Category Oregon

A closer look at 2018: An Oregon Weekend

As I’ve talked about before, Navani is from Eugene, Oregon, which meant a road trip to meet her to decide if I wanted to buy her and another when it was time to bring her home. Jason had already gone with me on a couple of trips to meet horses I didn’t buy, and so he elected not to come this time. I could’ve done it in a one day there-and-back trip, but I also didn’t have the kind of time pressure that would make that exhausting round trip necessary. Instead, I drove to Portland the night before which was its own ordeal (driving Seattle to Portland on a Friday afternoon: just don’t do it) and stayed in my favorite hotel for immediate highway access: the Red Lion on the River Jantzen Beach. The hotel itself is fine,  but really it’s that ability to immediately launch myself onto the highway from, essentially, the parking lot that makes it my go-to for this kind of waypoint trip. 

I left early enough in the morning to allow for a couple of stops along the way and still be on time, ideally a bit early. One of the horse-buying tips I learned from the more seasoned people in my circle is that you should try to be early enough that the seller can’t hide or otherwise mask the horse’s behavior. Very high-tempered horses might be worked hard beforehand or even administered a sedative. Horses that are hard to catch in the pasture or are cinchy are already brought in and saddled up. Turning up a little early gives you a better opportunity to observe more about the horse. Hence, blasting straight out of the hotel parking lot onto the highway instead of grabbing breakfast at some amazing Portland restaurant. 

Instead, my first stop was to Sesame Donuts in Sherwood, where I purchased their namesake donut plus a pumpkin spice donut, and a fancy latte that was definitely seasonally flavored, I just cannot remember exactly what those flavors were. The sesame seeds did impart an interesting nuttiness to their cake donut base and really helps fill in that gap in the breakfast spectrum where you aren’t in the mood for a bagel but you still want to get a bunch of sesame seeds stuck in your teeth.

My other pre-Navani stop was at Grove of the States, located off French Prairie Rest area near Wilsonville. Here, they have (or had) the state tree of every tree in the United States along with a plaque featuring the state and the tree name. The grove was initially planted in the mid 1960s to honor Lady Bird Johnson’s Highway Beautification Act (which I got to learn a bit more about at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center when I visited there last spring),  and its creation involved a visit from the attorney general of every state in the nation. Unfortunately, it was planted “in symbolic geographical locations” (I presume in the shape of the United States) without accounting for the long term space and light needs of these non native specimen trees and as a result many of the original plantings have failed over the ensuing fifty years.  

To ensure that the symbolic project lives on for future generations to enjoy, a grove restoration project began in 2016.  Now, new saplings strive upward among the beautiful mature trees of Grove of the States. It’s wonderful to have such a fine place to stretch your legs at a rest stop. I hadn’t known before that several states share the same tree as their state tree–I don’t know why I assumed that each state had to choose a unique state tree and if their favorite was drafted already, too bad, Vermont. Maple is taken.  

I see now that my home state of Wisconsin has taken the initiative of designating a state pastry, which sounds exactly like something my people would do. I can only hope the rest of the states follow suit and then I’ll be able to go to Bakery of the States. That’s how America is going to achieve unity: every single state pastry mashed together in my stomach like the mighty globe of fat, carbohydrates, and sugar I knew it could be.

After meeting Navani and calling everyone to tell them about the horse I was going to buy, I was wiped out, so I drove back to my convenient highway side hotel, ate the other half of the sandwich I’d bought on the harrowing drive there the night before, and passed out.  The next morning, I immediately headed over to Ken’s Artisan Bakery, where the line was already out the door at 8:30am.

I wasn’t bothered by the existence of a line itself but rather people’s shocking behavior in the line, specifically the family behind me, the adult members of which said and did nothing when their 6 or 7ish year old son pressed his face and hands against the glass and then smeared himself like human butter across the entirety of the case, in the style of a Japanese novel, right to left, shoving past me and several other people to make certain he got it all, because nothing makes a pastry look more appetizing than through a film of oily secretions. This child then attempted to scale the structure because surely nothing is more loadbearing than the thin glass on the front of a pastry case, it’s probably the same kind of glass you can stand out on over the Grand Canyon, or that they use to contain the more venomous snakes. It was at this point the dad took decisive action, by picking up his coughing baby and hoisting her completely over the glass barrier, presumably because the glass was no longer serving its function as a clear window to the food beyond. A little known fact is that this glass performs a secondary sanitary role, acting as a physical barrier between the mouth  of the customer (and/or sack of crap strapped to its waist) and unpackaged food so as to reduce the risk of contamination. It cannot provide this function when you lift your baby over the glass to cough directly on the bread. Why not just cough into my open mouth, save us some time? 

