road trip america part five: oregon

while in oregon, of course we went to astoria to see mikey's house from goonies:

we also went down to cannon beach to see haystack rock from the beach scenes.  we had prefect goonie weather - cold, gray, foggy and wet.  we took the longest walk down the beach in the mist towards the rocks, which were much farther away then they seemed. it was amazing how much sand was in our shoes (and socks) once we got back to the car.  one of my favorite days on the trip.

we got in to portland late and met up with ken and his wife kyla for dinner at the food trucks. chris and i shared a vegan pizza and some crazy fried potatoes with rosemary ketchup.  food truck culture is so fascinating to me.  i love it.  where else can you get fried peanut butter pie on a stick?  no, i didn't go there,  i wanted to, but i didn't.  we spent the night with ken and kyla and their extremely talkative twin cats, fritz and colby.  why didn't i take photos of them?  for that matter, why didn't i take more pictures in portland period?  i think this is the only one i took, but i feel it sums portland up quite nicely: 

the net day, we ate some delicious strawberry chocolate chip pancakes and then checked out green noise records (ken's store).  we also went to ground control, an 80's arcade so the boys could play.  my reward for sitting through that was taking a trip to queen bee to look at fabulous and fun hand made purses.  i bought the cutest hand screened tote. hooray! after that, and a failed attempt at getting doughnuts from voodoo, we headed out.

this was the last nice memory of oregon i had.   weird a-frame motels at a rest area.  

the remainder of the evening was quite memorable, to say the least.  we ended up at random back woods camp site, which advertised the following: pool, laundry, monthly rates.  the only thing they actually had were the monthly rates.  people lived there in trailers.  we were eagerly greeted by "mike brown, owner":

 "new jersey!?!?  whatch'yall doin out here? jersey! they got tents there?"  

good old mike gave us the most secluded tent site, which was out of view from the other campers, surrounded on three sides by a stream.  when i asked where their laundry room was: "ehhh them thangs haven't worked right in three or four months or so."  the pool had so much algae in it that it looked radioactive.  on the way back from exploring said pool area, mike brown stopped me to give warning about the bear problem they've been having lately.  as if i hadn't already started to feel like we were going to die in this place.  after dinner, we all climbed into drew's tent to play some uno, and after a few rounds,  "splash! splash! splash! tromp! tromp! tromp!"  "BEAR!!!"  yes, there was a bear/bears catching dinner about four feet from the tent.  we all agreed we wouldn't fall asleep that night, so we broke down the tents in record speed, in the glow of the headlights, and hauled ass out of that dump,  only to end up at the seediest motel i've ever stayed in.  i don't think any of us ended up sleeping that night after all.