Gone to Oregon

Marie had a flight certificate from US Airways kicking around the house that she received after being bumped from a flight last year. It was due to expire in a month and she suggested I use it. So the last time I was at the airport on my way to New York (flight certificates cannot be used online), I stopped by the US Airways counter and booked a flight to Portland, Oregon. Why Portland? Oregon was the only State in the contiguous 48 that I had never visited and with a seat sale and the certificate, the extra cost was minimal. So why not and on May 29, away I went.

US Airways calls itself a ‘hub and spoke airline’ which means to get anywhere, you have to go everywhere. At 6:50 a.m., I flew from Ottawa to Philadelphia. Changed terminals, and at 10 a.m. I was on my way to Phoenix, Arizona. After a two hour stopover in Phoenix, it was on to Portland. By the way, US Airways has no onboard entertainment on their domestic flights (save for crying babies and watching people trying to jam oversize luggage in the overhead bins so they don’t have to pay the luggage fee). So if you fly with them, bring something to read, listen to, or watch.

After 12 hours of travelling, I arrived in rainy, cool Portland (cool as in cold, although I understand the City is also quite “cool”) late in the afternoon, local time. Needless to say, I did not feel like doing any tourist activities, opting instead to hang out at the hotel for the rest of the day. I say day, because I was in bed before it got dark what with the time change and the long day of travel.

The next morning, I took off early to beat the traffic as I had to cross much of Portland to get to the highway that went north-west to Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River and the Pacific Coast. But there was no traffic. I forgot that it was Memorial Day in the US. So I had a leisurely drive along the south bank of the Columbia, which would have been much prettier I am sure if the weather had been better. During a short break in the rain (more like a constant drizzle), I stopped at a lake where several people were fishing from the banks and from kayaks, canoes and inflatable rafts. There seemed to be a lot of fathers and kids and grandfathers and kids fishing. No moms or grandmothers. Memorial Day must be a day of rest for women.

As I walked along the shore of the lake, it really struck me how green Oregon is, at least this part of the State. It is very similar to Vancouver Island. I stopped to talk to a guy and he told me the lake was stocked with trout and that is why there were so many people fishing there. He already had caught two trout and had been there just 20 minutes. There also was a heron fishing along the shore of the lake, but every time I tried to get close, it flew away before I could compose my shot (and of course I had left my telephoto lens in the car). As I was getting set to leave, I could hear a strange buzzing from the adjoining lake on the other side of the road. So I walked over to watch a model speedboat circle the water for a few minutes.

The Columbia River is navigable by ocean freighters all the way to Portland. As I continued my travels downstream, I could see many that were tied up alongside the paper and wood products mills that lined the far side of the river. Most of the mills seemed to be active if the plumes of steam and water vapour rising white against the grey sky were any indication. I expect they export much of their product since home building is just not happening in the US. The south shore, the side I was on, alternated between farming and woodlands. It is also the side where the Oregon Trail ran in the mid-nineteenth century that brought settlers to the territory from the east. Several signs along the highway marked historical plaques that dealt with the Trail but with the rain coming down, I did not stop to read them. The American explorers, Lewis and Clarke are highly celebrated here as well as they passed along the river in 1804 and wintered close to Astoria. Only a small mention is made of the fact that until 1846, the Oregon Territory was British.

The River, its geography and history, are celebrated at the excellent Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria, located at the mouth of the river and where the road turns south to follow the coast. No photos are permitted in the museum (I can understand this policy for some of the rare art and documents, but not for many of the exhibits of boats and other items in the museum). I was amazed at the number of shipwrecks (around 2,000) in and around the mouth of the river as “crossing the bar”, a deposit of silt and sand caused when the river hits the Pacific waves, is extremely dangerous. Waves 14 metres high have been encountered during some winter storms. Coast Guard rescue boats are called out up to 200 times a year to assist boats in trouble. The entrance to the river and to mark the bar was once the job of the lightship Columbia, which is part of the museum. From 1951 to 1979 a crew of 18 manned the ship, moored at anchor just off the river’s mouth. Severe boredom, intermixed with panic when gale force winds created huge swells, was the sailors’ lot.

