Back in the PNW

9 May, 2018;  Oregon City, OR

For the first time, I’m experiencing some culture shock

Or, if not culture shock, serious re-location adjustment.  I drove up into Oregon from the East side on Hwy 395.  I was on the ‘Oregon Outback’ Scenic Byway and it was very different from the usual coast and coastal mountains.  I had to look at my map – first surprise – despite having lived in Oregon over 35 years; I really hadn’t realized how big Eastern Oregon is!  My usual travels don’t take me very much further east than Bend or Klamath Falls – they aren’t even half-way across Oregon.
Anyway, it was a beautiful drive – lots of lambs, kids, calves, and foals.  Big lakes that I had never heard of (distressingly, they seemed very low, some were really dried up.

Not dried up; typical green rivers of Oregon

You never know what you’ll find in the insulating box around the water hook-up.

In SW Arizona, I’m cautious of finding snakes, scorpions or spiders.  In my first hook-up here in Oregon, I found frogs; very much in keeping with my impressions of the PNW as essentially benign.

Several things kept surprising me

• Weather forecasters talking about ‘the coast’ – I haven’t been near a coast in almost 9 months.
• Having to sit in my car and wait for an attendant to fill up my gas tank.  Something I used to take for granted is now somewhat irritating.
• I usually look for Oregon/Washington license plates when I’m in big parking lots.  I keep thinking – ‘Oh, look, they’re from Oregon’ before I remember, Duh, I’m in Oregon!!
• Everyone in stores keeps commenting on the ‘lovely sunny day’ – I admit it, I now consider sunny days the default!  I’m almost taking them for granted.

My second night was in the mountains just south of Bend.  Huge ponderosa pines and the smell was more persistent but just as intoxicating as the ‘desert smell’ I love.  I stayed at LaPine State Park, home of a ‘big tree’.  This big tree is over 500 years old, and even though it lost about 30 feet of it’s crown in a storm, it’s still the biggest Ponderosa pine in circumference.

I’m driveway surfing with friends until my RV park reservation comes open in June.  Not sure how much I’ll post now that I’m in the city doing mundane, every day kind of things.

Back to life in the green tunnel that is the Pacific North West!