Spring Break April 4-5: Outings in Oregon

Flash back to the beginning of the month. I am having trouble sleeping. I am sidetracked and cleaning my house a dozen times over, shuffling and re-shuffling things. I am looking at maps.

Spring break is almost here.

When my teammate Alice had made a casual invitation to come along on her and Nora's trip to California a few months ago, I felt excited but apprehensive. I wasn't sure about trekking my poor car back down to California - a state it didn't have a good track record with anyhow - when I would be taking it cross-country again in a few months. I was also feeling the typical financial pressure I plague myself with from having parents that won't tell me when or how to start giving them money for pretty much paying for my life thus far. (Oh woe, first world problems.)

But all it took was a phone call to my mother humbly expressing my doubts and she was endorsing to adventure, for better or worse, always playing the role of giving me more leeway than I give myself.

And so I unleaded the enthusiasm. My traveler was not going to sit this one out.

In the following month, Nora managed to land a sweet teaching job at the community college, officially competing with our resident team over-worker Corey and thus, had to bow out of the plans. But on an early April Thursday evening, pretty much packed and ready to dash in the morning, Alice and I cracked open a couple ciders that I'd appropriately saved from an odd lake-side find on a walk we took a month or so back. We clinked glasses, said cheers, and said goodnight. We wanted it to be morning.

As my general rule of thumb, stores with cool murals
are worth checking out

Our first stop was a visit to Manzanita! It happened to be Mindi's birthday weekend so we stopped in Portland to try and find a gift. On my many co-op trips, I'd passed by this store called Mirador that seemed promising and not wanting to lose ourselves in the endless possibilities of Portland neighborhoods that's where we headed. It was almost too good a choice; the possibilities in the store alone were endless! Most everything seemed like a Mindi thing. After some advice from the woman that had kindly opened a few minutes early for us, we left with a Washington-made foot scrub and a beautiful local card made out of a fine sheet of wood veneer. (I received a raving text a week later from Mindi, having made a visit to the store while in town for her weekly Greek classes; lucky lady is spending the summer in Greece).

Is it a Broccoli? Is it a Kale? Is it Delicious?
I know one of these things. 

We met at her house and all piled in one car to go get lunch at Wanda's, proclaimed by Mindi as "really, the only place to eat" in town. Afterwards, Alice got a sample tour of the area. We visited the community garden, looking far more forlorn in its pre-bounty than it had all of the summers that I had been around. However, there were still some bolting mutant brassica cross-breeds that were delicious munchibles.

A bouquet of Nom that Mindi made me

Birthday girl - 'Second-mom' - and I 

Giddy first-day-of-travel faces

After that, we headed to Short Sands, stopping for views all along the way. 

We showed Alice the giant tree that almost fell on someone when the area was a campground. I gushed about berry varieties that would come to coat the forest paths and pointed out the small cove at the end of the beach where we would watch sea stars and urchins during the low tide. It was fun to have someone to show all of the wonders that Mindi had introduced me to. On the beach, we gave my mom a call so she could say happy birthday and enviously imagine us on the ocean (since I'm pretty certain they were still buried in some sort of snow flurry at that point).

It was slightly chillier (read: a lot) by the time we neared
the woods so I scavenged some last-minute laters from
Mindi's car.

A then and now repeat-pose from my first visit to the tree in '11

The afternoon was quickly passing and I'd given up the possibility of making it to our destination - Eugene - in time to see the first art walk of the season. However, Alice had mentioned her love of cheese and so it seemed obvious that the Tilamook Cheese Factory was a must-see stop. We got there with a good hour before closing. There was a lot more to the building than I'd ever imagined from passing by. I suppose it made sense, being the only thing in Tilamook. Past the merchandise; much of it far from cheese-related, and the wafting smells of fresh ice cream, we made our way upstairs to the free self-guided tour of the factory. I have never seen so much CHEESE (duh). The blocks that they started out as on one end were probably a good couple of cubic feet, whittled down at each stage until they were morphed into tightly wrapped wedges spinning around on some octopus wheel ride. Alice made a shocked comment about the waste as we watched tunnel-visioned workers take mere seconds to determine the shape quality of a cheese block and toss the inadequate candidates to the side, sometimes hitting the floor instead of their spare buckets.

