Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, California, Oregon. Oregon. Oregon. I wasn’t on vacation anymore when we reached that damp green state. I was auditioning new lives.
The journey was fabulous: Freedom from obligation, freedom to stay or leave, to drive or gawk, get up early or sleep late. It was a necessary holiday. We had been on the road for two weeks and each new place was amazing, but each confirmed that life in Iowa was, for me, a better option.
An idyllic picture of Oregon has been building in my mind since my last trip west, made prettier and more enticing by dark Iowa winters. Ocean, mountains, waterfalls, trees and moss and green green green! So what if it rains? I’ll stay inside and read a book. (In fact, the first rain drop in the two weeks we’d been travelling came down in OR.) I don’t have the words to describe its natural beauty, so thank goodness for digital cameras.
The journey was fabulous: Freedom from obligation, freedom to stay or leave, to drive or gawk, get up early or sleep late. It was a necessary holiday. We had been on the road for two weeks and each new place was amazing, but each confirmed that life in Iowa was, for me, a better option.
An idyllic picture of Oregon has been building in my mind since my last trip west, made prettier and more enticing by dark Iowa winters. Ocean, mountains, waterfalls, trees and moss and green green green! So what if it rains? I’ll stay inside and read a book. (In fact, the first rain drop in the two weeks we’d been travelling came down in OR.) I don’t have the words to describe its natural beauty, so thank goodness for digital cameras.
Our first experience in Oregon was the University in Eugene. I dragged my sister to Berkeley and Davis the week before, which felt more like doing a duty than discovering a potential future. The UO was immediately different (but maybe that was just my Oregon utopia bias). I loved the campus and the graduate painting studios in an old building with enormous windows and character.
The people we met in Oregon helped its cause, too. More ‘strangers’ let us spend a few days in their home on the Northwest side of Portland, in exchange for feeding, petting and pilling their entertaining cast of Belgian tail-less cats and walking their sweet dog. We were guided to Powell’s, the Portland Art Museum, the good restaurants on 23rd Street (can’t remember names), and the best wine at the co-op (Casal Garcia Rose Wine—that I can remember).
Thanks again to kind friends of friends, we spent the summer solstice in a cozy cabin on the side of breathtaking Mount Hood...
...but we loved Portland so much that we decided to go back for more.
Round two brought us to OMSI (and their Chronicles of Narnia exhibit!!), the historic Pittock Mansion, the International Rose Test Garden in full bloom, every open gallery in the Pearl, and on a hike with sweet Sadie through a maze of trails in the hilly woods behind our temporary home on Aspen Avenue. We started to plan our next trip to Oregon, which we imagined would be a more permanent situation and which involved us earning a living by bike taxi-ing people and selling ads on the back of our three wheeled bike cab. Just until Emily gets a job at Powell’s and I get hired at PAM.
Round two brought us to OMSI (and their Chronicles of Narnia exhibit!!), the historic Pittock Mansion, the International Rose Test Garden in full bloom, every open gallery in the Pearl, and on a hike with sweet Sadie through a maze of trails in the hilly woods behind our temporary home on Aspen Avenue. We started to plan our next trip to Oregon, which we imagined would be a more permanent situation and which involved us earning a living by bike taxi-ing people and selling ads on the back of our three wheeled bike cab. Just until Emily gets a job at Powell’s and I get hired at PAM.
I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent thinking about what Oregon presented. It’s not easy stuff. Live there? Sure, in a heartbeat. Never pump my own gas again? Yes, please! Move across a country and live hours and hours from my family? Start all over, again?! Big girl decisions. I could postpone them, though, because luckily I was still on vacation.
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