Avian Bird Flu: Day Three on the Oregon Trail

Shagwood Rose

The name of a seniors home on the way to Newport...It could be taken dirty!

Also just to touch on before we move on up to Portland.
If you haven't heard, like I hadn't on our way down.
The Avian Flu is moseying about America again.
However that should really only affect chickens right?
Well man did we ever see a lot of dead birds along the coast!
Even the day we left Newport I came across a dead seagull on the boardwalk as I was walking.
Even worse it had definitely been picked at!
And you know what that means!

ZOMBIE GULLS!

but none of us appear to have been effected as of yet

So on the third day of our adventure we left the glorious seaside of Newport

And headed inward and upward towards PORTLAND!!

It's very strange the transition from the homes of artists and meth zombies back into the big box commercialized world. 

Happens somewhere close to Salem.

That's also when the fog pulls back and it's like 

GASP!

CIVILIZATION!

On our way to Portland we stopped at, possibly the only outlet mall in Oregon (which is so weird but perhaps strategic for a state with no taxes on their shopping)

THE WOODBURN PREMIUM OUTLET MALLS!!

Oh it was glorious! 

We bought sooooo much!!

As Canadians do at outlet malls in America.

Also there was definitely a large focus on active wear!

Compression pants

Running shoes!

There came a moment (and if you know my rollypolly self) where I was like omg....I'm gunna be one of those people who only wear active clothes and work clothes.

But quickly was like meh I will be STYLING! 

And my booty will be gorgeous in my new pants!!

So car fully stocked we carried on

To the Hospitality Inn....

Such a questionable place

I mean it could have just been the one in Portland but dammmmmmmn questionable.

It should have been a sign when we parked beside a car with a bunch of anti-Obama stickers that we didn't quite belong here.

But we got Anita to check us in because she's the most efficient and good at dealing with people/rednecks

AND THEN WE WENT TO SOCK DREAMS!

THE MOST AWESOME SOCK SELLING PLACE A PERSON COULD WISH FOR!!!!!

We did admittedly get a little bit lost on the way there. 

But once there oh the socks that were purchased!

Mostly knee high because they're so good!!

Then we soberly tottelled over to a place called Vine Gogh

A magical studio where you paint along with a teacher

Like Bob Ross Paint Along videos but with a real live person!

It's so wonderful

And you can drink wine or beer and they have little snacks

I had tea so I could drive

But it was a wonderful time and our paintings turned out so well.

Though mine went backwards in the seasons cause I wanted to show off my sunset...which you can hardly see but meh.

Even if Sherona thought differently of hers.

Meth Zombies: Day Two on the Oregon Trail

"We are mildly decent human beings and that's polite in America"

I can't remember if it was Anita or Sherona who said that but it was a pretty accurate representation of us traveling through Oregon.

On the second day of our trip along the Oregon trail, nicely settled in our hotel room in Newport we naturally decided to leave Newport and go other places as tourists do.
I kind of felt like that part of the Arrogant Worms "Mountie Song"  where the Americans are listing all the major cities in Canada they plan to visit that day.
We were like
We wanna go to Tillamook! And Manzinita! And Lincoln City! Maybe Florence this afternoon if and we got time!
We wanna buy some cheese!
We're gunna taste the wine!
We're gunna walk barefoot on the sandy beaches in January!!

And we did most all of that except get to Florence.

We started the morning off with a trip to Fred Myers because soooooomebody forgot deodorant! (Anita)
So there we were frolicking through the store and we come across THE GUN SECTION!
Just like a giant display case of all the different types of guns and ammo you could purchase.
Purple and pink hand guns.
Rifles in camouflage (again purple and pink camo for the lady hunters)
Completely unmanned. and true maybe we can trust the early morning shoppers of Fred Myers not to be crazy and trigger happy before 10am
But seeing that certainly makes a liberal Canadian uneasy.
Not to mention the grand display was located between the children's bikes.
Excellent placement!
Teach your kid how to ride and hunt on the same day. (That's a sport isn't it? Maybe on horses instead of bikes? Some sort of biathlon)

So we moseyed on out of there and back up the coast to Lincoln City for a spot of Breakfast. Pig N Pancake.
You see them all over oregon. And there was one in Newport but the gps in the car is very very special and can't always be trusted to find things.
It was suprisingly super delicious and we were very pleased.

Full of eggs and hashbrowns we trucked on. Up to tillamook!
But before the big cheese stop we took a second to stop in at the Blue Heron. (mostly because it said wine tasting)
And taste wine we did!!
There were so many glorious choices!
Sweet wines, meads, regular wines! We tried it all!

I settled on the Toasted Cow. It's super sweet white wine but tastes like juice it was so good!! I should have bought two bottles!
My cohorts got some honeymead as well as the cow wine (and drank both their bottles that very night)

The guy in charge of the wine tasting station was awesome!  He reminded me a lot of Hannibal in terms of looks (which is not an insult, he could be quite dashing) I have no idea what his name was but he informed us quite a bit about the residents of the Oregon coast.
Driving along it's a lot of one level houses. like the ones you see for sale on the side of the I-5 in Washington and you kind of just wonder, who would ever buy one of those things. Well tons of people in Oregon do!
Their also hella spread out with acres of land between houses but not nearly enough cows, or chickens, or crops to possibly be making a living off of their farms. It's all very confusing as to how these people could possibly make a living.
We settled that it's all just inherited.
Wine tasting man explained these strange people to us however.