As I exited the museum, the rain stopped and some blue sky became visible. It was still very cool, though, so a jacket was in order. I continued my trek, joining highway 101 and turning south along the coast. And that is when the scenery really became interesting. My first stop along the coast was Cannon Beach (cannon from a shipwreck in 1864 have been found here), with its famous ‘Haystack Rock’. The town lies below highway 101 and to get to it, you have to get off the main road. The highway used to go through the town, but a tsunami from the 1964 Alaska earthquake wrecked the highway bridge in town so the highway was reconstructed higher up in side of the low mountains than run along the coast. I was to drive through several “Tsunami Danger Areas” on my trip down the coast. Large siren systems are mounted on poles to warn people if tsunamis are expected. The good thing I suppose is that there are several well marked escape roads, all heading straight up the mountains that are never more than a kilometre from the towns along the coast.

Cannon Beach was beautiful. As it was Memorial Day, lots of people were beach walking, flying kites, sunning behind shelters because of the wind and even a few (mostly kids) were braving the cold Pacific waters to play in the combers. I walked a kilometre or so down the beach to get better pictures of Haystack Rock. It was covered with nesting birds some of which circled and wheeled around it, their cries all but lost in the sound of the surf crashing against the rocks far below.

After leaving the beach and getting the sand out of my shoes, I drove back up the hill to Highway 101 and continued my journey south. The highway climbed to go over a rocky promontory and as it did, I looked back for a view of Cannon Beach through the trees. The length of the beach became very apparent from this viewpoint – Haystack Rock is about half way down the beach.

As I pulled into a look-off area near Arch Cape and approached the stone wall to take a picture, I was heartened to see that the US Army had secured the area. It must have been one of the soldiers from Toy Story, but there he was, guarding the stone wall and keeping people safe.

There was a look-off or ‘scenic view” area every 100 metres or so and since I still was enjoying the intermittent sunshine, I stopped at several. At some, you can walk down trails to get closer to the water, while at others, you would have to rappel down the cliff that drops off from the side of the road if you wanted to get down to the water. The surf often crashed into the craggy rocks that line the coast which created quite a display of the power of the ocean.

Since I was heading south, the water was on my right side, so stopping was easy to do. This is probably the best way to travel the highway, although you do miss the views out the “back” window, like this one of yellow blooming trees growing on the opposite side of the highway. This shrub/tree grows all along the coast in rocky areas; I neglected to ask what it is, but it reminded me of dogwood. The rhododendron trees were also in bloom; ranging in colour from red to violet. They grow wild and are also cultivated by many people and certainly add colour to what is mostly a green landscape.

Soon, the rain clouds had come back to visit and as I made my way to the top of a ridge it started to rain again, a fine drizzle or “English Rain”. I could see the town of Manzanita far below and the coast stretching out to form another long beach that fronted Nehalem Bay. It was now getting on to 3 p.m. and I still had another 100 or so kilometres to go to my hotel in Lincoln City. The rain started to fall harder, so that meant that I would make less stops. The highway also went inland near the town of Tillamook, famous for its Cheese Factory and Tillamook Cheddar. I was going to stop to see if Tillamook Cheddar actually had some flavour (most cheddars in the States are what Canadians would call curds), but everyone else who had been on the road when the rain started had pulled in and the parking lot, including the overflow lot was full. So I kept on heading south.

The highway meandered through farm country, not getting very close to the coast, all the way to Lincoln City. Lincoln City is strung out among several former towns that were incorporated in 1965 into one municipality and got its name from school children. Lincoln City’s claim to fame is the World Kite Flying Championship in June and the D River, supposedly the world’s shortest at 137 metres in length.

