Finally Rolling, through Washington and Oregon

3rd Dec-9th Dec 2021

Having had our leak fixed we saddled up and rode out of town. It was amazing to be finally on the road again. Big D was running well and we could start to forget about the money he had cost us. (Or had we just become numb with the thought of it….??) Wenatchee is surrounded by hills and mountains and there was a fair amount of climbing and descent to get where we wanted to go. The landscape went from forest covered hills to a fertile growing valley dotted with huge stacks of hay under tarpaulins to a barren plateau with far reaching views. Within a couple of hours we were reminded just how enormous this country is.

We stopped in a service town called Yakima to do our first major provision shop at, you guessed it, our old favourite village store, Walmart. It really is a phenomenon. A wonder of consumerism, frequented by the ‘interesting’, where we can buy anything and everything that we might need (albeit of mediocre quality) including that essential of RV life: dissolving toilet paper.

The final leg of our first day’s travel brought us back to the banks of the now-even-mightier Columbia river that we had left in Wenatchee. Here the river forms the boundary of Washington and Oregon and our site had a lovely view of the river, Oregon and the sunset. There was one small (or very large) spanner in the works of our tranquillity. The trains. The massively long, pulled by two engines and pushed by another, running all day and all night, half a mile long, freight trains. The tracks were about 20-30 metres from our pitch. Luckily we have a borderline abnormal fascination with US trains, and ear plugs. We had two nights here with not much to do. We had miscalculated the ease of walking to a local brewery for dinner as the main township, and brewery, sat at the top of a steep escarpment and the RV park was at the bottom. This had not been obvious when looking at a 2D map. The road that linked the two was steep, busy with traffic and had no pavement. A burger and a few pints of IPA was not worth the danger of walking up there in the dark.

It was interesting to learn how to live in Tin Can again. The space is very generous for a truck camper, but still very compact and bijou compared to a whole house. Everything has its place, including us. Movements need to be slow and declared to each other to avoid collisions and tidiness is definitely essential. It was also amazing to get reaquainted with all the possessions that we have acquired over the years. Jeepers we have squirrelled a lot of stuff away in this thing. We even have a printer, for Pete’s sake! A lot of stuff won’t be needed for a while: the BBQ, the camping chairs, the picnic rug, the games…We’ll be living inside until we get quite a long way south.

Our next destination was Lincoln City on the Oregon coast. We crossed the Columbia river and followed it on the Oregon side to Portland and then wound our way across the north of the city to pick up the road out to the coast. Our route took us right past the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum in McMinnville, which was quite epic. We stopped here as it the home of the famous ‘Spruce Goose’, the largest flying boat ever built and which is made entirely of wood.

It was the wartime pet project of Howard Hughes, who at the time was the richest man in the world, on behalf of the American government. Its remit was to transport US troops and materials across the Atlantic whilst avoiding the German U-boats. It was cutting edge technology, costing $18 million of tax payers’ money and $7 million of Hughes’ own money. After 5 years of work it was finally completed in 1947, missing the war entirely and to add to its monumental uselessness, it has only ever flown one mile on its single test flight. Since then it has cost countless millions of dollars to maintain, store and move and it is now the centre piece of this very interesting museum that houses loads of historic, mainly military, aircraft. All that said. It is enormous and hugely impressive. Bigger than an Antanov heavy lifter, if you know how big that is.

Lincoln City gave us our first look at the Pacific Ocean. We pulled in with the promise of a gorgeous sunset and once set up we headed to the beach to stretch our legs and take the obligatory photos of the sun going down. It was quite lovely. Somehow this felt like the true beginning of this trip and from here we have about 1000 miles due South to our first major waypoint, Palm Desert for Christmas. We had given ourselves 18 days to do a trip achievable in 2 long days. This is travelling on ‘Hampson Time’, tortoises not hares are we. We just had one night here and as there was a nice bar just down the road we availed ourselves of the first (of many) burger & beer dinner of the trip. We rolled on due South the next day. This would have been another day of gorgeous coastal and forest scenery, but the weather was hideous. It rained from dawn to dusk. We packed up in the rain, drove all day in the rain, had our picnic sandwiches parked up in a deserted dunes carpark in the rain, arrived at our next stop-Port Orford- in the rain and set up in the rain. These are the perils of travelling in the Pacific North West in December. It is only rain, however, and we can certainly climb into our Big Girl Pants and deal with it. (Whilst giving ourselves permission to whinge a little in the moment)

Port Orford is our favourite type of town. Small, coastal and a bit gritty. It obviously has a bit of a tourist scene in the summer as indicated by the few motels, closed up galleries, gift ’emporia’ and restaurants. Right now, not much was happening. The next day was completely different. The sky was (mostly) blue and the sun shone (a lot). At the crack of midday we went a’rambling. Port Orford has two claims to fame. 1) It is the rainiest town on the Oregon Coast and 2) It is located at the furthest point West on the contiguous USA mainland. I will argue with neither of these facts. Our rambles took us up onto the headland which had a good loop trail with some magnificent views.

We then trundled into ‘town’ and down to the fishing dock. Port Orford fact number 3 coming up: it is (allegedly) one of only two open ocean ports in the US (or was it the West Coast?) This means that it is often too rough to moor the fishing fleet in the water, or to launch and retrieve the smaller boats in the conventional way. The solution: use a crane. We were very impressed by this and spent a considerable length of time that afternoon watching the crane pull boats out whilst taking photos, looking either like sad tourists or quite inept spies.

The fishing dock was also home to ‘Griffs’, a mighty fine fresh fish joint that sold us some very marvellous take-away fish and chips that we ate in the sun. What a difference a day makes. With full tummies we walked back through town back to our roost.

On our second day in Port Orford we went for a walk in the opposite direction, a route that took us up to a place called Paradise Point where we got chatting to a chap called Tom. He was spending a few hours parked up in his truck, gazing at the sea whilst smoking a variety of legal things. He looked rough as a bag of oysters elbows, but turned out to be very interesting. He was a sixty-something Vietnam veteran who was living in free accomodation courtesy of the Veterans Association and proudly told us about his recent purchases of an electric bike and iphone because he ‘had nothing else to spend his money on’. Not sure that’s how it’s meant to work, but who am I? He had some (mostly) very sensible opinions on a very wide variety of topics and was obviously usually a bit bereft of stimulating conversation. We were there for a while. Eventually we managed to extract ourselves and continued onto the beach to walk home. This took longer than planned as the sand was quite deep and soft but we made it in the end. Quite the work out. I finished the day with a video meeting with our NZ accountant. Life on the road, 2021 style.

The next morning we were on the move again, but not before we did the laundry. Those in the know will know how satisfying a task this is when you are on the road. It is not a chore, it is pure joy! The other task, which always falls to me rather than Nick is ‘The Dump’. This is not so joyful, but equally satisfying. Over the years I have perfected the dark art of ‘waste management’. Get it wrong or cut corners and a good day can quickly become a bad one. I am the High Priestess of the Tanks, and don’t let Nick near them. He finished the laundry.

The journey to our next stop was pretty short but along some more amazing coastline. We bade farewell to Oregon and crossed into California. The border is unusual in the US, in that it is manned. We were asked if we had any fruit. Yes, some apples. Did we buy them from a grocery store or harvest them from our own garden. Bought them. We were granted admission. New Zealand-style biosecurity this aint.