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Yay, day at the coast (or driving along it, at least). Yay, planning or lack thereof.
Yay, patterns saving me from myself. >.<
I left home about 9:30 this morning, and stopped for gas and snacks (soda, sunflower seeds). I headed up I-5 to 405 to 30 westbound, taking that to the coast. I didn't think I'd ever taken that route, and I wanted to see Astoria.
I didn't stop much for photos, just 3 times or so the whole day, I wanted to keep driving and looking. And it was pretty.
Driving into Portland, the day was already crisp and clear; I could see the mountains and hills, sharply outlined, even got to see Mt. St. Helens clearly - along with all the ones I can't name. ;) (North, so not Mt. Hood, which I can id when I see it.)
At the western edge of Portland 30 goes through the northwest industrial district. I expected this to be sort of blah, to be tolerated to get to the "real" drive. Well, now I want to go back there with my camera. (I decided not to photograph anything within an hour of home, because I could do that another day, and didn't want to delay my heading coast-ward. Turned out the more I drove the less I wanted to take pictures. Heh.)
There were trains, of course, and people who've read enough of my journal know of my fascination with those. Tracks interweaving, that sort of thing. Fascinating dome-covered buildings (storage things or something, I believe, but they looked neat). Neat views of the river, encrusted with shipping access and the like. Toward the edge, a stately home...with braces all up the front; looked like it had maybe been gutted by fire. And yet someone braced it up, instead of just having it taken out. Further along, on the side away from the river, nice-looking homes (with beater cars in front: they face the tracks, so...).
And somewhere outside town, before the rest of the stuff I'm about to go into, I saw a sign for the "Malarkey Ranch B&B". Which I thought would amuse my mother; it certainly amused me.
A bit after that I passed a garage (the kind you park your car in, not the kind you get it fixed at) and OH I WANTED A PICTURE. It was...it was a two-car garage, standing open at the end of a five or ten-foot driveway (no more than 10, I really think less) directly off the highway (which is the main problem, there was NO shoulder to speak of there, and on the other side would have been too close to get a shot, or I would have that shot). There were no cars in it; the "driveway" was grown up with grass 3 feet high or so, but the wheel-ruts were still mostly clear, and thus distinct (no gravel or paving). There were vines climbing the garage, and a bush grown intimately against its side; it had no windows, nor ever had, making it just a cave with the greenery amidst it. I already remember more what I thought of it, than what it looked like; I so regret not getting a picture, but I really couldn't see a way to safely get one. It was fascinating, and beautiful somehow.
After that, lots of little towns, mostly run-down. Some in the beautiful way of that garage, others not. Manufactured homes by the dozens; a trading post; mom and pop groceries; several taverns; car repair places; boat shops; "country clutter and collectibles" (I love that name!). A topless bar that had clearly gone out of business, in that it somewhat resembled the garage. Except there were less encroaching plants, more lost paint, windows open black holes, nothing inside, and the parking lot grown over. It looked rather more sad. That, I could probably have gotten a picture of; and I didn't want one.
Some of the bridges over the Columbia, through that area, are pretty dramatic. (Up a hill to reach the bridge?) Once again, no pics - I didn't get the camera out until the coast, even. Which is a pity. I wish I'd gotten those bridges, they were neat, and I won't ever have the chance again if I have anything to say about it, because the neat ones start just near the hill from HECK.
I mean, yeah, crossing the coast range. Yeah, gonna go up. NO, do not need drop-off just beyond guard rail, several hundred feet, for a half a mile. Was interrupted slightly by two view points. Could have gotten pictures. Did not WANT pictures. Did not want to stop, did not want to look. (Also didn't want to have to start back up a hill that steep from a dead stop, or back around on the viewpoints, but that was secondary to 'eek! eek! height! no!' reaction.)