I asked the desk clerk at the hotel if the seafood restaurant across the road would be a good place to eat. He said yes, but that there was a better one a ten minute walk further down (actually ‘up’) the highway. So I set out in a downpour for Kyollo’s Seafood Grill. The walk was worth it, even crossing the 'famous' D River which was really short. At Kyollo's I was greeted at the door by a 'how are you doin', darlin' and walked through the bar to a table near a round window (it really was a porthole since it was so wet outside). An excellent thick clam chowder was followed by red snapper in a spicy peanut and Frangelico sauce with all the trimmings. Very yummy indeed. I asked my server to recommend a local wine; she suggested a local Pinot Noir and let me taste it. It was good, so I asked for a half carafe, but was informed it was only sold by the glass or bottle. Since I wanted more than one glass and the trip back to the hotel was downhill and I was on foot, I went for the bottle, particularly after she informed me that Oregon law said I could take whatever was left with me as long as it was corked. The bottle arrived, the name of the wine was “Wine by Joe”, and it said it was very good on the label and Joe was right. And even though it was a screw cap, I left with half the bottle with a cork in it.

The next morning I had hoped that the rain was past but no such luck. The rain came down pretty hard for the first half hour or so of my drive and was still coming down as I entered the small town of Depoe Bay. I am not sure what it is with the towns along the Oregon coast, but several of them boast of the smallest or shortest things as opposed to the boasting one usually finds in the USA. Depoe Bay is no exception. It supposedly has the smallest navigable harbour in the world. It is also famous for whale watching, with a resident pod of grey whales for most of the year. They must have gone on holiday because when I passed through, there were no whales to be found. But I did catch sight of some seals as I walked to the bridge to check out the small harbour. They were about 100 metres away, on the other side of the harbour entrance. They looked like they were sunning but I think they were having their morning shower since it was still raining quite hard. They certainly did not have a tan.

The harbour which is quite a bit below the road was small, but I am sure I have seen smaller ones on my travels. With the rain pouring down, there was no one around to debate it with, so I got back in the car and continued to head south. The coastal highway has at least two tunnels on it (I know this for a fact as I went through two tunnels during my two days on the coast) and several bridges. Most of them, including the highway itself, were built or improved during the 1930s Depression through government funding (Civilian Conservation Corps). Some of the bridges have Art Nouveau influences, and almost all of them are historical and marked as such.

I stopped a couple of times on my way towards Newport but the rain made it miserable and also difficult to take photographs. I stopped to see the Devil’s Punchbowl, a collapsed cavern that fills with sea water at high tide (it was low tide so the Devil would have to go elsewhere for refreshments) and also stopped at Cape Foulweather since the vistas from here are supposed to be magnificent. But the Cape was living up to its name and I could not see much in the rain.

Since the weather put a damper on outside activities, I rolled into Newport with Plan B in mind, to visit the University’s Marine Science Centre which would at least let me get out of the rain. As I approached the entrance, I noted that the Beatles had visited sometime in the past and had left their vehicle near the front door. But the Centre was not going to open until noon, so I then put into effect Plan C, which was to visit the nearby Oregon Coast Aquarium. But it was also closed. I was to find this happening throughout Oregon. With the exception of weekends, it seems that the “tourist season” doesn’t really start until the end of June as many attractions have restricted hours. So having run out of plans, I drove over to the harbour to have a look at the Yaquina Bay Bridge I had crossed from Newport to the neighbouring town of South Beach. It was built in 1936 and has the claim to fame as being featured in the opening scenes from the 2008 film Prom Night. Maybe it doesn’t rain at night?

The next stop was at Cape Perpetua in the Suislaw National Forest. The Cape was named by Captain James Cook in 1778 since it was sighted on Saint Perpetua's Day. Satan must vacation in this area as well, because there is another interesting feature called the Devil’s Churn at the Cape. It is a narrow inlet where, when I arrived, the tide had turned and was rising again. After descending the hundred or so steps down close to sea level, I watched the waves enter the Churn and crash against the end of the inlet. The Churn is covered at high tide, but I did not stick around to find out.