I made my selections away from where the coughing action went down and ended up with a couple of marionberry croissants, a maple pecan croissant, and two canneles, since I knew I’d be home by afternoon to share with Jason. Of those items, the marionberry croissants were a standout, the fat juicy berries studding the flaky pastry and making it a luscious pie-like experience.  Plus anything sprinkled with pearl sugar earns bonus points in my book. 

A thick fog blanketed the road near Sauvie Island  that morning, and when I saw a sign advertising a pumpkin patch, I had to pull off to check out what a field of pumpkins looked like in that much atmosphere. 

I don’t know how this ATM works, I assume you tell the witches your pin number and then money shoots up into the cauldron. 

Everything looks super spooky in this much fog. Everything including this cow train, which felt like a Twilight Zone episode where you’d find out that these are the cars the cows, who are now in charge of society, use to cart humans to the abattoir.  Bovine University.

From Sauvie Island, I drove to St Helens, also known as Halloweentown. Halloweentown festivities were in full swing, and I had a blast getting my photo taken in the upside down photo studio, checking out all of the awesome vintage Halloween stuff at the 2CS vendor mall, and catching up with my friend Kat while I went ham buying fancy candles and chocolates at Woodland Cottage Handpicked

From St. Helens, I drove to Longview, the place where I’d once attempted to eat the largest cinnamon roll in the world (with help!). Longview has a series of squirrel bridges up throughout town  to help prevent car and squirrel related accidents. The first was called the Nutty Narrows and it was installed in 1963 for the cost of a thousand dollars.  Every time I have occasion to come through town, I find my way to at least one squirrel bridge to see if I can observe it in action and each time I have been disappointed by no-show squirrels. What I’d really love to see are some webcams monitoring the comings and goings of the bridge, which seems like it’d be even easier than booking Cherry Poppin’ Daddies for their annual SquirrelFest which is in fact a real thing and not something I just made up, where you can “Enjoy: no car/squirrel fatalities!” Thanks, will do!

I walked alongside Lake Sacajawea, enjoying the sunshine, petting dogs, and playing Pokemon until my cell phone battery got low enough that it threatened my ability to listen to Spotify the entire way home, as in their wisdom, Google’s decision to remove the aux jack and route sound through the USB port means that I cannot charge my phone and listen to music at the same time.  All these phone manufacturers arbitrarily removing the aux jack really jacked up my road trip flow, where I want to use battery-heavy GPS and listen to music or podcasts for hours at a time. I like to keep the phone plugged in to a charging source so that I don’t have to worry about the state of the battery and, in the event of some kind of incident, I know that I have a full charge regardless of my location. That’s a thing I can’t do with my Pixel 2.  I can listen to music in my car now if I have a usb-c to aux adaptor (they’re so easy to lose, I asked Santa for three, he brought me one, and I’ve lost it already) and an aux cable, but now that phone aux jacks are going away, they’re going away in newer models of cars, too. The last loaner I had from MINI, I couldn’t connect my phone and the car physically at all, and I don’t feel great about allowing a rental car access to my phone. 

You know what else isn’t a joke? Facing a road trip with no music. #bringbacktheauxjack

The Bestest Beach Weekend for the Bestest Boy

In late September, I knew my time with Napoleon was coming to an end. His dementia was starting to take a toll–he was withdrawing from us, he lost interest in toys and playtime, he would get lost in the house, he would pace the hall at night. It was hard to watch him slipping away from us, and after a lot of talking and crying, we made the decision to euthanize him at home before things progressed to the point where he was having more bad days than good. It was a hard choice, and I questioned my decision nigh-relentlessly. 

But before that, we decided to take him on a weekend trip. He was in heaven the last time we took him to the ocean, so we decided to go to the beach, so we could walk him out on the sand as much as he wanted to. We stayed at the Hallmark Resort Cannon Beach, because I had a wonderful experience with them last year in Newport, and remembered that they had this second location and were dog-friendly.  We arrived late in the evening on Friday, and this was waiting on check-in:

Awwwwww!

Napoleon was a bit agitated that night–it could be that it was an unfamiliar place, it could be the dementia, but I’m pretty sure it was that he knew we were at the flippin’ ocean and hadn’t gone out to it yet, gigantic staircase and pitch darkness be damned. So we were up at the crack of dawn for our first beach walk. 

