The Great American Road Trip - Exploring Hood River

Continued from Driving to Hood River, Oregon.

I stepped out of our motel in Hood River, which was settled cozily between Interstate 84 and the Columbia River Gorge. If you have never been to the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, I highly recommend it. There are mossy forests, stunning scenic views of the gorge, waterfalls, and some amazing hiking. So anyway, I stepped out of the motel room to take Poppy for a jog. The sun was warming up and there was a cool breeze. Wow, it was really breezy. Actually, I think it is downright windy. But I have heard the kitesurfing is the king of sports here, so I guess its to be expected.

The Columbia River Gorge, view from near our motel.

After the jog, Paul and I head downtown to the Dog River Cafe where I heard they served Stumptown Coffee, another recommendation of mine, if you find yourself in the greater Portland area.

Dog River Cafe

The highlights of our morning include: watching the windsurfers at the waterfront park and trying to get Poppy to fetch a stick in the river, hiking six blocks of stairs built into the hillsides above downtown in the residential neighborhoods, eating bland and overly-stuffed-with-lettuce tacos downtown, ordering freshly made juice from the Juice Brothers cart while talking to a local about Hood River as well as the guy Matt, the juice guy, and watching Tibetan monks create a sand mandala at the library.

Downtown

View of Downtown with the Columbia River in the distance.

The Waterfront Park

Another View of Downtown and the neighborhoods above.

A view of Downtown as we climb the hill above town.

Matt, the Juice Guy, from Juice Brothers.

Tibetan Monks

After all that excitement, we decide to drive around the surrounding rural area. The Hood River Valley is rolling green with orchards and vineyards. The back roads are winding, hilly and fun to drive. After meandering to the end of the paved road near the top of a mountain, we made our way along the fruit loop and wine loop and stop at Apple Valley Country Store along the Hood River where I sample and purchase some Huckleberry and Marionberry jam.

Hood River Valley with a faint view of Mount Hood.

Poppy, enjoying the countryside from the car window.

A fun, hilly country road.

The Hood River Valley

A view of Mount Adams in Washington.

Another hilly road in the rural Hood River Valley.

After a Paul and Poppy nap back at the motel, Paul and I head out for an early dinner. We go to the Trillium Cafe, which I hear is a low-key sort of local place with simple food. We order beer and food and a large, bald, middle aged man sits down next to me. We start to talk to him and learn he is from Sacramento and is in Hood River for a month to learn to teach yoga. Interesting. He continues to talk and I politely listen until I start to overhear the women in her early thirties sitting next to Paul telling him about having all kinds of exciting sexual encounters with multiple men at the Cannes Film Festival in France this past spring. Okay, what the hell is going on? Meet Vita.

Vita

Vita is from Vancouver, Washington. She mentored a group of film students at the Cannes Film Festival and decided to take advantage of every single opportunity that came her way in Cannes. It sounded like an adventure in celebrities, exquisite and lavish parties, lots and lots of booze, debauchery, and basically having sex or at least making out with many, many people. She continued to tell us the sad tales of her broken heart love stories, which included a poet from Milwaukee who had enough of her three dogs. She lamented about the only available bachelors in the small town where she is living with her parents are the 18-year old high school quarterback and the mid-fifties former child molester. Hence, she is Hood River.

Chris

In the midst of these thrilling tales, we meet Matt, the juice guy, again and he joins our conversation, reiterating that Hood River is a really cool place. Then comes in Chris, who says he is from Seattle but also owns a condo in Huntington Beach, is a chiropractor, has a better voice than Layne Staley, plays in a band (who he probably thinks is better than Alice in Chains) is recently divorced and is hanging out in Hood River with some friends. Naturally, Vita and Chris end up hooking up outside, where I will save you the description of what I saw when we stopped to say goodbye. I did manage to talk to both bartenders, both from Portland, who both said that Hood River is really the greatest place on earth. Well, we'll see.

The Great American Road Trip - Driving to Hood River, Oregon

Continued from The Great American Road Trip.

Despite baking in the sun, I do like the drive to Oregon. My sister mentioned to me that I seem to drive to Oregon every month and actually, she is pretty close to correct. Once you get away from the Bay Area and past the Sacramento Valley, the landscape becomes more interesting along Shasta Lake and through the Siskyou Mountains. My favorite part is always the appearance of Mount Shasta on the horizon.