A few more kilometres down Highway 101 brought me to the Cook's Chasm viewpoint and a phenomenon called the Spouting Horn. (There is a spouting horn in Depoe Bay as well, but since it was low tide when I was there, I did not see it, nor even know it was there - I found out later it existed.) The spouting horn at Cook's Chasm can be viewed from a lay-by on the highway. As the waves come in at high tide and during storms, they enter a sea cave and the now compressed air in the cave, mixed with water, is ejected forcefully from a hole in the top of the cave.

Before leaving the Spouting Horn lay-by, I looked back north along the coast to the Heceta Head Lighthouse, which I had passed about 3 kilometres back up the highway. Built in 1894, it is still a working lighthouse and is the brightest light on the Oregon coast, with a range of 35 kilometres. Today it is in a State Park and unlike many other of the Oregon State Parks, there is a fee to enter. I would have paid and gone in if not for the rain, because to get to the lighthouse and the lighthouse keeper's house (now a bed and breakfast), you have to walk down a trail. I was already wet, particularly my feet, so I passed it by. If you go out to Oregon in the next two years, you will also have to pass it by as it is closing for repairs for two years on August 1, 2011. Heceta (pronounced Heseeta) Head Lighthouse is also supposed to be the most photographed lighthouse in the US. I guess I helped keep that fact alive even though I was quite far from it when I took the photo.

Shortly after leaving the Spouting Horn, the landscape changed dramatically as I left the rugged coast behind and entered a much flatter area just north of Florence. It had also stopped raining – of course, I had left the most scenic area. I filled up with gas in Florence as the prices were the lowest I had seen since Portland. In Oregon, a station attendant must pump the gas (no self serve) and as I chatted with the guy, he noticed my Ottawa Senators fleece. He knew the Sens had not had a good season and asked me if Vancouver would win the cup. It seems Oregonians like hockey as he was the first of three people to ask me about hockey during my trip. I grabbed a milkshake as I headed out of town to celebrate the fact that the sun had come out again, albeit temporarily.

For the next several kilometres, I drove beside the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. What this means, apparently, is if you have an ATV, you can participate in the recreation, since several billboards along the highway advertised dune buggy riding. The Dunes themselves are somewhat difficult to get to as they hug the coast and the highway goes inland away from them. I tried to drive to them a couple of times, but the roads out to the coast were gravel and pretty rough. The best I could do was take a picture of the back side of them from the highway. I did find out though where Jack the Ripper had gone after his crime spree in London (no wonder they never found him).

I ended my drive along the coast at Coos Bay and headed inland and back into the rain. I drove up the Coquille Valley, a farming area until it got a bit rugged as I crossed a low pass near the town of Remote before heading down again into the Camas Valley (ranches) to the town of Roseburg, my next overnight stop. I ate prime rib Oregon style that evening at a restaurant across the street from my hotel. The roast is covered in a salt crust before cooking. It was interesting is all I will say about it.

The next morning dawned cold and – you guessed it – rainy. Today was to be the worst day for precipitation. I needed to go over one of the highest passes in the Cascade Mountains which are still active volcanoes as witnessed by Mt St Helens twenty years ago. When I stopped for gas before leaving town, I asked the attendant who was about my age if there would be snow at the top of the pass since I knew that side road to the north entrance to Crater Lake (another volcano that blew its top and filled with water) was still closed for ‘winter’. He assured me that I would have no problem at this time of year, so I turned left and headed up the Rogue -Umpqua Scenic Byway (Highway 138) in a steady rain that immediately got worse the closer I got to the mountains.

Not far from Roseburg I passed over Sandy Creek and noticed a covered bridge parallel to the bridge I was on. So I turned into the small park beside the road and went to check out the Sandy Creek Covered Bridge that was built in 1921. It has been converted into a picnic shelter which is a great way to preserve this historical landmark.

A little further up river and after going over a small hill, I took my foot off the gas to descend into the next town – Glide. It has a population of maybe 500, most of whom seemed to be attending the elementary school. Just past it, I stopped to see the “Colliding Rivers” where the North Umpqua and Little River (literally) collide basically head on before turning west to head for the Pacific. Although it is an official viewpoint, the trees make it hard to actually see the two rivers that well. Now it was really pouring outside, so keeping my camera dry while I was out of the car was getting much harder to accomplish. That goodness there was no one else out observing me because I must have looked like a reverse Quasimodo with the large lump under my rain jacket. Or a guy that dresses in women’s clothes.

