After Craters we headed down the road towards Oregon. We connected back onto I84 and after a short while we had crossed the state line. Eastern Oregon is amazing. We had finally come across trees again for the first time in a while. Large pines dominated the forest, which was open and accessible. The first day we were in Oregon we didn't get much done but driving. We decided to stay in a little town called La Grande where we found a decent campground. It was too windy to enjoy being outside, and we didn't want to stand out there to cook so we headed into town for dinner. We Happened upon a little brewpub called Mt. Emily Alehouse that looked good and settled down for some food and a beer. The place was great. Run by good people, good food and great beers. Their porter was one of the best I've had in a while. I also discovered that the entire town is right into disc golf. In fact our bartender runs the league and they set up their course in a different area each tourny. They have 18 movable disc buckets that they bring in before the match starts and he makes the courses. He also runs his own pro shop where he sells discs and beers! What a place. During the night I spoke with at least a dozen or so locals that were playing in the tourny Saturday. They really made us feel at home and it was nice to sit down with folks with like interest and have some beers and some conversation. Made me want to be back home with all our friends...
The next day we headed into the Umatilla National Forest. It was just out of town but we were quickly in the middle of nowhere. The forest was beautiful and just driving through was amazing. We tried to find places to hike but the entire area was dedicated to ATV access, which I thought was incredibly stupid. I can't stand the noise those things make and the fact that they are tearing up a national forest bothers me. On the other side of the forest we hit a small town called Ukiah. There was a ranger station there dedicated to the national forest so we stopped in to ask about hiking options. A man, who I will call "mumbles" for obvious reasons, came to the front desk. This guy was about as worthless as any government employee I've ever met. He mumbled about there being too much snow in the forest to hike, and he didn't have any information for us on the topic. I hadn't seen any snow... He did offer to get us an ATV trail map and said we could hike the roads if we wanted. What a dipshit. I don't have to tell you that both Kris and I were annoyed at the very least when we walked away. We headed south from there and back into another national forest where we found a little campsite for the night. Kris and I hiked up off the road to the highest hill we could find and spent some time looking over the area. After we scoured the area for enough dry wood to build a fire. We ate, had a fire and then something terrible happened. I vaugely remember Kristen telling me that there were batteries in the fire pit as she built the fire. I was sawing wood and wasn't really paying attention to her. After the fire had been burning for a while Kris sat down to read her book and I was just standing next to the fire watching "caveman TV". That is what a friend of mine calls watching the fire. The next thing I know the fire explodes with a thundering boom. I stagger back to safety, my ears ringing and my eyes bleary. Kristen runs up to me asking me if I'm ok but I can hardly hear her. I can see her mouth moving but the words aren't coming out, or maybe I just can't hear them. Finally my hearing returns and I discover that the batteries that were in the fire pit exploded. To this minute I don't understand why neither of us had the wherewithal to pull those batteries out. We know better. Anyway that pretty much ended our night. We didn't want to go near the fire in case another battery exploded, so we just went to bed.
Sometime in the night Kris shook me awake. I could tell I had been asleep for a long time by the way my eyes felt. "Do you hear that", she said. I stopped moving around and listened. The scuttling had returned. We had another mouse. I can't tell you how many times I cursed that night, but you can imagine my mood at hearing the news.
It was obvious that we were going to have to hit a hotel for the night to get rid of the mouse. We got up and got going towards I84. After a few hours we had hit the Columbia River Gorge. The gorge was pretty cool and we got to see a lot of people out windsurfing and kite boarding on the river. The wind was up as usual and it was a pleasant respite to pull into Hood River, Oregon and stop for the day. We looked up one of the hotels that partners with Mount Hood Meadows ski resort so we could get cheap tickets for the next day. The place was called Pragers Motel and it was a shit hole. Not only was it a shit hole, the people that were in the other rooms where low lifes. I noticed our next door neighbor smoke at least a pack of butts in the hour or so we were there getting things ready to go our for the night. Once the trailer was off the van and things were settled for the night we set the mouse traps yet again and locked up the rig. We headed into town on foot looking for some food and a badly needed brew. Once in town we found a great little brewery called Big Horse. The building was right next to a neat town park with a waterfall and sculptured salmon swimming up it. We went in and had some of the most unique beers we've ever had the pleasure of tasting. One of my favorites was the Saison of the Witch, a french farmhouse ale. It was like a belgian wheat beer but with so much flavor and an ABV of 7.5%. Needless to say Kris and I left there on foot stumbling home. It was a good night.
