Mapping it

States I traveled through on this trip:




States I've now visited:



Looks like my next roadtrip path is pretty clear...!

Going anywhere I want

When I conceived this trip, I thought I would go to the Southwest. Slot canyons, arid terrain, bold colors, and desert creatures all fascinated me. But I knew I had only so much time for my trip, so I was open to making a new plan, especially after my singer/songwriter friend Cathy returned to C'ville from her trip out West and told me how she never made it to Sedona, or a number of other things she'd planned. Instead, she discovered the town of Las Vegas, Nevada beyond the strip, which apparently has a thriving art community. Her total change of plan, despite really wanting to do it all, inspired my sense ot total freedom. Even though I'd asked all my friends for travel recommendations in the southwest, and to some degree I feel really dumb now choosing to travel more-northern roads, I couldn't have imagined a better trip than the one I chose each day.

Day 5 - Reconnecting and discovering

Woke up in: Nye Beach (Newport), Oregon
Slept in: Eugene, Oregon
Traveled: 101 South, 126 East
Notable eats: Hot breakfast at Tables of Content; tempura fried shrimp roll at ??? in Eugene
Miles: 99
Total mileage: 368
Photo Evidence (more are stuck on my phone; who knew that Save to Phone means you can't upload??? Grr.)

My farewell breakfast at the Sylvia Beach Hotel involved saying goodbye to my new friends Dian and Bonnie, and meeting a fascinating woman who writes children's books. (She told me I look like her cousin, in spirit as much as physically -- whaddya think?) Ann has written a wonderful series about an African-American family following the kids as they grow older -- although she didn't want them to age when she was writing; they just did!

The sun was out, so I wandered the coastline delighting in the warmth. I also bottled some of the Pacific Ocean to send to my British cousins.

It was so delightful to see my friend River again; we've both had more than our age's share of disaster and confusion in our lives since we we parted in 1989 -- but at heart, we have have always had much in common, and it was nice to find out we still do. We'd corresponded a bit when she finally tracked me down on the Internets, but really that wasn't the reason why it felt like it had been mere weeks since we last saw each other. She is the same amazing, bright person she was in ninth grade, only more so -- we've both grown into ourselves. I got to meet her girlfriend and three cats (Sarah, Bridget, and Shanti) -- Sarah turned out to be quite portable in her basket, so we passed her around as needed while we chatted and caught up.

In the evening, we visited the Lichtenstein exhibit at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. We moved around the gallery trying to avoid a talk provided by Jordan Schnitzer, benefactor, himself (River was highly amused that he patted my shoulder in passing and asked if I was having a good time!). You could hear in his voice that he was trying to sound like he knew what he was talking about and impress the art patrons. I felt sad for him, to have such an exciting collection to share and choosing to talk pretentiously rather than what he really loved about the paintings.

In the gallery's permanent collection, I discovered a delightful beryllium copper sounding sculpture by Harry Bertoia -- the site has some MP3s of what happens when you touch these sculptures. First time I'd seen his work, and it added a whole new dimension to my perspective on 3D art.

Here's why houseguests should always treat when they go out to dinner with their hosts: without a receipt, they won't remember the name of the sushi restaurant where they had the interestingly-named tempura-fried sushi roll! Help me out, Riv....

Before bed, I looked up where to go for Nia the next day, and figured out where to snack and work subsequently. I was promised that Bridget would want to snuggle with me, but I think she was put off by the airbed's response when she walked on it. Made me think of my own feline family: who wouldn't care, who would be suspicious, who would poke holes in an airbed deliberately...!

