and behaved accordingly. In other words, they didn’t act like the arrogant dipshits that are usually found on bicycles in Portland: running traffic lights & stop signs, expecting everyone else to yield to them, ignoring all traffic & safety laws, and being otherwise flippantly defiant regarding common sense or common courtesy. (Since the beginning of this year, I have seen exactly ONE bicyclist in Portland who stopped at a traffic signal on a red light or a stop sign.)

The scenery on 101 truly is phenomenal. Seeing the ocean was almost distracting enough to make me run off the road at one point! Our stops along the way to Astoria provided us with lunch and a bit of shopping for goodies, including fudge and pretty shinies (I got a charm bracelet with charms that have the names of my daughters and my godson), some crochet & spinning goodies, and a few pressies as well. By the time we arrived in Astoria, we were soooo ready to crash. Dinner and a bit of the Discovery Channel capped off our evening.

Astoria and the drive east
After finding a Starbuck’s — the first we’d seen in two whole days, horror of horrors! — and obtaining our usual mochas, we went to the Columbia River Maritime Museum, which was awesome per usual (my second visit, Lyse’s first). And a stop at the Flavel House rounded out our Astoria experience (also my second visit, Lyse’s first). Lyse tried to convince not only me, but the tour docent, that the house should be hers — and it’s not even green! (But it’s Victorian, and heaven knows she loves that stuff.)

Driving back to Portland along Highway 30 was less congested and less tree-filled than any other leg of our trip, although there were still many, many trees. We rubbernecked like crazy through Scappoose, since we’ve given it some consideration as a place to move to when we decide we can’t stand Portland anymore and want a simple life in the country (including, Lyse decided after meeting the friendly donkey at the West Coast Game Park, a donkey to help haul stuff around the farm…or ranch…or whatever we end up having). Of course we hit town at a quarter-to-five, just in time for rush hour traffic. While waiting for a green light at the freeway offramp, a transient with a beggar sign made some sarcastic remark at us, presumably because I ignored his presence instead of forking over cash…yet another reason Portland is swiftly wearing on our nerves.

We barely got home in time for me to hug and kiss Geoffrey before he had to leave for work, but I’m looking forward to spending lots of time with him before I have to go back to work on Sept. 2nd (and he heads off for a week in Costa Rica on the 4th!). It was wonderful to spend two solid days with Lyse, filled with adventure and laughter and that wonderful sense of true compatibility that comes from a bond that goes even deeper and broader than years of friendship can really account for. But I’m also very glad to be home, to be sleeping in my own (deliciously comfortable) bed tonight, and in the wonderful company of my loving household and my terrific next-door neighbors.

Sorry to be so mushy there, but maybe that’s what happens when you spend a couple days looking at thousands upon thousands of trees. Trees are great, but loved ones hug you back!