In the morning we woke early to get a start up towards the mountain. We would be ripping it up on skis today! We packed everytihng up and checked the mouse traps. Every one of them had been licked clean, but none had gone off. Sh*t! Oh well, we had skiing to do. We left the trailer in the parking lot due to the severity of the climb up the mountain. In just under an hour we were sitting in the parking lot of Mount Hood Meadows. The wind was blowing, it was snowing and the mountain looked like it was in full on winter. I happened to chat with the guy booting up next to us in the parking lot and he offered to show us around the mountain. I told him that we didn't want to slow him down but he insisted that he would wait for us at the bottom of the lift until we got ready and we could meet him. After getting our boots on we met him at the scheduled place and boarded the lift. We learned his name was JD and he had spent many years on the east coast working as ski patrol before coming to Oregon. He skied this mountain all the time and told us about the many nuances it held. Once off the lift we took a warm up run and then proceeded to hit some of the most varied terrain I've ever seen from one lift. Each run was unique in its own way. Double fall lines, steep variable pitches and trees were the menu of the day. At one point JD asked me how I felt about side slipping steep, narrow chutes. I replied that I never had, but worst case scenario I would just fall. That seemed to satisfy him and he brought me down off the trail into some trees and then we began side slipping down a six foot wide path with cliffs on either side of it. Towards the bottom he yelled up to me, "what do you think about rocks?" I replied that I had hit them before... It turns out that we narrowly avoided the rocks by dropping straight down a steep line into an amazing bowl choked with snow. I planted my pole to see what kind of snow there was still remaining. The pole sank up to my hand. The mountain claims a base of 120" at this very moment...heaven? We skied hard until around 11:30 when JD had to head home to start on some DIY projects around the house. Kris and I skied a few more runs before the weather turned really bad and then went in.
As we dropped back into town the landscape melted back into spring and it was soon 50 degrees and partly sunny. We grabbed the trailer, changed our clothes and hit up the local wally world to get some more mouse traps. Once we were done with that we hit I84 again and ran over to Troutdale where we were supposed to find the greateast brewery in Oregon. McMenemins Edgefield is a brewery, pub, banquet center, golf course, hotel, hostel, etc. It was recommended by at least ten locals that we hit it on the way across. We had to stay at the nearest hotel to it because they were booked solid but we headed over for dinner anyway. Once on the compound we noticed the amount of drunk people wandering around the parking lots, roadways and walkways. They were everywhere, people were everywhere. Laughing, shouting, being idiots, everywhere. We found a parking spot and after 15 minutes of fumbling through the idiots we found the pub. It was a mob scene. Children running through adults, adults being drunken idiots, noise in every direction. We got seats at the bar and waited for the bartender. We waited, and waited and waited. After 15 minutes the guy finally came to offer us a drink and clean the bar in front of us. He left with our drink order and we waited, and waited and waited. After another ten minutes he hadn't even poured our drinks and we decided this place was not worth the headache. We got up to leave and I told the guy to forget about it, he made a gesture like he really didn't care if we stayed or not, there were enough drunken idiots to make his tips today.
After we got out of that hell hole we headed back the other way and hit a little bar and grill called Bumpers. The bar was known for there specialty martinis. The two guys behind the bar must have been by far the best barte
nders in the area. We watched them for hours as they made flaming spanish coffees, epic bloody marys and hundreds of martinis in all different flavors. Kris and I had a few. She tried the cucumber tini which she enjoyed, many times. I had one called the sweet and heat. It was mango puree, tequila and jalepenos. It was delicious. The bartenders must have enjoyed having someone to talk to because they started tossing us free drinks of which they had made too many. We enjoyed everything from homemade kahlua to strawberry dacquries. All in all I'm glad we made if out of the drunken disneyland and enjoyed the folks over at Bumpers. They were polite, funny and courteous professionals!