Well there was nowhere else to go but up, so I continued the drive up the valley. The valley was really pretty, even in the poor weather. High rocky cliffs closely border one side of the road, while on the other, there is a drop off to the Umpqua river running below. From time to time, the Umpqua hiking trail can be seen on the other side of the river, cut into the hillside a few metres above the water. The mist of the clouds swirling down into the valley and the fact that there was virtually no traffic made it seem that I had left civilization completely behind.

I stopped at one of the numerous one lane bridges that cross the river for roads that go to campsites and the odd house. While standing under the bridge to keep dry, I noticed 3 guys fly fishing about 200 metres downstream. Since I could see them, their camouflaged rain jackets didn’t work so well unless they wear them so the steelhead fish in the river won’t see them. With the sound of the river and the rain pelting down, I doubt they even knew I had stopped and taken their picture.

There were multiple pull-offs whenever the valley widened a bit and I stopped at quite a few to have a quick look. I also passed small waterfalls along the way. I tried to walk in to one that is close to the road (Whitehorse Falls), but the trail was completely soaked and slippery so I gave up after 50 metres or so. Besides it was raining so hard that I was actually in a waterfall.

As I continued up higher into the mountains, the temperature continued to fall, and the raindrops became wet snow and then snow. I had caught up to a couple of trucks and was following them, figuring that if it got worse, the truck drivers would keep going and I could tag along with them. By the time we got to the resort of Diamond Lake, it was impossible to see far – I saw the sign for the lake but not the lake itself which is right beside the road. All I could see was a thickening curtain of snow. Just past Diamond Lake, we came to the Crater Lake turnoff. By this time, there was 5 or 6 cm of snow on the road. Holding the little Chevy I had to at least one of the ruts from the trucks had been getting more difficult, but at least they were “ploughing” the road for me. So it was with a bit of trepidation that I passed them as they pulled off at the Crater Lake turnoff to perhaps put chains on their wheels (trucks must carry chains when travelling in Oregon). However, I had seen one truck come the other way from up higher so I knew the pass was “passable”. So I continued to slowly go up, and just as I got to the sign that marked the top of the pass, the falling snow started to diminish. I was at an elevation of 1800 metres or in USA measurement, 5925 feet high.

As I went ‘over the top’, the snow actually stopped, but there was still quite a pile of snow on the ground and covering the trees on each side of the road. Spring had yet to come to this part of the Cascades. But it did not take long for the snow to disappear now that I was losing altitude. I came upon a couple of deer at the side of the road, and as I stopped to get a shot, they scampered into the woods. But one did not go far, and partially hiding behind a tree, had a look at me. Then it was gone.

The descent down to the valley below went uneventfully, but in the 20 kilometres or so to the junction with Highway 97, I saw several more deer and no more cars or trucks following me. One or two brave souls were headed up towards the pass to practice their winter driving again.

Turning left on Highway 97, I headed north. The land was fairly flat as I headed up towards Bend which would be my next stop. I was hoping to stop at the Newbury National Volcanic Monument, a 1,295 square kilometre volcanic caldera! But it was only open on weekends in June so I passed it by. Unfortunately, the Highway was under construction as I passed across an exposed major lava flow so I could not pull over to take a picture. A few kilometres down the road, however, I did pull in to the High Desert Museum and toured it. A modern building houses displays and exhibits that feature the region’s natural sciences (i.e. volcanoes, mountains and rivers), history (Native Americans, fur traders and ranchers), art (amazing Native art), and wildlife (birds of prey, wild cats, otters and of course wild animals in the extensive grounds). I spent over two hours viewing the exhibits and talking to volunteers who were playing roles from the 1850s such as the wagon freighter master who was visiting the Miller Family Ranch which is part of the museum. When I told him I was heading up to Portland, he let me know it would take several days to get there by horse and then by rail, but he said the “only” hotel in Bend was not too bad.

