Kristin Laura

We left the beautiful Oregon coastline and headed inland to Portland this morning.  Once again, the scenery along the way was gorgeous. Rolling hills with farms and a backdrop of mountain forests.  We crossed innumerable creeks, streams and rivers. We are staying in the Sandy Riverfront RV Resort in Troutdale (“Gateway to the Columbia Gorge”) east of Portland. Not a bad RV park, but the spots are much closer together than the last two state parks we’ve stayed in.  I’m just excited because they have a laundromat (it is day 9 after all). After setting up camp (also known as plugging in the electricity and hooking up to water and sewer), we drove to the Alberta Arts District.  I was in search of Bolt, a modern fabric shop.  They had some fun patterns by up and coming national and local designers and a large selection of printed canvas.  While I was admiring the fabric, Shawn stood in line at Salt & Straw for ice cream.  It had to be good because t...

It rained all night. Boy was I glad we weren’t tent camping! When the rain stopped this morning, we took the opportunity to walk along the dunes and the beach. The tide was out and the hard packed sand made it perfect for walking, running, biking, chasing kids and dogs, and horseback riding. There were people doing all these things while the weather was good. Dunes separating the campground and the beach Not us After that, it started raining again so we headed into Manzanita for lunch. Manzanita is a ritzy little seaside town similar to Carmel. Lots of expensive realty, restaurants, coffee houses and gift shops. We had lunch at the Big Wave Café. Shawn had fresh halibut fish & chips and I had clam chowder and crab cakes with habanero aioli. We also enjoyed a bottle of Oregon Chardonnay from Westrey in Dundee Hills. We slipped into Bread & Ocean Bakery just as they were putting up the closed sign and grabbed their last loaf of sourdough. We are still on ...

On a driving day, we start out by figuring out how far we are driving to our next camp site.  Today it was estimated at about 100 miles and 2 hours.  We left South Beach at 10 AM and arrived at Nehalem Bay State Park at 5PM.  It turns out there is a lot of good stuff to experience in 100 miles, and we took our darn sweet time doing just that. Our first stop was Pelican Brewing for lunch and a beer sampling.  After Rogue Brewing, it was hard to compete.  Pelican’s beers weren’t bad, they just weren’t as epic as what we had at Rogue yesterday.  Shawn had an elk burger with goat cheese and I had a smoked salmon Caesar salad. Next stop was the Latimer Quilt & Textile Center.  They were having a showing of quilts with the theme of green and/or recycling by local quilt artists.  While I was admiring the quilts, Shawn wandered into the weaving room and struck up a conversation with Shirley the resident weaving instructor.  She explaine...

Since we are staying two days at South Beach, we started the day with a long walk.  The trails around the park are very well groomed.  We walked along the interpretive trail learning about the local plants and trees then along the jetty leading into Newport.  We headed back along the grassy dunes to the beach.  The beaches in Oregon are so nice (also known as beautiful) with fine, brown sand.  There was very little wind today and the sun was shining. We went into Newport for lunch and a bit of beer tasting at Rouge Brewery.  Shawn had the Kobe beef burger with blue cheese and I tempted fate and had the smoked cheddar mac & cheese.  While it was not as good as the world’s best Face Rock Creamery mac & cheese, it was darn tasty and went well with the beer samples.  Our favorite was the 10 Hop IPA.  We even bought a 32 ounce “Crowler” (freshly canned to order) to bring back to camp. On the way back to camp, Shawn sp...

I feel so special today.  My husband is awesome.  He started the day by sneaking off from the camp site to shop for my Valentine’s gift.  Sure it’s a bit early, but they don’t charge sales tax in Oregon.  I am now the proud owner of a Stihl 18” chainsaw…but this is a story for another day.  We continued heading up the coast.  I had been told by some of my quilting students that there is a great little quilt shop in Port Orford.  I went to Quilters Corner while Shawn went to take pictures by the ocean and park the RV.  As I wandered around the shop, I overheard a woman talking about how terrible California is and why she had to leave.  It is lovely and all in some places but she lived in Fresno and the politics were just too much.  I got a good laugh, especially when I went to the counter to pay and mentioned I was born and raised in Fresno and all of my family still lives there.  It was a very nice shop, but she is selling it for $1...

This morning I had to show Shawn all my adventures of the previous evening.  It wasn’t nearly as scary in the daylight with Shawn by my side (except for the old van with darkened windows tucked away in the bushes…still creepy).  Steve the dinosaur found a slug. Just before noon we hit the road again headed for the border.  Road repairs along 101 had us stop a couple times for about 20 minutes each with traffic going in only one direction at a time.  On a normal Tuesday, this may have bothered me, but when you have nothing but time and are surrounded by redwoods, its not such a big deal. We had planned to stop in Crescent City for lunch at a Mexican Restaurant, but as we were driving by it looked closed.  When towing a fifth wheel you can’t make any sudden decisions like let’s stop here and look at the chainsaw carvings of Bigfoot.  And you can’t just flip a u-turn at the next light.  We ended up stopping at Home Depot for propane and ea...

When we arrived at our camp site yesterday, I thought “oh how pretty and secluded, look at all the beautiful ferns”.  Who was I kidding?  It is creepy.  It’s all dark and damp  and slimy vines hang from the trees and there are scary sounds coming from the bushes.  I’m just waiting for the twang of banjo notes. Shawn wasn’t feeling well, but I wanted to see the sun set over the ocean so I decide to venture out on my own at 6:15 PM.  The campground is dark and over grown.  Little paths veer off the road forming black tunnels of wet.  Ominous sounds from the gently rustling bushes make me fear a mountain lion will pounce at any moment.  I doubt clapping my hands and yelling “scat” will have the same effect on the mountain lion as it does on the neighbor’s cat who skulks through my backyard daily.  I reach the deserted parking lot where the wind is making the bathroom door creak reminiscent of a haunted house.  I consider turning ...