Snow zone warnings, but no snow, as expected. The forests through the coast range were just gorgeous, the deciduous trees greys and browns and orange-browns, and the evergreens in full force. The deciduous trees, bare of leaves, were more noticeable up close, with the effect that often the near hills looked orangish and the far hills looked misty blue-green-grey. Very pretty. Wants a painting, or a photograph, but we were around to No Good Turnouts at this point, and I wasn't settling for a tolerable excuse for one. Heh.
Got down into Astoria. Astoria has pretty homes. Astoria has a museum I decided not to go to. Astoria has a neat bridge over to Washington. Astoria...oops. Has gone by. Went right through it, after deciding I wanted to see it. Vaguely picturesque, but I'm not very impressed by what I saw of it, not in the "I must go back and see it" sort of way, at least. Stopped at a Fred Meyer's that was either at the end of town or in the next town over (couldn't figure out), opened my sunflower seeds, and had some with soda. Decided to hold out for a McDonald's for lunch.
Closed the sunflower seeds, and dropped them into my purse for ease of access later. Promptly forgot about them; the main pocket of my purse doesn't hold money/credit cards/checks, so I wouldn't go into that pocket until I wanted dental gum, about three hours later. At which point I would discover that the lid had not tightened properly, and 2/3 of a jar of sunflower seeds were all over the inside of my purse. Which I still have to clean up, almost 8 hours later. My poor purse. Anyway....
First place I took the camera out: Ft. Stevens (I think?) State Park, which has a day-use parking area for the beach that they don't charge for (unlike most of the rest of the park). The sun was sort of over the water, but I took seven photos anyway - of the water, the rocks, the coastline, and the brilliant greens of the plants back inland from it.
I also got to be very glad I know I'm a space-case, and build my life around it, with patterns and suchlike (granted, any pattern can be forgotten, but weave enough together and you're usually okay). I know sometimes people seem to find it odd that I always keep my purse with me; but it has way too many important things, ranging from my medicine to keys to money. When I get out of the car, I take the keys and purse at a minimum.
Except when I forget. Climb out at park, lock door, close door. Pause. Inventory. My pocket is empty: the keys are in the ignition. Ah, but I know I do this occasionally; and I did grab my purse (and the camera, which is incidental to this dilemma). Perfect. Open purse, grab spare key kept for such occasions, open car, retrieve key-ring. Put everything away, lock and close car without keys inside. Much better. And you know, that vastly beats being locked out of your car a three-hour drive from your home, on a public beach a mile or so from the nearest town?
I got a scare; some guy was letting his dog (black lab cross, looked like) run loose, and she ran at me. I gave a very firm, "NO!" (which is nonsensical, but I was scared-ish, and most dogs know it) and she went away again. A couple people made comments to each other and laughed that I'd told the dog no for that. Fine, do that. Not that many years ago, I'd have: (a) rooted to the spot and started screaming, (b) frozen and just stared, shaking, or (c) freaked and run. Frankly, I think I'm getting a helluva lot better.
Went from there on down toward Seaside. Seaside failed to impress me. Seaside failed dramatically. I was going to go to the aquarium. The turn was clearly signed; I was not paying enough attention, and saw it too late to make the turn. Okay, fine. Next light is signed: historic downtown. I'll head that way, see that, and if I can get to the aquarium from there, all is good. (If not, I'll come back out and go back to the right spot.)
The historic downtown is...full of tourist trap junk shops (and non-junk shops, to be fair), decked out in colors far too bright and primary-ish for me to believe it's been history for that long, full of one-way streets with brick crossings (look pretty, and threaten to disassemble car into component parts, stranding one in Seaside's historic downtown). There were some views that might have been pretty, but by the time I managed to navigate my way out of that trap, I went right past the public parking, right past the aquarium sign, and straight out to the highway. Found McDonald's, had lunch. I'd had enough of Seaside.
So I headed on out of Seaside and continued up the coast. Went about 10 miles past where highway 26 meets highway 101. Stopped at two lookouts (one with a historic marker!) along the way. At the second one, the view (height), distance (to next highway back home) and wall (of rock, with mesh over it to hold it back - real encouraging, neh?) combined to disturb me, and I decided to turn around.