I got to Bend and my hotel just before 5 p.m. which meant I could watch the first game of the Vancouver-Boston Stanley Cup final. After the end of the second period, I crossed the road to a local restaurant for dinner, hoping to get back to see the end of the game. And I made it with about five minutes left and saw the winning and only goal of game 1.

The next morning and the last full day of my Oregon jaunt dawned sunny but very cold. I left Bend (formerly Farewell Bend to the settlers who forded the Deschutes River here on their trek further west) after getting a full tank of gas as I was heading back across the Cascade Range on my way back to Portland. Immediately after leaving the city, the highway started to climb and the Ponderosa pines soon gave way to sagebrush, junipers and bitter-brush.

Just north of the town of Terrebonne (lots of French names in this area as French fur traders were some of the first Europeans to enter the plateau on their quest for beaver and other furs), the highway crosses the Crooked River which flows at the bottom of 100 metre cliffs. The State has developed a small picnic park here, called the Peter Ogden Wayside. The old highway bridge is now a pedestrian only walkway and spectacular views of the cliff walls, the nearby railway bridge, the Cascades in the distance and the river below are worth the stop. Signs warn people to leave their dogs in their vehicles; apparently over the years, several dogs have jumped over the low wall that runs along one side of the gorge to get the last surprise of their lives. (Those dogs that did go over the edge, like me, had probably spent several days in rainy weather).

Not far north of the Gorge, at the town of Madras, I turned off Highway 97 unto Highway 26 which heads towards Mount Hood and Portland. After descending into another gorge, this time carved by the Deschutes River, I crossed into the Warm Springs Indian Reserve and the town of Warm Springs. Passing by the Kah-Nee-Ta High Desert Resort & Casino, the highway climbs out of the Deschutes gorge and sets out across the high plateau of the Reserve. It is free range land for cattle as evidenced by the cattle gates on the many dirt roads that branch off to ranches. The snow-topped Cascade Range can be seen to the west and various buttes to the east.

The terrain changed again as the highway kept climbing and trees started to reappear, this time huge pines and firs. It was actually very pretty for a few kilometres until the clouds started again and with them, the rain. At least this time as I climbed up over the Blue Box Pass, elevation 1,225 metres, the rain did not change to snow. By this point in my drive, I was on the flanks of Mount Hood, the highest mountain in Oregon, but of course with the clouds being so low, I could not see the mountain at all (in fact the only view I had of Mount Hood was on the day I flew into Portland and even then it was partially obscured by cloud cover).

Descending from Blue Box Pass, I stopped for a sandwich at the ski hill lodge at the oddly named village of Government Camp. Apparently it was named in the winter of 1849 when an army patrol’s wagons became bogged down in a soggy meadow here and the troop had to leave them behind. Settlers passing through on this portion of the Oregon Trail the next summer saw them and thus the name was born. Today it is a ski village, with several skiing areas close by, including Timberline Lodge, the road to which I had passed a couple of kilometres back (if you saw the movie, The Shining with Jack Nicholson, you have seen the outside of Timberline Lodge).

Continuing on downhill, I drove through showers, sunshine and villages with more strange names (including Zig Zag and Rhododendron (the last toll booth on the overland portion of the Oregon Trail)). Soon the thick forest gave way to farmland and then to more and more urban area as I approached Portland. Soon I was back in the hustle and bustle of civilization. I did a bit of shopping (should have bought the waterproof hiking shoes before I started my trip) and then went to my hotel to watch Game Two of the Stanley Cup Final.

The next day dawned sunny and clear (of course, I was heading home). And I finally got to see many of the famous Cascade Mountain Peaks to the north (Mt. St Helens, Mt Adams and in the distance, Mt Ranier) as the plane climbed to altitude as I headed east. Getting into Philadelphia, I met up with Marie who was heading home from her job in New Jersey and we flew home together on the last leg of both of our trips. So ended my trip to Oregon.