And there you have it, all caught up. Kris and I are heading into Portland today for the day. Kris has a dental appointment in Vancouver, Washington tomorrow and then we will be heading north along the coast for a few days...I think.
The next day we headed into the Umatilla National Forest. It was just out of town but we were quickly in the middle of nowhere. The forest was beautiful and just driving through was amazing. We tried to find places to hike but the entire area was dedicated to ATV access, which I thought was incredibly stupid. I can't stand the noise those things make and the fact that they are tearing up a national forest bothers me. On the other side of the forest we hit a small town called Ukiah. There was a ranger station there dedicated to the national forest so we stopped in to ask about hiking options. A man, who I will call "mumbles" for obvious reasons, came to the front desk. This guy was about as worthless as any government employee I've ever met. He mumbled about there being too much snow in the forest to hike, and he didn't have any information for us on the topic. I hadn't seen any snow... He did offer to get us an ATV trail map and said we could hike the roads if we wanted. What a dipshit. I don't have to tell you that both Kris and I were annoyed at the very least when we walked away. We headed south from there and back into another national forest where we found a little campsite for the night. Kris and I hiked up off the road to the highest hill we could find and spent some time looking over the area. After we scoured the area for enough dry wood to build a fire. We ate, had a fire and then something terrible happened. I vaugely remember Kristen telling me that there were batteries in the fire pit as she built the fire. I was sawing wood and wasn't really paying attention to her. After the fire had been burning for a while Kris sat down to read her book and I was just standing next to the fire watching "caveman TV". That is what a friend of mine calls watching the fire. The next thing I know the fire explodes with a thundering boom. I stagger back to safety, my ears ringing and my eyes bleary. Kristen runs up to me asking me if I'm ok but I can hardly hear her. I can see her mouth moving but the words aren't coming out, or maybe I just can't hear them. Finally my hearing returns and I discover that the batteries that were in the fire pit exploded. To this minute I don't understand why neither of us had the wherewithal to pull those batteries out. We know better. Anyway that pretty much ended our night. We didn't want to go near the fire in case another battery exploded, so we just went to bed.
Sometime in the night Kris shook me awake. I could tell I had been asleep for a long time by the way my eyes felt. "Do you hear that", she said. I stopped moving around and listened. The scuttling had returned. We had another mouse. I can't tell you how many times I cursed that night, but you can imagine my mood at hearing the news.
It was obvious that we were going to have to hit a hotel for the night to get rid of the mouse. We got up and got going towards I84. After a few hours we had hit the Columbia River Gorge. The gorge was pretty cool and we got to see a lot of people out windsurfing and kite boarding on the river. The wind was up as usual and it was a pleasant respite to pull into Hood River, Oregon and stop for the day. We looked up one of the hotels that partners with Mount Hood Meadows ski resort so we could get cheap tickets for the next day. The place was called Pragers Motel and it was a shit hole. Not only was it a shit hole, the people that were in the other rooms where low lifes. I noticed our next door neighbor smoke at least a pack of butts in the hour or so we were there getting things ready to go our for the night. Once the trailer was off the van and things were settled for the night we set the mouse traps yet again and locked up the rig. We headed into town on foot looking for some food and a badly needed brew. Once in town we found a great little brewery called Big Horse. The building was right next to a neat town park with a waterfall and sculptured salmon swimming up it. We went in and had some of the most unique beers we've ever had the pleasure of tasting. One of my favorites was the Saison of the Witch, a french farmhouse ale. It was like a belgian wheat beer but with so much flavor and an ABV of 7.5%. Needless to say Kris and I left there on foot stumbling home. It was a good night.