I'd had a good day, but it was time to go back home. (And I wrote the second part of this first, so I apologized in advance if they don't mesh.)
Coming home was interesting. To put it mildly. I got up to a lookout point up on 101 south (scenic) and just about freaked. Pretty, but too high, and with mesh-restrained rocks hovering too high above me. Took a lot of pictures, debated, and then went back down the way I came. That was enough of the Oregon coast for me.
It was only about 10 miles back to where 26 meets 101, so I headed east on 26, a route I have taken before. It's pretty. Farmland, trees...just glorious. I spent a lot of time photographing with my eyes, but I didn't pull into anyone's driveway to get shots (which I could have done). I think I mostly wanted to be there.
Then I get up higher. And there's snow. On the ground. Pretty snow, but I was wondering if it would get on the road. It never did, but it was pretty solidly there on the dirt - even seen through the trees well back from the road, so not just the remnants of the plow's work. One bridge had a flashing "ice" sign (needless to say I took it slow), but the road there was wet, just as the road was all the way. Which matches the weather reports and my perceptions of the temperatures, but actual snow on the ground didn't, so I was being cautious.
That is just a gorgeous drive, coming down 26 from the coast to Portland. Well, maybe until you reach Beaverton. However, I'd been in the car so long that by the time I was coming down the last long downslope, my tailbone was bitching royally. I saw the mountains, still crisp and clear, and I thought of taking a picture, but didn't want to stop, and try to frame it...I really just wanted to see them. So I did.
And then I got off at 185th, and browsed a used music/movie store and Craft Warehouse, as an excuse to let my poor tailbone recover. (Okay, CW was supposed to be the excuse. But I always forget the right lane is forced to turn before CW, and the used music place was in a handy spot for a semi-graceful recovery. So there.)
Got some music, actually, but not much else. The prices were okay, but only because I'm lazy and too honest to play the join-and-leave game with BMG over and over. Not worth a drive, certainly. No big shock there. Only a few things are worth a drive for me, on an average day. I locked my keys in the car again at Craft Warehouse. Same 'use other key' routine as before. No, I don't usually do this twice in one day; in fact, I don't normally do it once in six months. Apparently today was just destined to be amusing.
Coming home from there, as I turned up Canyon, I saw Mt. Hood. It was dusk, almost dark, and the sky was a shadowed blue behind it, and it was softly, snowily white. Very pretty. Very postcard-esque. I almost stopped to try to capture it, but my chances of accurately holding it with a camera were close to zero, and I knew it.
Stopped at Powell's Beaverton on the way back. They've moved graphic novels up by roleplaying games, and appear to have more. I suspect someone who liked them or was more curious than I might enjoy it; me, I just peered around the corner to confirm that, yes, their roleplaying selection still sucked rocks. Actually, it's worse now. You could stuff the entirety of it onto one of those shelves if you had to. Sparse doesn't begin to describe it....
Laura Resnick definitely doesn't have any other books there, let alone the sequel to That Book. And no one else had anything new out that intrigued me (one or two got to the back cover; those provoked winces and went back). There's a new David Brin out, but it's hard cover; I didn't bother checking it out, I'll do that in about a year. I have enough reading material, it's not like I really need to tempt myself.
One last stop at the grocery, and then home. Alas, the convenient grocery was Safeway, which I prefer to avoid, since they've stopped stocking my milk in quarts (the size I use) and only stock half-gallons. Since it goes bad before I can finish a quart, buying a half-gallon offends me. I didn't get any of Scott's milk, though; he's drunk this stuff for a week before, so hopefully he'll forgive me. As is becoming habit, I filed a complaint about the milk idiocy. This time, someone said they'd actually talk to the person who stocked it. Yay.
Budget Gourmet has some new bowl meals that look good, calorie-wise and food-balance-wise, and aren't painfully expensive anyway. Shrimp stir fry sounded like a nice start tonight.
I'm home.
Update: Looking at my purse to clean it, I am reminded that last week several of my aspirin spilled, and apparently at some point, so did several of my orange tic-tacs. This looks amazingly silly. Now to get it out.