Day 4 - Finally, a vacation day

Wednesday, June 14

Woke up in: Nye Beach, Oregon
Slept in: Nye Beach, Oregon
Traveled: mere steps to the gallery next door
Notable eats: Mostly, the hot cups of tea throughout a cold, gray day. Meals were all at the Tables of Content restaurant: Breakfast; fresh baked lemon bars and muffins, plus perfect scrambled eggs and grilled toast. Dinner; I didn't keep track because the conversation was so fascinating, but it was fine dining with good wine.
Miles: 0
Total mileage: 269
Photo Evidence

I think there is little better in life than waking after a long sleep to discover that a hot breakfast awaits, accompanied by homemade lemon bars and muffins. My desire to live at Sylvia Beach has been only further reinforced by the company at the breakfast table -- a group of fascinating women from various states, including Elizabeth, who does Nia in Eugene. Thanks to her, I didn't have to go from waking up to highly enthusiastic in seconds flat when someone asked me about it; she was excited to talk about her own experiences.

Elizabeth also pointed me to an exhibit at the Newport Visual Arts Center right across the street: a collection of poetry broadsides, all a collaboration between the poet and the printmaker. The work of William Stafford was featured most heavily, since he's an Oregon native, but I found lots of poems I knew and some great stuff I didn't -- especially Martin Espada's poem about an immigrant janitor at Harvard, printed with the Spanish and English translations side by side. I knew I was far from home when I saw Rita Dove's first name misprinted in the exhibit literature.

Cold, gray weather sent me inside rather than walking the beach, and I spent a wonderful day in the Sylvia Beach's library, curled in an armchair with the ocean to my left, the fireplace to my right, and my journal and books beside me. I held down this spot for hours, moving only for cups of tea and occasional work on the jigsaw puzzle in the kitchen lounge. Vacation at last!

Dinner downstairs at the Tables of Content restaurant held pleasant surprises in both the five-course meal and the excellent company. I learned there is a monastery within the city of Kyoto, that it's common to flip a pregnant woman on her side when she's in labor, and that high school students in Santa Rosa, California have at least one good teacher to challenge their political thinking. I also got a long list of good books I haven't read yet.

marrying the fly

Half a lifetime ago when I first read Natalie Goldberg's book Writing Down the Bones, one of her essays struck me as particularly relevant to my own writing. "Don't marry the fly," she says, in an eloquent passage about freewriting: that it's okay to let everything that's around you or your characters flow onto the page, but getting caught up in revealing the life history of the fly that lands on the narrator's hand is an excessive amount of detail.

My journey has taught me a lot about how I learn and experience a new place -- I can't just hop out of the car, take a few snapshots, trade stories with a few folks, and then hop back in. I want to know each place I've stood, whose boots covered this same path a dozen or a hundred years ago. I want to sit by each river I've crossed until I can tell north from south, east from west by their sound. My body wants to absorb and digest the wondrous totality of the beautiful things I find, instead of just taking a quick taste test and making room for more.

So in Oregon, I married the fly -- I stopped constantly along the road, exploring anything that looked interesting. The downside of fly marriage in writing is you'll bore the crap out of your reader. The downside in travel, you'll run out of time to taste everything you'd wanted between to and fro. I think the only thing I'd change about this trip would be to drive it in three months instead of three weeks. Good to know... for next time!

Day 3 - The other end of Lewis and Clark's journey

Tuesday, June 13

Woke up in: Seaside, Oregon
Slept in: Nye Beach (Newport), Oregon
Traveled: 101 South
Notable eats: I tried the clam chowder at Doogers, a dish for which the establishment is apparently renowned. Although it contained much clam, I was otherwise underwhelmed. Snack: fresh cheddar cheese curd at the Tillamook Cheese Factory (yummy, and it squeaks! Er, the cheese, not the factory).
Miles: 171
Total mileage: 269
Photo Evidence: Part I, Part II

So just over a week ago I was sitting in traffic next to Charlottesville's Lewis and Clark statue, which marks the beginning of their trip west. That statue's portrayal of Sacajawea is always a hot button (but said portrayal is of course a product of its time when the statue was created about 90 years ago; check out the artist's original statement). So imagine my surprise when today I found the statue marking the other end of the trail. Sacajawea has been replaced in her position on Charlottesville's monument by Lewis's dog -- who, so far as we know from his journals, may not have ever made it to the coast! At least Sacajawea is accurately represented on the statue's base as the mother of an infant. But if you want to be incensed over inaccurate historical representation, you'll do even better in Seaside than in C'ville.