Mount Shasta

Poppy

After getting off the interstate in a town called Weed (go ahead, giggle), California, the road continues north and east toward Oregon. On the way, is the grasslands of Butte Valley, green and watery in the spring and dry and golden toward the end of summer. I find many people are surprised to learn that Central Oregon is actually quite dry, unlike the rest of the state on the west side of the Cascade mountains.

Butte Valley

The California-Oregon border

Dry Oregon

I could almost do this drive in my sleep, but this time, unlike most, my final destination is not Bend, Oregon. For the first time, I continue past Bend, without even stopping. The sun is setting in velvety waves of color behind the silhouette of several dark and pointy Cascade mountaintops. We are just outside Madras, Oregon driving through lovely countryside, with large irrigation sprinklers spraying rosy sprays of water over golden fields.

The first stop on our Great American Road Trip is Hood River, Oregon. Hood River is about 60 miles east of Portland with a population of about 7,000. It is on the banks of the great Columbia River, along the Columbia River Gorge, some of the most scenic landscape in America. We arrive at our motel late and a less than full moon is hanging low and golden orange in the sky. Tomorrow, we explore Hood River.

The Great American Road Trip

I am in a 14-year old purple Honda Civic hatchback with a brand new clutch, driving with the sun beating on me across the hot, parched Sacramento Valley with my husband, an eight-month old puppy and a car packed for a month of living on the road. We are on a quest. We are on a journey. We are on a Great American Road Trip.

We are lucky, in the United States, to have such a vast and varied landscape. There are sandy beaches, rocky sea cliffs, deserts, rainforest, old mountains, new mountains, plains, canyons, caves, rolling green hills, giant ancient trees, old-time cacti, volcanoes and swamps, we have so many things to explore and experience just in the continental United States and so far, the list has only including natural wonders. There is a whole other perspective of a place when it comes to the people and what the people have built there, past and present and future. People make homes out of these places. They establish a community. Sometimes they love it, sometimes they don't; staying in a place for a reasons such as family, jobs, friends, culture, schools, natural beauty, climate, status, or recreation.

I have been asking myself, where is my place in this world? When I travel people ask me where I am from and I usually say, "I am from Pennsylvania but I live in San Francisco." because I can not bear the thought of saying I am "from" San Francisco. When I first moved to California and I experienced the first six weeks of non-stop sunshine of the summer months, I thought I would never leave. But the sunshine continued, for months while the world around me began to dry and brown and shrivel and crack under a coat of hot dust. Then there is San Francisco, where I have been for six years. When it is nice out, it is magical, for four hours in the middle of the day, while carrying around the jacket that you will need to wear 365 days a year. The rest of the time, it is damp and foggy and windy and cold and you wonder why anyone would want to live in a place where you need to wear ear warmers and gloves while walking the dog in August. But there is more to this place then just weather, some that I would love to leave and some that I would like to keep.

Well why not Pennsylvania then? I have family and friends there and I think I understand the people. Also, there is nothing like driving on a two lane country road through the rolling green hills of horse farm country or trail running across the grassy fields and quiet, hilly forests where your mind can finally relax and the other things at work in this world can whisper in your ear. So, why not there? Maybe it is because I left there for some reason and I found a little more of me somewhere else, or did I? Was a piece of me missing in Pennsylvania? Or maybe it is because I keep thinking that there is another place, where I will roll into town and breath in the air and look around me and smile at the people and know that in no other place where will I feel as much Me as I do here. So then, where is that place?

That is why I am baking in the sun in the Sacramento Valley, while my husband takes a snooze and the puppy lodges herself under my seat. We are on our way across the United States to try and discover that one place where we can finally feel Home. After much research, we have selected several places where we think we might like. In between, we are going to work in some sightseeing and time with family and friends. We only have a tentative plan and about 30 days. Who knows?

Here is the list of tentative stops:

1. Hood River, OR
2. Missoula, MT
3. Bozeman, MT
4. Jackson, WY
5. Boulder, CO
6. Somewhere in Iowa
7. Somewhere further east of Iowa
8. Pittsburgh, PA
9. Syracuse, NY
10. Providence, RI
11. Hartford, CT
12. Landenberg, PA
13. Frederick, MD
14. Lynchburg, VA
15. Asheville, NC
16. Somewhere between North Carolina and Texas
17. Dallas, TX
18. Austin, TX
19. Somewhere in West Texas
20. Somewhere in New Mexico
21. Tucson, AZ
22. Maybe somewhere in Southern California

But who knows? Maybe we will change it, add to it, subtract.



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