In the morning we woke early to get a start up towards the mountain. We would be ripping it up on skis today! We packed everytihng up and checked the mouse traps. Every one of them had been licked clean, but none had gone off. Sh*t! Oh well, we had skiing to do. We left the trailer in the parking lot due to the severity of the climb up the mountain. In just under an hour we were sitting in the parking lot of Mount Hood Meadows. The wind was blowing, it was snowing and the mountain looked like it was in full on winter. I happened to chat with the guy booting up next to us in the parking lot and he offered to show us around the mountain. I told him that we didn't want to slow him down but he insisted that he would wait for us at the bottom of the lift until we got ready and we could meet him. After getting our boots on we met him at the scheduled place and boarded the lift. We learned his name was JD and he had spent many years on the east coast working as ski patrol before coming to Oregon. He skied this mountain all the time and told us about the many nuances it held. Once off the lift we took a warm up run and then proceeded to hit some of the most varied terrain I've ever seen from one lift. Each run was unique in its own way. Double fall lines, steep variable pitches and trees were the menu of the day. At one point JD asked me how I felt about side slipping steep, narrow chutes. I replied that I never had, but worst case scenario I would just fall. That seemed to satisfy him and he brought me down off the trail into some trees and then we began side slipping down a six foot wide path with cliffs on either side of it. Towards the bottom he yelled up to me, "what do you think about rocks?" I replied that I had hit them before... It turns out that we narrowly avoided the rocks by dropping straight down a steep line into an amazing bowl choked with snow. I planted my pole to see what kind of snow there was still remaining. The pole sank up to my hand. The mountain claims a base of 120" at this very moment...heaven? We skied hard until around 11:30 when JD had to head home to start on some DIY projects around the house. Kris and I skied a few more runs before the weather turned really bad and then went in.
As we dropped back into town the landscape melted back into spring and it was soon 50 degrees and partly sunny. We grabbed the trailer, changed our clothes and hit up the local wally world to get some more mouse traps. Once we were done with that we hit I84 again and ran over to Troutdale where we were supposed to find the greateast brewery in Oregon. McMenemins Edgefield is a brewery, pub, banquet center, golf course, hotel, hostel, etc. It was recommended by at least ten locals that we hit it on the way across. We had to stay at the nearest hotel to it because they were booked solid but we headed over for dinner anyway. Once on the compound we noticed the amount of drunk people wandering around the parking lots, roadways and walkways. They were everywhere, people were everywhere. Laughing, shouting, being idiots, everywhere. We found a parking spot and after 15 minutes of fumbling through the idiots we found the pub. It was a mob scene. Children running through adults, adults being drunken idiots, noise in every direction. We got seats at the bar and waited for the bartender. We waited, and waited and waited. After 15 minutes the guy finally came to offer us a drink and clean the bar in front of us. He left with our drink order and we waited, and waited and waited. After another ten minutes he hadn't even poured our drinks and we decided this place was not worth the headache. We got up to leave and I told the guy to forget about it, he made a gesture like he really didn't care if we stayed or not, there were enough drunken idiots to make his tips today.
After we got out of that hell hole we headed back the other way and hit a little bar and grill called Bumpers. The bar was known for there specialty martinis. The two guys behind the bar must have been by far the best barte
nders in the area. We watched them for hours as they made flaming spanish coffees, epic bloody marys and hundreds of martinis in all different flavors. Kris and I had a few. She tried the cucumber tini which she enjoyed, many times. I had one called the sweet and heat. It was mango puree, tequila and jalepenos. It was delicious. The bartenders must have enjoyed having someone to talk to because they started tossing us free drinks of which they had made too many. We enjoyed everything from homemade kahlua to strawberry dacquries. All in all I'm glad we made if out of the drunken disneyland and enjoyed the folks over at Bumpers. They were polite, funny and courteous professionals!And there you have it, all caught up. Kris and I are heading into Portland today for the day. Kris has a dental appointment in Vancouver, Washington tomorrow and then we will be heading north along the coast for a few days...I think.
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