I’ve done a lot of driving in the last 14 years.  Mostly on the east coast, but three cross country trips as well as plenty of driving in southern california and whatnot.  However, the I-84 Columbia Gorge corridor is in the top 5 scenic drives that I’ve ever done.

The Columbia Gorge is one of the country’s only (if not the only) National Scenic Areas.  Several hours of driving through a canyon, carved out of the surrounding hills by the Columbia river over I guess millions of years.

It’s about an hour and a half from The Dalles to Portland if you drive quickly, but towing and taking sideroads and checking out waterfalls can make the drive take a lot longer.  All of the shots below are from the Rowena Crest lookout point.

Oregon

I’m not sure why The Dalles exists.  Granted, that goes for a lot of places that I’ve visited in the last three months — most of the area between San Jose and San Francisco serves no purpose, either.  It’s just a place to store people.  People storage, that’s my new name for the south bay.

I think The City of the Dalles exists for the sheer purpose of having the most awesome name in the United States.  Sure, there are places like Intercourse, Blue Ball, and Bird-in-Hand (all in PA), but no city is daring enough to have “City” at the beginning of its name instead of the end, nor bold enough to put the word “the” in the middle.

When people heard I was traveling to THE DALLES (it’s even more powerful when you capitalize it), they asked, “what is that?  I’ve heard of it but didn’t understand.”  Many of them pronounced it “The Dallas,” which is.. totally wrong.

I don’t have a lot more to say about The Dalles.  The Baldwin Saloon (http://www.yelp.com/biz/baldwin-saloon-the-dalles) is an amazing place to eat and drink – I met a bunch of incredibly friendly locals.  Nelson Tire Factory fixed a leak for me and tightened my hitch ball for free.  I camped in a parking lot near the river.  The trains that go through here are extremely long and frequent, and almost have a mysterious quality — they gave me the feeling that I can only assume made my grandfather enamored with trains for most of his life.

The Dalles also has some other neat engineering feats, like a hydroelectric dam and various other technological marvels under heavy guard that are not open to the public.  There’s also apparently a great no-kill animal shelter.  I love Oregon, did I mention this?

Wikipedia just told me that The Dalles’s main claim to fame is that it is the end of the Oregon Trail.  And now you have died of dysentery.

Oregon

You know that famous movie moment where our hero the out-of-towner walks into a local bar, the music comes to a screeching halt, and everybody stares?   Yeah, I felt kinda like that tonight.

In a town of only 400 people, and one bar/restaurant/breakfast place/whatever, a new face stands out.  Welcome to Dufur, Oregon.

My main business was in The Dalles (about 15 minutes north of Dufur), but there were no RV parks answering the phone there — so, off to Dufur I went.  The Dalles is a fairly remote/rural place, but even the residents there were surprised to hear that I ventured out to Dufur.  It’s difficult to explain the geography here — after an amazing drive east from Portland out I-84 through the Columbia Gorge (top 5 drives ever), you head south into masses of steep, rolling hills — farm country.  Dufur is the first little town you come to.

The Dufur RV park is on the very southern edge of town (contrary to many of the online addresses), tucked between a laundromat, some “historic buildings,” and a sort of junk yard/abandoned farm equipment area.  The park contained the original “lower area” with many permanent residents, and the newer “upper area” with pull-throughs, which is where I stayed.  My overnight stay cost me $20, payable in cash to the nice older lady in trailer #1.  I didn’t get her name, but we had a nice chat about Dufur with a tiny TV showing Jeopardy in the background.   Not quite realizing how tiny Dufur was, I asked her where I might find a bite to eat — “the restaurant is still open.”

Yes, the restaurant — the Pastime Saloon — is the only restaurant in town.  It’s a combination bar/restaurant/breakfast place, full of taxidermy and sports memorabilia.  After eating my open faced turkey sandwich smothered in gravy (reminded me of my childhood), I had a few beers and talked with some of the locals.  After getting over the weirdness of my existence, they seemed to accept me well enough and we had a great time for a few hours.  One thing of note about the Pastime Saloon, and really, any place in Oregon: they all have *great beer*.  This was the most rural, farmland bar you’ll find, yet they had amazing, fresh taps.  I love Oregon.

