We thought our ride through Northern California along the coast and into Oregon would be an easy driving day. We failed to figure in the road renovation delays…and they were all over the place today. I’ve done this drive before, but I’d forgotten just how much primeval forrest we had to traverse and the delays this time over the rivers and through the woods were epic. Our first big stop after Ft. Bragg was Arcata, the home of Cal Poly Humboldt. We like this small park called Redwood Park right next to the campus. They way other schools have a small rose garden, Humboldt has massive redwood trees right in its backyard. It was crowded today, it being a Saturday, but we took Gary & Oswaldo to be able to say they saw the redwoods.
It was already mid-afternoon so we decided to book it up to Coos Bay. Not long after we crossed the CA/OR border we got a call from the Coos Bay restaurant Kim had booked for dinner. They said all of Coos Bay had lost its power midday and it had not been restored. We hadn’t heard from our hotel and they weren’t answering the phone, so we just carried on. When we got to the hotel in Coos Bay, they still had no power. We had to call an audible, so we made a few calls and hit the road north for 30 minutes to the town of Reedsport, further up the coast. It’s your typical coastal Oregon town probably driven by timber/lumber, which is evident all over the place up here. We have no idea if and when Coos Bay regained its power tonight. It did occur to us that we were all annoyed by a half day power failure and reminded ourselves that there are 700,000 people in FL/GA/TN/NC who are without power after a week since Helene. And then we heard that NOAH is saying a potentially BIGGER hurricane is due to hit the same FL Big Bend spot next week. Hurricane Milton is brewing in the Gulf and aimed at Tampa, so God knows what’s next. We decided not to complain too loudly about our 30 minute inconvenience. We just found a nice Mexican restaurant and used Margaritas and tacos to ease the pain.
After a standard Best Western breakfast (for me a prepackaged bowl of Cheerios), we started north with our sights set on Portland. We decided to stop for lunch on the beach in a town called Lincoln City, the last coastal town we would see in Oregon since we were turning toward Portland and then up the Columbia River from there. Lunch was pleasant and Frank got the chowder he was hankering for. From there we went to what is called the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum, about 45 miles SW of Portland. As we arrived, we were blown away. You see the Oregon coast and much of the rest of the state seems focused on either DC fishing or logging and it’s easy to see why based on the surroundings.
But suddenly, outside another small town called McMinnville we happened on a complex of four massive modern buildings that seemed very in keeping with the green surroundings of the Willamette Valley and yet looked impressive enough to be part of the Smithsonian. We almost didn’t know where to start, so we went to the biggest building. It was a good choice because it’s where the famous (infamous?) Spruce Goose of Howard Hughes fame is lodged. When you walk into the hanger, the other dozens of neat historic planes fade into the wallpaper due to the presence of this silver monster.
We signed up for a special cockpit tour of the behemoth and went around killing time for that tour. We squeezed our way up on the original spiral stairs, commenting about how much smaller this 1940’s guys must have been. This massive plane made entirely out of wood (required by the war resources board) and built by unskilled aviation laborers and engineers (also a requirement of the war resources board), this impressive beast never flew more than a few hundred yards and 70 feet high. The pilot was Howard Hughes, himself, but the political will to support the effort to build bigger transport planes to avoid the treacherous North Atlantic, where Liberty ships were being decimated by German U-boats, faded as the war effort started to turn for the Allies’ favor. The Spruce Goose sat in a Long Beach hanger for years until Disney bought it as an attraction sitting beside the Queen Mary. When that idea wore thin, a group of aviators bought it for the Evergreen. The story of dismantling and repositioning the Spruce Goose to this spot 1,000 miles north of Long Beach, is enough to fill several documentaries. It was a stop suggested by Frank and it was a good one to be sure.
We then wound our way into the big city of Portland. We are staying at the most hip hotel I’ve stayed in recently. It’s got a real downtown feel, as we say in New York. Every service person is covered in ink and the lobby looks more like a Starbucks than a hotel lobby, with people sitting around working on computers and tablets while sipping coffee. The hotel seems to be an old building that’s been renovated. Our room with a king-sized bed is perhaps the smallest hotel room I’ve seen since Tokyo. We don’t mind for one night, but I think it’s actually smaller than the suite we had on the Danube River boat a few years ago. I’m not sure why I even mention it because it has everything we need, it’s just a tad squeezed.
We went to dinner a 10 minute walk away and had the most expensive dinner of our trip. I’m not sure it was our best meal, but it was nice and nicely presented. I think all of us are eating more than normal, but that’s what happens on roadtrips. Point to point travel translates quickly into restaurant to restaurant travel.
Tomorrow will be a ride out to the Dalles on the Columbia River Gorge, then south to our friends Faraj & Yasuko’s fishing camp in Maupin on the Deschutes River. We will then slide down to Bend, the town that epitomizes the Oregon lifestyle to me. Half this trip is about Oregon so we are all-in on Oregon for another two days.