Up early for a phone call with an East Coast client, I sat with my phone and computer about 100 yards from the tideline and gave thanks for the modern technology that has allowed me the freedom of this trip. A swatch of rainbow hung in the clouds as the sun rose. This is the life!

Today was also a day of following intuition to find what I needed. The zipper on my bag broke; I wandered into a thrift shop that benefits the local SPCA and found an even better replacement within 10 seconds, for $2.50. I needed some good reading that would connect me with the West but also be comforting; in a used bookstore I again found within seconds a Pam Houston collection that includes her recounting of a weekend fishing with my favorite high school teacher. I wanted a satisfying touristy experience; I followed signs for the Tillamook Cheese Factory (as already detailed in my captioned Flickr photoset).

Finally, I chose my night's lodging based on a one-line writeup from a library travel book that I found mostly useless but decided to photocopy a page or two anyway just in case. The most pleasant surprise awaited me when I finally found the Sylvia Beach Hotel -- at first I thought it had everything I could possibly design in a perfect night's lodging except for cats. When I realized those were provided as well, I could have happily stayed the rest of the month.

When not on his travels, Dickens supervises hotel operations.

Shelley makes sure no butterflies disturb the guests.

Day 2 - The Pacific Coast at last!

Monday, June 12

Woke up in: Seaside, Oregon, Seaside Hostel
Slept in: Seaside, Oregon
Traveled: 101 to and from Cannon Beach
Notable eats: Bistro (no website, alas) – steamers served with a leek-infused nectar; fresh grain bread with a choice of flavored butters (white truffle or honey nutmeg); salad with garlic-caper dressing; Chinook salmon baked perfectly with leeks and morels in a light vermouth sauce; Swedish cream with seedless raspberry sauce. Accompanied by a white Bordeaux, Chateau Thieauley
Miles: 20 (roundtrip)
Total mileage: 98
Photo Evidence

Slept late; woke and met Belinda, who is biking from San Francisco back to her home in Whistler, Canada! Wrong direction, she says, after too many days of being soaked and biking into the wind. We talked about how, when you tell others you’re taking off for a long solo trip, the response is often “Oh, you’re so lucky! I wish I could do something like that!” Well, if we can, you can; it’s a matter of choosing to make it work, which isn’t always the easy path. Belinda told me she'd met a guy who is taking two years to bike from Alaska all the way down the coastline to Chile. Imagine what it must take to put your life in order for that, but how rewarding to find the way to do it!

Had a nice, quiet afternoon catching up on e-mail and walking on the beach in the rain and wind. The Pacific Ocean is not as salty as the Atlantic, but it’s deeper, and that sense of depth comes through to the shoreline. I watched a woman try to rescue a Dungeness crab, but the critter was already not doing well; the extra stress may well have been the final straw. I was tempted to take it home and eat it, but my last experience with off-the-beach seafood did not work out so well. Better to leave it for the seagulls.

Late afternoon I drove down to Cannon Beach to explore; the view of Haystack Rock as I drove through town was breathtaking. Stopped in at Northwest by Northwest Gallery, where I was captivated for the first time by the enormous photos of Christopher Burkett. Months and years go into the timing and creation of his work; it's really something. The gallery also had some amazing hot glass art; foodie owner Joyce gave me a great tip for dinner – so I wandered down to Bistro, where bartender/scuba diver/carpet cleaning business owner Dustin kept me company and fed me well.

I also chatted with Lloyd and Marilyn from Portland, who invited me to join them at their table as they celebrated their 42^nd anniversary! I'm always so excited to meet couples who’ve loved and tolerated each other for so many decades and still find joy in each other. If the good Lord's willin' and the creek don't rise, I have this to look forward to as the Shmoo and I age.

Five things I've (re)discovered about travel

With props to 5ives, the infamous and the original.

