Oregon trip debrief

[del_chan]

Just got back from Oregon. The drive up took us about 14 hours up, but we arrived in the tiny, backwoods, river-side town of Elkton before dark, with very little trouble. It was great to see our friends again, I desperately needed a vacation, and everything was so beautiful we took about 400 photos. The trip back was brutal from the holiday weekend traffic, but we survived somehow. Even though we've got a lot of difficult things to deal with now (two cancer diagnoses in the family, two co-workers gone at work, husband's job hunt, and apparently my knee is bothering me because I have osteoarthritis), I'm glad to be home.

Things I learned on the trip to and from Southern Oregon:

• We found out that when our friends said "we're an hour away from everything", that also included grocery stores, gas stations, bookstores, freeways and ATMs. There were two restaurants, one "cash market", and a post office in Elkton. I didn't even see any elks. Though I almost hit a deer on the way in.
• You're not allowed to pump your own gas at gas stations in Oregon. I know this is how gas stations used to operate, but it feels greatly invasive to me. My car! My gas! My credit card! No touching!
• I met someone who doesn't like Apples to Apples. I didn't realize this was possible.
• When someone says, "let's relax on the beach by the river", you can't actually relax until you swim across the river *to* the beach. Also, I'm not a very strong swimmer against a current.
• As a corollary, bringing any camera that didn't fit in a ziplock bag or wasn't waterproof was not possible.
• Rivers have rocks. Rocks have algae. Algae is slippery. Rocks are hard.
• Watson Falls is that waterfall you wish you had seen in Hawaii. It even had majestic birds flying over it.
• My arm puffs up when I get too many mosquito bites. I sincerely hope I don't have allergies. Or West Nile Virus.
• Oregon Coast = not that interesting after all.
• After nine years (yikes, that makes me feel old), I still remembered Evangeline's in Old Sacramento. I bought a wig. And we found the hat store for shmitz. He made the Hat Store Gaping Amazement Face (pictures later). He was adorable. And I need to start a fund for going back and getting him a top hat.
• I developed a mini-obsession with the town of Taft, which apparently is the only oiling town west of the 5 in the San Joaquin valley successful enough to warrant a K-Mart. It was old-school, really ugly, and set off Shmitz's TF2 tingle every half-mile.