Hi friends! We’re still here! All is well! Sorry for the long silence – we’ve settled into a nice routine in Portland and the weeks have just flown by! We’re going to work on a couple of blog updates over the next few days – this one will tell the story of traveling from Utah back to Oregon last month; then we’ll put together a couple posts to share about our fun times in Portland over the last few weeks.
Let’s travel back in time …
Sunday, June 11 (immediately following the music festival in Utah): It is time to put the canyons in the rear-view mirror. Kayla and Matthew are starting to long for trees, and shade, and maybe a break from the relentless and stark beauty of the canyons. We knew that after a weekend of Festivaling in the dust we would want a clean room and a shower, so we’ve booked two hotels as we push across Nevada. Our first destination is Ely, NV.
We leave Torrey and hit the highway. Kayla asks, “did something weird just happen?” and Matthew says “nah.” Ten miles out we pull over for gas to discover that we hadn’t latched the galley hatch, and it was fully open. Horror! Miraculously, nothing had flown out of our back end. The hatch had shifted horizontally on its hinge, but we were able to get it realigned and it shut just fine. How did we get away from that mistake without a disaster?!?! *whew* Learning from this lesson, we now check the galley hatch seven times as part of our pre-flight checklist.
From Torrey we move through Loa and Richfield, and then get on Highway 50 (the loneliest road) through Scipio, Holden, and Delta, UT. Just outside of Delta we encounter our first big thunderstorm. We’ve been watching the dark clouds ahead of us, not sure if our winding highway would lead us through it or around it. Sure enough, we are going through. It starts as heavy rain, but as we approach the center of the storm, it turns to hail. We watch the outside temperature go from 73 degrees to 37 degree in minutes. (You read that right: a 36-degree temp change in mere minutes!)
At the border of Utah and Nevada we encounter another storm strong enough to take us off the road. We find a little service station and get the car under a roof before the big hail hits. Incredible storms! We finally get to Ely around 4 PM, get a pizza, and camp out in our hotel for the night.
Even our car knows this is The Loneliest Road in America 
But not lonely enough to prevent the annoying 1/2 hr we spent following this massive piece of equipment traveling at 10 MPH (taking up the whole road and not providing any passing opportunities!) 
Heading into the storm. This doesn’t come close to capturing the drama we experienced with the crazy temp drop and hail – we were too distracted when that was happening to take a photo!
June 12: After Kayla’s morning meeting, we hit the road for a big day of crossing Nevada. We stay on Highway 50 pretty much all the way to Sparks, Nevada (basically a suburb of Reno) where we enjoy an evening in a casino hotel. A note about our casino dinner as written in our road journal:
Delicious Margaritas and a plate full of regret at one of the casino restaurants. Bizarre, soulless world of new age digital “slot” machines.
June 13-15: Our first stop was a county park in Sparks, where Kayla settled in for a meeting, and Matthew began to reorganize the Betty Mobile and started a de-dustification process that will last for weeks.
We take the winding Red Rock Road north out of Reno and over the pass into California. Along the way we see…locusts?…swarming sections of the road. They were huge!!
Highway 385 takes us to Susanville (awesome lunch at the Lumberjack Cafe!), then 36 west, 32 to Chico, and 99 to A9 (just east of Corning) to Woodson Bridge State Recreation Area.
What a great spot for what we needed! The campground was dense with trees, and right next to the Sacramento River (though no easy access to it). We will spend three nights here, fully unwinding from our four-plus weeks of desert camping and constant moving about. Still, after two nights of hoteling, we are so happy to be back in the Bettie Mobile. We skip dinner and go right to sleep.
Kayla has been assigned to a new work project that is keeping her pretty busy, so these are big work days for her, while Matthew continues the de-dusting of our vehicles, prepares some pretty delicious camp meals, and makes friends with the campground hosts.
June 16: By noon we’ve packed up and are ready to head north. We jump on I5 straight to Ashland, OR for another, longer visit with the delightful Sandy Burd. We’re pretty exhausted, and grateful for a little quiet time, showers, and excellent conversation over a simple dinner with Sandy.
June 17: We spend a lovely sunny day in Ashland, enjoying the parks and outdoor restaurants and a cool evening, solving all the world’s problems with Sandy.