 Being the slightly zealous food purist I am (purist being tongue and cheek with my double standards and all) I watched the clockwork below us with a bit of dystopian cynicism. All around me were facts like this:

"Each of the eight stainless steel cheese vats holds approximately 53,000 pounds of fresh milk. On average, each vat makes three batches of cheese per day. 

It takes 10 pounds (1.16 gallons) of milk to make 1 pound of Tilamook cheese. More than 1.7 million pounds of milk arrive at the plant every day. Approximately 167,000 pounds of cheese are made each day."

These were coupled with strategically-shot videos of "happy" cows that were very obviously not free-roaming and long-written praises on "finest quality farm equipment and high productivity", a sure sign that cow happiness was not a top priority. Nonetheless, the 'bootstraps' story was impressive, beginning in 1894 with a man named Peter McIntosh and his cheddar cheese recipe and replacing the butter business that had been Tilamook's prior specialty. It has since grown into a national industry that affords top scientists to analyze milk cultures in ways I don't understand for premium quality. And those vats were rather daunting as I imagined the process of filtering they had to go through to separate the solids from the milk etc. So when it came time to tasting, I employed my double standards and swallowed my pride along with a nice little cube of pepper jack. And a lick of Alice's Cookies n' Cream. "Hey, maybe all of those factory scrapes go here, to the cheese tasting bin," said Alice. "That makes sense," I hoped. 

Pressed for time, I didn't get to discover what this token bus symbol meant, but it made for a cool picture. And now looking it up, its apparently part of the Loaf Love Tour movement. Literally a cheese tour, spreading their cheese across the country like a wandering musician. I wonder how the cows feel about their lactation claiming their fame. I joke, I joke. Mostly... :)

As we left the Cheese Factory, I checked on the travel time to Eugene (well, springfield). The surprising calculation that my phone gave me characterized the nature of much of our week's travels; we were still almost a good four hours away. This was about double my estimate from my recollection. Time to book it. 

I had been in communication with our hosts, prospecting that we would be there at a reasonable time for dinner but as we lost sunlight I began to worry that we would be keeping them up. I had met Tucker over the summer when my farm buddies and I had ventured to the Oregon Country Fair. The extent of our friendship was two bus rides, a few fun fair photographs and complementary Facebook exchanges hoping that we might be able to get together again sometime. He and his wife Kira openly welcomed the idea of Alice and I coming to spend the night but I think we had all hoped it would entail visiting time as well. Fortunately when we arrived, they did not seem too perturbed and we continued to stay up with some wine, chocolate and their menagerie of animal companions for a couple of hours before sleep took over. It also worked out that we had not in fact, missed the Eugene festivities. Kira told us about Eugene's Saturday Market and we found out that the next day would be the first one of those of the season. In the morning, Kira had had to be up and gone before I even awoke, having her incredible own business as a horse farrier to tend to. But we had time to kill before the market began at 10 so Tucker visited with us a bit more, as we talked more about the ambitious novel he is working on based on his Military service and had passionate discussions about equal rights and the patriarchal agenda, his views of which were highly relatable and contrary to what one would typically have been surrounded by in the environment of the armed forces.

We gave ourselves plenty of time to find parking, wanting to hit the market early and then hit the road. Finding a spot was easier than we'd anticipated, but the machine did not seem to want to let us give their city money (how unfortunate). No signs indicated that it was a free parking day so I manufactured my own employing notice to Eugene and we were on our way.

 Yes, I've seen plenty of art fairs and markets in my time and sometimes they feel redundant, overflowing with the latest trend in artistic experiments and clothing. But this one felt different. I think part of it was the size. It wasn't too overwhelmingly large so one could take in each individual booth without feeling like they'd just seen more of the same around the block. Our first stop was the food court where I got some fresh Ginger Carrot soup and my favorite Indian food indulgence, Naan. Well-fed, we made our rounds. In the back of my mind, I kept feeling like I should be gift hunting but only ended up leaving with a few things for myself, a small freebie that I may gift and some business cards for future reference.



