For those Deadliest Catch fans out there, I’m happy to say that I can see the Helly Hansen corporate offices from my current RV park. (Helly Hansen is the brand of equipment they use on the Northwestern — yes, the same Hansen as Captain Sig.)
The other thing I can see from my RV park is a lot of white box RVs jam packed into a small space. Trees are important in the p-n-dub, people!!
After averting engine and backup disaster on I-84, I spent the next 18 hours or so in Portland. This would be first old-friend-reunion of the trip, as I spent most of my time with my old friend Chris (who owns a design company called Silktricky), who grew up near me back in PA. We hadn’t seen each other in about 14 years, but had a great time hanging out in Portland.
I have no sense of geography, so I can’t really say where we were, but check my Yelp reviews if you care (http://beer.yelp.com)
This was my first true urban camping experience. Meaning, I parked the rig on the street and slept in it. This was also my first experience with ground clearance on the airstream, as some of the hills in Portland were way too steep, and I was dragging the rear bumper quite a bit. A horrible noise, but no harm done.
Portland seemed pretty awesome; I want to spend more time there. I have realized that I did this trip absolutely backwards so far — I should’ve started in LA in Feb/Mar, then Bay Area Apr/May, then PNW June/July. Oh well, next year.
A disgracefully small number of Portland pictures.
The first major “incident” of the trip happened as I headed for Portland, several miles west of Hood River.
There was a good amount of traffic heading west, including a number of disgustingly smoky haulers that were pumping black smoke into the clean Oregon air. Pass them going up the hill, then they pass you going down the hill at some ridiculous speed. Then smell them again. Etc.
I finally got fed up with this when a suburban passed me, towing a trailer full of logs that were not secured at all. I pictured myself in one of those bad insurance company commercials. It was time to pick up the pace and leave these idiots behind.
Note to self: Even though the F-250 is rated to be able to tow almost 3 tons more than I am normally hauling, apparently there are still limits. Especially when you have poorly-installed aftermarket parts.
Passing the log truck at about 75mph going up a hill, I heard a loud bang, and the truck started making a terrible noise. GPS shows an exit coming up, which I limped toward in disgrace. At the bottom of the ramp, I could either go left which seemed to immediately go up hill, or right, over a railroad track and then to a loop where I could turn around easily. Right it is. Whoops.
The road, of course, had a gate on it, which I didn’t realize until I had driven about 500 feet around a bend. The road was barely wide enough for two cars to pass. There were no shoulders. I am just under 50 feet long. Assuming I get the rig fixed, I am going to have to back up a hill, around a bend, and over a railroad track. Did I mention that I suck at backing up?
The loud bang was my intercooler line (from the turbo to the hot side of the intercooler) being blown off. I thought there were supposed to be systems to prevent an overboost condition, but those systems may also consist of the driver paying attention to the redline of the turbo gauge, which I thought was just there to add color to the dashboard. It’s also possible that the line (well, pipe, really) was never attached properly anyway. The angle at which it seemed to have been connected did not appear to be correct at all. Who knows.
After disconnecting the entire assembly (an aftermarket unit from Banks), I managed to remount it and everything sounded ok again. Now the backing challenge. Did I mention I suck at backing up?
It took about 20 minutes to back up, including a several minute wait for a train that decided to go by just as I was about to cross the tracks. Good times.
An uneventful drive to Portland otherwise..
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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..
After two months in the Bay Area, Magic and I are cleaning up and getting ready to hit the road again. It’s been a long time since we towed; it’s about two days of work to get everything ready. (Mainly cleaning things up and putting them away — lots of clutter has built up since we parked..) And also, had to do the obligatory farewell dinner with two of my good friends, Chris and Alex:
We’ll also be doing a three-day stint with no hookups from Thursday-Sunday. Not a big deal for water, but I’m not sure the engine will be running enough to keep the batteries charged. Makes me wish I had made the investment in a generator or solar — though probably not worth the money at this point. Maybe next year.
While I will miss the redwoods, great hiking trails, living next to a stream, and the friendly staff at Saratoga Springs, staying in one place for too long sortof defeats the purpose of airstreaming in the first place. Lesson learned – one month stints are the new rule, unless there is some very compelling reason to do otherwise..
530pm departure for Chico. See you out there.