June 18: A lazy chatty morning and then it is back on the road! Our drive today was really criss-crossy, beautiful, and fun! We take I5 just for the first part – through Roseburg and Sutherlin – but then we leave the interstate and have a lovely drive through rural Oregon. Hwy 138 to Rochester Bridge Road, and over a covered bridge.
Fun Fact: Covered bridges were covered so that horses wouldn’t freak out about crossing over water!
Then to County road 23, Metz Hill Rd, Cty Rd 29 to John Long Road, briefly on I99 North then Hwy 38. (Side note: The little town of Lorane is particularly charming.) Finally, we take Territorial Hwy to Richardson Park on Fern Ridge Lake, where we land for another three-night camp. The lake is lovely, and the campsites are huge. Perfect!
June 19-20: The campground is just outside of the city of Eugene, so we spend our afternoons exploring the city, and usually spend some evening time biking/walking around the campground and lake area. Very peaceful, lovely campground – highly recommended!
**There’s another thread connecting these Oregon spots that we’ll talk about more in a future post. The headline is that there is this brewery pub chain called McMenamin’s and they have brewpubs all over Oregon, and they have these Passports where we earn stamps (and prizes) for visiting all their places and we’re trying to visit as many of their establishments as possible this month. Our stops in Roseburg, Eugene, Corvallis, and Salem all included some time in McMenamin’s pubs.**
June 21: Moving on to Corvallis. Territorial Hwy, with quick bit on Hwy 36 to Cheshire, then Applegate Trail back to Territorial Hwy to Monroe, 99 West to the Corvallis airport, then a few more quick turns until we arrive at the Benton County Fairgrounds RV Park – our home for the next couple of days. We were too early to check in, so we drove a little further into downtown Corvallis. Kayla conducted an interview inside the Bettie Mobile parked near Central Park while Matthew found some A+ sandwiches at Old World Deli. After checking in to our campsite, we hopped on our bikes, found a quick and easy path into town, and enjoyed some food and drinks at … where? That’s right: McMenamins!
June 22: Massive day of work for Kayla, starting at 6 am at a coffee shop! Finally done at 2:00, we hop on our bikes again and take a long ride through town, next to the river, and through Willamette Park. We found some beers and tacos (at a NON-McMenamins! Notably: Taco Vino, which was super cool!).
This campground gets a C- for amenities (small spaces, no shade, marginal showers, terrible wifi) but an A for location (just a block away from a bike path that goes straight into the OSU campus and throughout the town). It’s a really interesting set-up though: it’s basically on the grounds of the county fair, so the 4-H and livestock buildings were right next to our bathrooms (they were empty of fair items, but in a testament to Benton County’s entrepreneurialism, they clearly rent out a lot of these spaces as boat/trailer/vehicle storage during the non-fair season).
June 23: On the road again! We pass through Salem (McMenamins!), then continued to Bill & Poppy’s house near Sherwood. Surely you remember Bill & Poppy, the musical friends we visited back in March? So lovely to be with them again. They’ve just returned from a bluegrass festival, so all of us are pretty tired. We have watermelon gazpacho (!!!) for dinner and call it a night.
June 24: Laid-back day, exploring Wilsonville (home of historic Boone’s Ferry) and playing some music.
June 25: We head out to McMinnville, where we’re going to have a McMenamin’s hotel experience! Fun (but HOT!) afternoon/evening: highlight was drinks on the Hotel Oregon’s rooftop bar. And the hotel itself is a super-cool renovated historic building.
June 26-28: We head into Portland, where we’re borrowing Bill & Poppy’s condo in the Sellwood neighborhood for a couple of days while spending some time with Jill & Desi – the people we’re going to be housesitting for – and meeting their three pets. Jill, Desi, and their son Rio are all delightful, the house is in a charming neighborhood, and we’re feeling even more excited about spending the next 5 weeks here.
Superb as alwasy, and a lot of that my old stomping gorunds,Euguen and Springfield. My short report, back on the Seabourn f-reports, makes me happy. Aloha, Jeff B
Always great to hear from you Jeff! Glad you’re having fun.
Wow! You certainly have some stories to tell. Sounds like some great adventures. Thanks for another excellent post. As to the hatch coming undone, I think it’s worth checking the alignment of the rear side depolarizing jacket. It may be contaminated by airborne nano particles from Area 51.
Ha! You may be right about that depolarizing jacket. We’ll look into it!