Making decisions, Spending money

Tuesday (Jun 28)

Wow, I hadn’t realized how much the sun was messing up my mornings. Slept till 10 in the cool, dark quiet of the east side of the lake.

Tonight and tomorrow are going to be stressful, so it is hard to make myself leave this peaceful place for a couple of hours on I-5 and pushy suburban traffic jams.

First town up is Oakridge, which I had described before as the most trailer park hillbilly place I’ve seen this side of the Appalachians. Seems ot be pretty much still that way.. I had a nice lunch at the Mexican restaurant. I don’t think wifi has reached this place. My chicken mole was very good.

Then Eugene, then I-5 to the Salem Fred Meyer where I returned the shirts I’d bought at the Klamath Fred Meyer. Size Large was waaay too small.  Then to the next rest area, which was cool and shaded and pleasant, so I chilled on a picnic table for 1/2 hour. No hurry when your evening’s destination is a parking lot.

At the Tualatin exit I found the sports bar I was looking for. The sports part was a FAIL, I’m not in Giants turf any more, so they didn’t get the game.  But the wifi and beer were very good. I had to get cranky for a minute to get the owner to shut the fuck up about things “somebody told him” about Hillary’s emails. I felt a little bad, but man I ain’t got time for that nonsense.

Eek! They’ve chained off the entrance to their parking lot. I’m feeling unwanted! Fortunately there is a perfect space under the shade trees, right by the building, at the head of an imposing line of three sleeping semis.

Wednesday

As it turns out, I slept very well on the shady street next to Van Specialties – didn’t get awakened by loud trucks once all night – go figure!  The big rig right behind me warmed up and pulled out around 7AM. I got myself awake and aware by about 7:30. Activity picked up about Van Specialties about 8AM, so in I went.

Things:

• $28 – dual USB port in the back running off the aux batteries, not the engine battery
• $20 – re-glue a molding strip
• $86 – disconnect hot water
• $36 – grab handle at sliding door

Have you noticed that I am over-fond of bulleted lists? Nothing says “organized” like bulleted lists!

After paying that bill I took the beltway (no traffic jams for the first time in my experience!) to the vicinity of Stereo King to look for breakfast on the theory that the same meal is probably $5 cheaper on this side of town, working-class SE 82nd, rather than back in pricey Tualatin. Perfect plan, I enjoyed a really, really tasty breakfast. I wish I could remember the name of the place.

After that I spent way more money than I planned to at Stereo King. That Dave is a helluva salesman! I am no match for him. That said, my old Kenwood receiver, state of the art 2009 technology, was seriously out of date.

My new Kenwood receiver, state of the art 2015, can be playing a podcast on my old iPhone hooked up via USB, while I’m hands-free talking on my new iPhone via bluetooth. The backup video is much crisper. All for a mere $572. EEEK!  Didn’t see that expenditure coming.

That’s it for my Portland bidness, some Van lifestyle improvements and a couple of Visa card hits, so it’s on to fun time:

On to Edgefield to suffer the indignities of the check-in process so I may reap the rewards of everything after.  Despite having a reservation I am consigned to an upper bunk – unsatisfactory!  :<< But after getting done with the check-in nazis, the rest of my evening is jsut what I came here for. It  follows my Edgefield awesomeness script perfectly. A couple of happy hour beers on the picnic tables under the trees, a little soak in the hot pool, that shower and shave I’ve been looking forward to since last Friday, then dinner at late-night happy hour.

Thursday

For breakfast, today’s special – sausage and kale omelette and a ton of their very tasty coffee. Back upstairs, then back downstairs to hassle with the check-in nazis about getting switched to a lower bunk. I think I have prevailed, but one and maybe two more looong trips up the stairs will be required, because of course if I am switching bunks then I must switch lockers and so I must have both locker keys to make the switch  – sigh.  I must point out that the twerpy girl last night surely had this bunk information since the five empty bunks had to show up on her computer, but she chose to lie to me about it so she didn’t have to mess with it. Bad Karma to her.