1. Everything has at least two uses. Dirty laundry = cleaning towel. Grocery store cheese container = snack bowl for the car. Slices of sandwich bread = earplugs. (OK, I didn't really do the last one. But I bet it would work!)
2. If you are going to pack just one eating utensil, pack a spoon not a fork. You can grab bites of food with a spoon, but you can't eat soup with your Swiss Army knife or a tines-only implement.
   
3. No matter how many Ziploc bags you pack, it won't be enough. Or, if you have enough, they aren't the size you wind up needing.
4. OK, everybody knows this one: always wear sunblock. But to this I will add, even on a cloudy day at 5 p.m. if you're a few miles up in the atmosphere compared with the likes of what you're used to.
   
5. The amazing experiences I've encountered by traveling off course (there is no "lost" when you have no set destination) have been the most delightful part of my travels, hands down. Instinct is real. When my gut says "I think you should make that sharp right up ahead," invariably some wonderful thing occurs that I wouldn't have had without taking that road. Sounds cheesy (and yes! The Tillamook Cheese Factory was an instinct turnoff!) -- but it's true.
   

Day 1: From Portland to the coast

Sunday, June 11
Woke up in: Portland, Oregon
Slept in: Seaside, Oregon
Traveled: 26 West, 101 North
Notable eats: Brunch -- a glass of Scharffenberger brut and a plate of lemon-ricotta pancakes with marionberry sauce, Everett Street Bistro. Dinner -- a fresh-grilled salmon burger, Whole Foods Market.
Miles: 78 (plus a mile doubling back for elk/tsunami sign photo op)
Total mileage: 78
Photo Evidence

In the a.m. I took my first Nia class as a White Belt; it was a very different class dynamic than I’d seen during the week of my intensive. A lot more playfulness grew from what seemed to be a greater sense of intimacy between our teachers and the group. It was a good way to say “so long” to the studio and shift from that suspended reality into … well, a different suspended reality of being on the road. To smooth the transition I got caught up on some errands and spent an undisclosed amount of money on ribbon at the divine Oblation Papers and Press.

Subsequently I treated myself to an exceedingly yuppified brunch at a café on Everett Street. I chose the place for the aesthetic experience (sunlight, architecture, and a clean, crisp feeling accentuated by baked goods), but I always feel a bit strange when I pass as a member of the upper middle class elite. What I drive, where I treat myself when I shop, and how I look don’t communicate the fact that I’m more comfortable in the company of pool players and people who read paperback thrillers than among those who use “summer” as a verb (without a trace of irony) and literary elitism as a weapon. Still, good food doesn’t care who’s eating it, and I enjoyed my meal very much.

Later in the day after soaking up many blocks of Portland, the smell of fresh-grilled salmon lured me to its source in front of Whole Foods. A lucky chance, because inside WF as I caught up with my checkbook, I met Tasha and Emily, who are in Portland training to fly the new Q400 for Horizon Air. A fellow cat rescuer, Emily shared with me pix of her furry family and good advice about touring Southwestern canyon country by air (go in a helicopter where you can fly below the rim; take Bryce over the Grand Canyon any day).

Tasha, who’d gotten her early pilot training in the Navy, updated me with percentages of women at the Naval Academy these days – “lots,” she said, “I think the latest is around 13 percent.” Perspective is everything; when she graduated there were maybe half again as many other women in her class.

Took 26 West to Seaside, stopping constantly for photos along the way….

Get a haircut, get a real blog...

OK, so no haircut, because the Shmoo would freak out; it's already about three times shorter than he desires. (And why would I want anyone but the amazing Kenneth to cut my hair anyway?!)

And Blogger isn't exactly a "real blog" for a geek-girl wannabe like yours truly, but it's fast and easy from the road. That means I can actually concentrate my free time on, like, posting. Wouldn't you rather hear about all the fascinating people I've been meeting instead of just looking at a lot of pictures of mountains and road signs? Well, I've been writing and not posting since I didn't want to put my perfectionistic streak through an afternoon of blog setup. Now the posts will roll. Um, a little later.