We rushed down the stairs and finally, finally, we were at the beach. Which we immediately charged across to solve The Problem Of A Rock With A Moat Around It, at least until we got distracted by a bird.

I don’t believe I was aware that Jason was recording this but now I’m glad he did.

Damn, I love the Oregon coast. 

After we tuckered Napodog out with a morning walk after his all nighter ocean anticipatory vigil, we packed him in the car and headed to Tillamook for a grilled cheese and some ice cream, some of which we shared with the pup and some which we did not, because the goal was to give him an exciting, happy experience, not churn his guts like so much rich creamery butter. He had many admirers on the Tillamook patio seating area, which helped to assuage his sense of hurt justice that somehow his cute face did not warrant an entire grilled cheese sandwich plus everyone else’s sandwiches as well.

After filling ourselves full-to-bursting, we headed back in the direction of our hotel on a different route, one that went through Rockaway Beach. I remembered from on our previous trip up 101, we were going to route through Rockaway Beach and stop at Pronto Pup, purportedly the inventors of the corn dog. That trip, however, we rerouted to save time after Tillamook since driving on the coast loses its appeal at night, and thus never made it to that stretch of road. This time we were gonna stop, no matter how full. Jason and I rode their mechanical corn dog, and then sat out in the sunshine with our dog, waiting for our other dog to be ready. 

The corn dog was excellent, and I have no problem crowning it as the best corn dog I have ever eaten, and I have eaten many an encased meat that has been battered and then deep fried. Still groaning from too much ice cream, however, a bite was all I tried. Napoleon had no such issues and also found it to be an excellent corn dog, though I’m not personally certain of his ranking system since I once saw this dog poop out an unused tampon and furthermore once engaged in a week long battle to acquire a corn cob he’d stolen from the trash and ate and threw up repeatedly, immediately eating it to begin the cycle again. “Leap towards the vomit with your bare hands” is probably not going to be the party game sensation of 2018, or ever. 

Napoleon also made friends at Pronto Pup, with several people coming by to pet him and tell him what a good boy he was. I was still having some trouble with my decision and was always struck by the weird impulse to tell people that our time with him was ending soon. I honestly can’t remember if I told anyone or if I managed to squelch it down to that place where all of my dumb impulses live, but I have to assume that it was coming from a place where I wanted them to appreciate even more what a good boy he was–how soft, how nice, how smart. I do remember that several of the people who approached us and asked to pet him mentioned that they’d lost dogs recently and my heart broke for them*. 

From Rockaway Beach, we drove back to the hotel and walked from there into the cute downtown area of Cannon Beach. We did some window shopping and some actual shopping, and we opted to walk back to the hotel via the beach–the mist had burned off since our morning walk and it had turned into a truly gorgeous day.  

His little paw prints are glowing as he walks toward the light and I definitely cut some onions while going through these photos.

After our walk back, we rested again in the hotel room until closer to sunset, when we headed back down to the beach. (So. many. stairs.) Our hotel was right across the beach from Haystack Rock, and a fair amount of people had gathered to watch the sunset, which is actually pretty special. We live in this world with so much entertainment and yet we gather with strangers to watch something that’s happened every single day of our lives and will never stop being beautiful. 

There’s this little gap at the base of Haystack rock, and at sunset, the light flashing and flickering inside gives the appearance of the wall being painted in gold. Napoleon, for his part, was way more interested in the activity on the beach than any glowy cave. 

Eventually we retreated to the beach chairs and watched the last of the sun slip over the horizon. Unfortunately, watching that late sunset meant that our options for patio dining (which was a must, given the presence of the pup) were zilch, so I popped over to the local hardware store (no, really) to grab some take out to eat in our room. I was met on my walk back by Jason and Napoleon, who had come out to find me after that little dog bean pitched a fit at not being able to have eyes on both of us at once. We watched a surprising number of movies over the course of our stay: Goonies (of course), Hotel Transylvania 2, and Ratatouille. Stuff that was kind of easy to just chill out and cuddle with one’s pup on the bed after a bunch of beach play time. 

The following day was a half beach day/ half drive home day, and we made the most of it, starting with another early morning beach walk to check out the tide pools and enjoy one another’s company. The beach cooperated by giving us an absolutely gorgeous morning, bright and cool, and wholly unlike the misty morning previous. 