After all that, the sweetie who cleans the Men’s Dorm just let me swap keys, so we’re all good. Get the bureaucrats out of the way and the people will respond!

Happy hour time! My plan to drink at the golf course was thwarted by a wedding, but this caused me to discover a “hidden in plain sight” drink ordering alcove I’ve walked past many times without appreciating it’s possibilities – the Black Rabbit House (not to be confused with the Black Rabbit Grille across the alley). It’s the backside of the bar that services the large and always busy outdoor cafe. So it’s as well-stocked as any bar here, and actually a LOT more snappy with it’s service, since it’s mainly serving busy wait-staff rather than people with time on their hands.

Good find! There’s always something new to discover at Edgefield :)

Friday

I’m gonna take it super easy today. Hang out on the veranda till early afternoon, then leave and hope to find a spot along the Columbia Gorge somewhere. There’s a big big big concert here tonight – Diana Ross (be still my baby boomer heart!) – and there is already a slow stream of older folks walking past the veranda from the parking lot carrying their lawn chairs to get in line, at 12:30!

I finally mobilized to leave around 2pm. Once at the van it took me a good twenty minutes to get everything configured for travel again after two days of just throwing stuff around. When I finally did get going, three miles away at the Troutdale interchange I flat-out ran a red light while trying to understand the (really fucked up) traffic pattern. Nobody was in the vicinity and absolutely no harm done, but it shook me up a bit. It’s hard, maybe even dangerous, to rejoin the real world after two days of spacing out.  FOCUS!

My plan is to find a campsite somewhere near, so as to have an easy trip to Heppner tomorrow. Yelp tells me the Corbett General Store has nice tri-tip sandos. It looks close to the freeway at a glance, but turns out it’s at the end of a 800′ (1,200′?) zigzag climb from river level to the rim of the gorge. It was a really cool, old school general store, and I’m looking forward to my pulled pork and cole slaw. Dude said the tri-tip was the dregs of last night, so at that VERY moment he would have to recommend the pork instead. Glad I asked!

As long as I was up there I followed the scenic rim drive (Old US 30) until it dove back down the hill to wind past the Vista House (spectacular!). I elected to stay on the scenic drive, which meant I got stuck on 3-4 minor traffic jams at each scenic waterfall, while the rubes tried to score a parking place.

Back on i-84 for a while, where unfortunately I took one scenic drive too many. The map shows another segment of “Old US 30” starting at exit 69, and my campground appears to be between there and the next exit (76). Why not take the scenic route, figuring to run into my campground in the middle. Boy was I wrong! I zigzagged my way back up to the rim again, followed it a few frustrating miles PAST my campground, then zigzagged all the way back down again to get back on I-84 and backtrack three miles.

Now that I read the map more closely, there is no official interstate exit for Memaloose State Park. There is a normal interstate rest area with a little road at the west corner of the parking lot heading down the hill to the campground – weird. Sure enough, to complete the annoyance, tomorrow when I leave I will have to go west eight miles back to exit 69 to u-ey and continue east.  Aaargh.

And come to think of it further, even if I had not done my ill-fated Old US 30 misadventure, I would’ve had to do a u-ey to get here, it just would’ve been quicker and shorter. My stress was that I was imagining the last Fourth of July Friday site being snapped up while I was making my way down the hairpin turns. No worries on that front as it turns out, tons of open sites at:

Delighted to have a place to be on a holiday evening, and for that place to be such a nice place!

I chose my particular site because of the long stretch of unoccupied hillside below it looking towards the river. But DUH, this is Fourth Weekend, so infilling of that open space happens quickly. There are three vehicles and roughly 11 people in that formerly empty space. My open van door is sort of dominating the picnic table of the nice family below me. Oh well, by my camp rules I’m here first

I took a small hike (slightly longer than a “walk”) up to the Rest Area. They’ve landscaped it to have pretty nice views up the river. It was a nice place to be for sunset. The also had information signs. I found it oddly disconcerting to find that the somber little island in the middle of the river was an Indian grave site, and that the word “Memaloose” means something like “Island of the Dead”. I won’t think of my campsite the same. :-\