The booth I ended up treating myself at was Kendra Grace Designs. Kendra was a rough-edged, glowing woman with a ratty top hat who had surely been a traveler in her earlier years. Her young son - an equally vibrant little man dressed Oliver style with a spurtly blonde mow hawk - immediately introduced himself (after asking clarification for what an introduction was). It was that trademark recycled-clothing look that caught my eye (I always want to buy these sorts of things and always know that I will be disappointed by the price tag) but it was my affinity for her personality her love of photography and her unique variation on the art that won me over. After talking for a bit, I opted to purchase one of her smaller pieces - a cloth bracelet with a polaroid photo transfer saying "Of Earth". Debating between that and a magnet of the same image, she threw in the magnet for free.

If I'd had more money in my already nonexistent budget, I would have been a patron of many more vendors at the market. This Sign-Language-based Jewelry had unique expressions of common and uncommon messages. Chris Pender had cleverly transformed his dissatisfaction with the limitations of the Life board game and come up with an amusing and fully functional parody (or reality, really) which I will still probably be buying at some point.

And then, across the street at the Farmer's Market section, we learned that we should have held off on the food court! There were dozens more specialty food artisans serving fresh Pasties and vegan pastries and warm tofu dishes. Next time I will know better. I did however, indulge my fermentation fanatics with a jar of Spicy Kimchi from Activation Foods and some freshly ground hazelnuts from Honor Earth Farm, having wanted to experiment with hazelnut "flour" for a while.

Leaving with bags full and wallets emptier (at least we returned to a ticket-free car) we began our dissent into California! Traveling with someone else, I was already participating in more fluff and pomp than usual and so when we stumbled upon the 'BIG THRU TREE' Tourist trap, I bit the bullet and we diverged from our route to check it out. I hadn't noticed that we could walk up to the tree for $1 as opposed to the $5 we paid to drive but then we got the (wow) experience of putting a car in a tree. Meh. It was a thing to do. And they had emus across the street, so that was...a thing.

 Getting back on track was more work than planned. At first, I forgot we'd left our route at all and kept on down the off highway. Once we were turned around, it turned out we were off route anyhow so we had to drive back to Grant's Pass to find the highway. Eventually we found our CA welcome sign. As we stopped to take a picture of our achievement, I took the opportunity to go pet one of these richly colored trees that had begun to appear alongside the road for the last stretch of Oregon. They had the smoothest, softest under-bark I have ever felt and much of their bark was shedding in papery patches. I am still on the hunt for the name of this mystery tree, so someone help me out!

Driving on, I recognized a small campground and store up ahead and new that the trees were about to morph into Redwoods. However, we entered near Jedediah where the trees were not the most immaculate of the bunch and Alice was somewhat unimpressed. I didn't blame her; I hadn't found this side of the forest too enchanting when I'd passed through. But I knew what was yet to come.

We didn't make it there that night though. By the time we drove into Crescent City just past Jedediah, sunset coming on fast. We couldn't decide what we wanted to do about sleep - try to find a cheap camp site or stealth away in the car - so we thought on it while venturing to the park to stretch our legs. The city had a nice pedestrian set-up along the water which trailed along thick patches of spongey, alien sea-flowers (for yet another lack of a name). It was a much needed stretch for our legs but our indecision remained. We finally just decided to drive and see where we were in an hour.

Where we were was the road. Still. But a pull-off that ducked down by the beach seemed like a nice, unnoticeable place to stash the car. I had been apprehensive because I had never been able to find any clear-cut law about Overnight car-parking in the state (I am still unsure) and having someone else along for the ride, I felt more responsible for offering a hassle-free experience than I would have if I were alone. Fortunately, hassle-free we were. We munched and shared some ciders by the beach and finally tucked ourselves in for the night, windows cracked, breeze blowing, and waves washing the mind into dreams.