It appears on the Oregon coast there's a very strange cross over of the cultured and the hermits. There's lots of retirees and artists that move out from portland to the coast after several years to settle down into peaceful lives.
There's also the people just living there for the tourism.
There's a couple farmer's doing their own thing here and there.
And then there's the Meth Zombies!

How intriguing!
These are the hillbillies of the Oregon coast, not much to do, no aspirations. Just doing meth all day everyday and shooting their homemade semi-automatic guns.
Hannibal was telling us about how he had some friends over in the summer and he was showing them his apple orchard (of course he was so hipster he had an apple orchard) when there was a huge commotion of hooting and hollering and guns going off.
His friends all hit the deck!
But he was like "Nah, don't worry it's just the meth zombies."

He also told us about stopping in a back country gas station and meeting a man he called "Boris" (because he was this big russian guy with a crazy moustache) who had a huge selection of knives all nicely polished and laid out in the store.
Hannibal was like "wow cool" and Boris was like meh.
But then Hannibal looked behind Boris and there was just a whack ton of guns just piled haphazardly all over the place behind him.
Hannibal was like oh shit just gunna pay for my gas and go!

Hannibal was a great find in Tillamook, along with the cheese of course.

So we continued up to Manzanita and walked on the beaches which are so nice and sandy. (Anita took off her shoes, I opted to avoid contracting the Avian bird flu)
And we headed back to Newport for a dinner at Mo's
Which is famous if you didn't know and has probably the best clam chowder on the west coast at least!

Though the saw for my shrimp tried to kill me.

It was a lovely evening

"HWY 47" Day One on the Oregon Trail

Well well readers.
It appears a tradition has been started amongst Anita and I.

THE ANNUAL OREGON EXCURSION!

And this year we brought along Sherona for the ride cause little miss had never been to Oregon and it was about time she encountered the middle bit of the American West coast.

Now we've all got our own ideas of how road trips should go.

Personally I like to get up at a reasonable hour when the human brain is functioning and trustworthy to drive. Around 7 or 8 am. Stop for breakfast. put on some tunes and drive.
But not these two goofs I was travelling with. OH NO!

According to them we gotta be ACROSS the border by 7am. (the border is about 30mins from my house)
Why?
I don't know. Maybe they thought the border on a monday morning would be a hella crazy to do to get across! I don't know!
But there I was up at 5:30 in the morning.
Shambling through the house like a zombie to get ready for my comrades arrival.
They arrived about 6:30. By that time my mother was even up for work.

But eventually the arrived and they were quite lively to be up so early and driving in such foggy darkness.
We stopped at Tim Hortons on the way to the border to take a cup of Canada with us.
We also learned pulling up to that Tim's that Anita may have a drive through problem.
As in can not pull through properly and ends up like 3 ft away from the pick up window.
I tell yeah it makes it very difficult for everyone to do their jobs when they're half way out the take out window trying to give three foolish girls their morning coffee.

So after that little set back with the drive through, we continued onto the border. Arriving at approx. 7:40 (That's 40 mins late for all of you keeping a time line of events here)

The wait time at the border was maybe 5 minutes.
1 line.
But wouldn't you know it there were some damn stupid people trying to zoom ahead and budge in.
Yeah I'm talking to you you grumpy old farts in the red car. At least the youth before you figured it out and reversed back to the end (which was only like 4 cars back)
But these buggers. Sat.
Waiting for people to let them in.
And we weren't like mid line.
We were last speed bump before the yellow sticks start to divy up the lanes.
We were basically there!!
So everyone, car by car was just like lols no.
As we pulled up next beside them the husband was hand motioning like give and take and how merge works but Anita just shook her head and we all glared at him and then promptly ignored them.
They eventually gave up and reversed their pigheaded selves to the back of the line which was now probably another 10 minutes they'd have to wait for being stupid!

We entered America.

Originally I was going to name this Blog post A Very Taylor Swift Road Trip because we were listening to the 1989 album and we very well could have listened to it the whooooole trip.
But then we took a turn onto "HWY 47"

Now I use quotations around this because anyone trying to pass this logging road off as a highway is out of their fucking minds and needs to get out of their house and take a dally on down the mountain to civilization.

This was a logging road! On the side of a mountain!!
On both sides of the road were steep cliffs.
The corners (which was all this road was made up of)
Were all 90 degrees angled corners and Anita was taking them at 90km/hr (60m/hr for you americans out there)
It honestly felt like I was in a game of Mario Kart going around those sharp turns and holding down the skid button.
Poor Sherona was in the back seat and she apparently gets car sickness. We didn't know this until this little off roading jaunt.
And when other cars started to come towards us! GOOD GOD!
We could have died America!
Straighten yourselves out!
And your roads.
And just so you know which road you should be fixing. If you've never actually heard of Hwy 47 and that was just a sign some hillbilly put up at the foot of the mountain. This road takes you to Mist Mountain!!
In Oregon.
Find it.
Fix it!



















As we cleared the peak of Mist Mountain Sherona said "I like Canadian Mountains better"
Anita Responded "Why there's farther to fall!"
But I think she meant the Canadians ability to tunnel through mountains.

Eventually we reached Cannon Beach and all was well and peaceful.
Yarn was purchased and I drove the dark winding road into Tillamook only encountering one possibly very drunk driver in a truck. But I passed them and so if they died, we'll never know.
We made it safe and sound to our Newport hotel and conked right out in preparation for day two.