I was just spent my first night in Portland, Oregon, the city that has a distinct reputation for being a liberal enclave and being the place where a lot of Black Lives Matter riots occurred after the George Floyd incident. I’m sure the Portland natives wouldn’t like the place that Portland occupies in my mind even though I am a liberal guy. I’m also sure that there is a lot more to Portland than one can see during one overnight stay. For one reason or another, I picked the hotel, the Hoxton, that is smack dab downtown and I guess this is the part of Portland. The feels the most gritty and real. In fact, you have to pass through a large old-fashioned Chinatown gate as you arrive to the hotel so I’m guessing we’re in Chinatown or else we like to say on this coast, it’s only Chinatown.
I know that as a liberal, I’m supposed to love this sort of vibe, but I guess there’s only so much grunge that I like in my daily life. When I went to go fill up gas this morning a young lady in a woolen shirt and woolen cap, pull down over her ears, came up and very politely asked me if I had a dollar to spare, which I was happy to do and which made me wanna say that the quality of the street people here in Portland seems to be a notch above your run of the mill street people. How’s that for convoluted liberalist thinking?
Today we’re heading out to drive along the western Columbia River Gorge. I’m hoping to find just the right entrance to the historic roadway that will make the viewing of the gorge and the falls that feed into it more pleasant for our crew. Well, guess what? Yes, I found the entrance to Route 30, which is the historic roadway along the gorge on the Oregon side. It took us to Bridle Hill Falls, which was magnificent but due to some problem with the road it ended there and we had to drive back about 10 miles in order to turn around and head back out. The benefit to that mistake was that we got to stop in Cascade Locks for gas and a bathroom break. While walking through town, we encountered three local women who were busy electioneering for city council begin speaking to one of the women and noted that one of the signs said that she was for truth and transparency. When I mentioned that to her, she said, “oh, that’s not my sign that’s her sign, pointing to another woman in the group”, implying that she took no responsibility for that slogan. I asked her if that meant she was for deceit and obfuscation? it took her a moment, but she and the other women all started laughing and said no no they all wanted truth and transparency. It just wasn’t her sign. It seems the whole country even in the Columbia Gorge want more truth and transparency and their government.
Next, we headed away from the Columbia Gorge with its beautiful vistas down towards the town of Maupin, where we found the campsite of Faraj and Yasuko with no problem. They had their outdoor kitchen all revved up and their picnic table dressed for arrival. They put on quite a spread of grilled chicken, salmon, burgers and smoked salmon through the delight of all involved. After lunch, I came with us for a ride up the Deschutes River so we could all see where Faraj does his fishing. He’s a bait fisherman rather than a fly fisherman because in typically Persian form, he cares more about actually catching fish, then the style in which he goes about it. He has found himself quite a fishing hole where we saw about a dozen people cast, casting for salmon. Apparently, Faraj has quite a reputation at that spot because he has come up with a top-secret form of bait which consists of cured salmon eggs. That struck me is rather hard that one would catch salmon with salmon eggs for bait, but he assured me that it had everything to do with the chemicals that he cures the eggs with and that, while he isn’t certain about this, he hopes that this is not a case of salmon being cannibals, but rather the salmon instinctively trying to protect their eggs by carrying them someplace in their mouth. I’m not enough of a zoologist to understand all of that, but I’m glad it helps and catch fish, and I’m particularly glad that it makes him a bit of a legendary fisherman on the Deschutes River.
Faraj and Yasuko have been camped out in their trailer on the Deschutes River for five weeks now and you can tell that Yasuko is ready to go home. Faraj says he has pretty much caught his limit and that his portable freezer is filled to the brim with fresh frozen salmon that will carry him and his family and friends through the year. He even gave me some smoked salmon to hand carry to our mutual old friends, Sam and Chris, who have moved to Bend, Oregon, and whom we will be seeing for dinner tonight. Before leaving the campsite in Maupin, we had our afternoon made by seeing a great big freight train from the Burlington Northern stable go by on the tracks on the far side of the river. We all waved and gestured sure enough just like when we were kids, engineer pulled on the airhorn and gave us a blast for good measure. There is something almost romantic about a train, running along a river in the great northwest.
The ride down to Bend was uneventful as we watched Mount Bachelor getting closer and closer on the horizon. We are staying in Bend at a resort called the Tetherow, It’s quite a nice spot and it’s convenient and they’ve given us an entire vacation house for our use for the night not so much out of the goodness of their heart, but because they apparently need our rooms for some function they’re having at the hotel tonight. That’s fine with us because we’ve got a five bedroom house with a big living room and kitchen and a washer and dryer all of which we plan to use during our 18 hours here. They even have a hot tub outside our bedroom on a terrace and if I brought my bathing suit, I might just indulge in that as well. As I’ve already said, we will be meeting Chris and Sam for dinner in Bend.
We have another day here in Oregon, but that’s less about Oregon and more about Shakespeare, specifically Much Ado About Nothing at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashford. I’m not sure we got our fill of the coast, Portland, the Gorge or even Bend, but we are now ready to gorge out and go look at the historic place from whence this all began. That would be Mount Mezama, which erupted 7,700 years ago. Since humans moved onto the continent 20,000 years ago, they got to see the boulders tossed to the coast and all over what is now Oregon. Tomorrow we visit the scene of that crime at what is now Crater Lake. Can’t wait.