I could go on about the locals of Dufur, but I wouldn’t do the experience justice.  This was the type of thing I was looking forward to during my nomadic adventures, and it was certainly worthwhile.  And now I have a free Dufur RV Park calendar hanging on the wall of the Airstream.

Randomness

Continuing north on I-5, I crossed into Oregon.  The only things I knew about Oregon before this trip were that my uncle was from there, Oregon State produces great sysadmin interns, and that I used to have a t-shirt as a kid that said “Oregon Tree Shirt.”

Oregon is awesome.  One of my top three states.  (PA, CA, OR, in no particular order)  It’s green, literally and figuratively, forward-thinking, friendly, ridiculously scenic, outdoor-oriented, and, well, it’s basically what Pennsylvania should be.  Pennsylvania is squandering its potential Oregonness, which is a damn shame.

My first stop in Oregon was at the Deerwood RV Park (deerwoodrvpark.com), which is a nice little park south of Eugene.  The owner/operator, Mike, is a helluva nice guy — I will definitely stay there again if I’m in the area.  My main business in Eugene, though, was George M Sutton RV to get some work done on the airstream.  (Wheel bearing repack, toilet seal replacement were the main things)  They didn’t actually fix the toilet leak, unfortunately, but I at least feel better about towing now that I’ve had the long-overdue bearing repack.

While I was waiting for the work to be done, I spent most of the day in Eugene.  The weather was rainy, which was unfortunate for dog-activities, so Magic and I spent most of the day in and out of the truck, driving around to different parts of Eugene.  We stopped by a great veg breakfast place near the train station, went up to one of the bluffs, drove around the U of O (looks amazing – it’s also apparently set in an outdoor arboretum, hundreds of species of trees all over the campus), and went to a record store where I picked up the “Keep Eugene Weird” sticker.

Eugene was weird, but in an awesome sort of way.  Pics below.

Oregon

My boss told me to be careful about heading north at this time of year — that I’d be crossing Mt. Shasta, and that there may still be some dangerous crossings.  Looking it up, it seemed that it was just a dormant volcano that wasn’t really part of a mountain range, and according to the map, I wouldn’t really have to worry about high altitudes.

Ha.

While I lucked out and avoided snow, I did get to experience the auxiliary cooling fan in the truck for the first time — pulling 8000lbs up long grades at 65mph definitely works the diesel a little.

In general, when it comes to driving around, I’m not easily impressed.  I’ve driven all over creation in the last 14 years, and as a result it takes a little more to wow me than it used to.  But, I’m happy to say, I was truly blown away by Mt. Shasta.  Hopefully these pictures speak for themselves.

NorCal

Our first destination (besides the I-5 rest stop we slept in near Maxwell, CA on Tuesday night) was Chico, CA.  Chico is probably best known as the home of the Sierra Nevada brewing company (one of my favorites), but our business was with Transfer Flow Inc. Transfer Flow sells aftermarket fuel tanks for trucks, and 12mpg + 28 gallon gas tank = misery, so it was time to improve on that.

It took about three hours to install the new 46 gallon tank, and during that time, Magic and I cruised (by foot) around the Chico Airpark.  While it was fairly typical of an airpark (lots of industrial type businesses), the surrounding area was really great — reminded me of Pennsylvania before sprawl and overpopulation.  Lots of orchards and farms, great scenery, and an easy, slow-paced life.  Driving north on Cohasset and then west on Keefer, you also pass through some of the more affluent areas (I guess?) of the Chico suburbs — lots of amazing houses with gated driveways etc.  Although, gated driveways seem to be the fad around here – even the crappy houses seemed to have them.

I don’t imagine I’ll have any reason to stop by Chico again (maybe to sample some fresh Sierra sometime in the future), but I’m glad I got to see it.  While I had always been more of a SoCal fan, NorCal certainly started to grow on me.

Lots of pictures of the airpark below..

NorCal