When we decided it was time to wrap up beach time, and headed to Sleepy Monk to grab some coffee and breakfast before we hit the road. The line there is kind of ridiculous–you have to step to the side to wait for your drinks and food, but people just keep cramming into the building, forcing you to interrupt someone’s conversation about yoga three times as you elbow your way through to get your goods. Their coffee and pastries are totally great, though, and I dig their druidic vibe. I especially dig the teeny goat on top of their coffee sleeves. 

After properly fueling our machines with caffeine, we hopped in the car and promptly saw this Bigfoot themed steakhouse with what appears to be a werewolf with one hooked flipper arm chained up outside. When viewed from the proper angle, it looks like the Bigfoot on the side of the road and the prime rib sign merge to become Bigfoot’s, uh, prime rib. If you know what I mean, and if you read this blog, you do. 

Ostensibly this is a photo of the lady Bigfoot, but look a little more closely at the background to catch a glimpse of Bigfoot’s Prime Rib.

We also found this great big chair in Seaside, Oregon. 

Our route home took us through Astoria so as to visit their Sunday farmer’s market. I don’t have any pics because walking through a crowded market that’s almost universally not looking where they’re walking with a small dog, and furthermore not paying attention myself by fiddling with my camera is a great way to get someone’s tiny paw stepped on. It hasn’t changed a lot since the last time I visited–even if some of the vendors are not the same, there was someone there in that particular category, be they sign makers, leather workers, or popcorn vendors, so the overall flavor remains the same.  Napoleon met his first goat and stepped back in shock, trying to figure out what was going on with this strange dog. The goat didn’t have much of an opinion either way.

At some point on the way home, we stopped at a restaurant that advertised their famous pie, because Jason is a legendary pie hound, and while he went inside to buy a slab, I walked around with Napodog outside and saw this bird carving, while so. many. vultures. wheeled around in the sky. I don’t know what that’s saying about the restaurant’s food or their mainly elderly clientele, but I do know that Jason thought their pie was nowhere near as good as mine. I do make a mean slice

And, since it was such a beautiful day and we had plenty of time to spare, we stopped in Winlock to finally see the world’s largest egg, something that I had been driving past in a hurry to something else for the last decade. It was, indeed, a sizeable egg. 

The rooster’s not talkin’. 

 

A special treats and walk filled week later, the veterinarian made the visit to our house, and even though I had been second guessing my decision up until the time she walked in the door, I have no regrets. I called my buddy up onto my lap, and after he was administered the painkillers, it sealed the deal for me. I felt him relax in my arms, pain free, and that was not something I’d felt from him in a long time. It eased some of my hurt to feel him not hurting, and I handed him over to Jason so he could feel the same. He was in Jason’s arms when the final shot was administered, and we petted him and told him how much we loved him as he passed. I keep reiterating what a difficult decision it was, because it was difficult to voluntarily part myself from him forever, when he’s been the little light of my life for so long, my constant, unquestioning, loving companion. But at the same time, I know it was the right choice. To be at home instead of afraid in the cold, sterile vet’s office. To be lavished with love until his very last breath. To still know us, mentally, so that we could comfort him at the end, to keep his last days from being confusing and scary. When I think about it in that way, I know that I made the best choice I could.

That’s not to say that the loss of Napoleon hasn’t been crushing. It’s been months and I still step around the dog dish that isn’t there when going to the patio door. I feel happy and then sad whenever something causes his nametag to jingle against his urn, as though he’s here for just a second and then gone again. About once a year, I’d get one of those new super soft blankets from costco, and the old one would be given to Napoleon and derisively referred to as “the dog blanket” because no matter how many times I washed it, the smell of dog was just too ground in, so they’d line his beds and make them extra plush and cozy. In the aftermath, we kept some things that belonged to him, and a dog blanket. On days I especially missed him, I’d go and sniff the blanket, and it was like my stinky buddy was back. Recently, I was having a rough day and crept off to the closet and its stinky contents, only to discover that the smell I believed to be permanent entirely gone, and this, too, was like losing a bit of him all over again. I have waves of grief wash over me when I drive past our dog park, when I see those noseprint smudges on my car window that I know I will eventually have to wash away.

I miss my buddy. I’m glad we had this trip together. I hope that if there’s an afterlife, it’s full of so, so many beach critters to sniff. 

 

 

*The first time I pet a dog, post-Napoleon, I almost burst into tears. Thanks to everyone who allows me to pet their dogs for much longer than is socially acceptable for a stranger to do so.