Yay, patterns saving me from myself. >.<
I left home about 9:30 this morning, and stopped for gas and snacks (soda, sunflower seeds). I headed up I-5 to 405 to 30 westbound, taking that to the coast. I didn't think I'd ever taken that route, and I wanted to see Astoria.
I didn't stop much for photos, just 3 times or so the whole day, I wanted to keep driving and looking. And it was pretty.
Driving into Portland, the day was already crisp and clear; I could see the mountains and hills, sharply outlined, even got to see Mt. St. Helens clearly - along with all the ones I can't name. ;) (North, so not Mt. Hood, which I can id when I see it.)
At the western edge of Portland 30 goes through the northwest industrial district. I expected this to be sort of blah, to be tolerated to get to the "real" drive. Well, now I want to go back there with my camera. (I decided not to photograph anything within an hour of home, because I could do that another day, and didn't want to delay my heading coast-ward. Turned out the more I drove the less I wanted to take pictures. Heh.)
There were trains, of course, and people who've read enough of my journal know of my fascination with those. Tracks interweaving, that sort of thing. Fascinating dome-covered buildings (storage things or something, I believe, but they looked neat). Neat views of the river, encrusted with shipping access and the like. Toward the edge, a stately home...with braces all up the front; looked like it had maybe been gutted by fire. And yet someone braced it up, instead of just having it taken out. Further along, on the side away from the river, nice-looking homes (with beater cars in front: they face the tracks, so...).
And somewhere outside town, before the rest of the stuff I'm about to go into, I saw a sign for the "Malarkey Ranch B&B". Which I thought would amuse my mother; it certainly amused me.
A bit after that I passed a garage (the kind you park your car in, not the kind you get it fixed at) and OH I WANTED A PICTURE. It was...it was a two-car garage, standing open at the end of a five or ten-foot driveway (no more than 10, I really think less) directly off the highway (which is the main problem, there was NO shoulder to speak of there, and on the other side would have been too close to get a shot, or I would have that shot). There were no cars in it; the "driveway" was grown up with grass 3 feet high or so, but the wheel-ruts were still mostly clear, and thus distinct (no gravel or paving). There were vines climbing the garage, and a bush grown intimately against its side; it had no windows, nor ever had, making it just a cave with the greenery amidst it. I already remember more what I thought of it, than what it looked like; I so regret not getting a picture, but I really couldn't see a way to safely get one. It was fascinating, and beautiful somehow.
After that, lots of little towns, mostly run-down. Some in the beautiful way of that garage, others not. Manufactured homes by the dozens; a trading post; mom and pop groceries; several taverns; car repair places; boat shops; "country clutter and collectibles" (I love that name!). A topless bar that had clearly gone out of business, in that it somewhat resembled the garage. Except there were less encroaching plants, more lost paint, windows open black holes, nothing inside, and the parking lot grown over. It looked rather more sad. That, I could probably have gotten a picture of; and I didn't want one.
Some of the bridges over the Columbia, through that area, are pretty dramatic. (Up a hill to reach the bridge?) Once again, no pics - I didn't get the camera out until the coast, even. Which is a pity. I wish I'd gotten those bridges, they were neat, and I won't ever have the chance again if I have anything to say about it, because the neat ones start just near the hill from HECK.
I mean, yeah, crossing the coast range. Yeah, gonna go up. NO, do not need drop-off just beyond guard rail, several hundred feet, for a half a mile. Was interrupted slightly by two view points. Could have gotten pictures. Did not WANT pictures. Did not want to stop, did not want to look. (Also didn't want to have to start back up a hill that steep from a dead stop, or back around on the viewpoints, but that was secondary to 'eek! eek! height! no!' reaction.)
Snow zone warnings, but no snow, as expected. The forests through the coast range were just gorgeous, the deciduous trees greys and browns and orange-browns, and the evergreens in full force. The deciduous trees, bare of leaves, were more noticeable up close, with the effect that often the near hills looked orangish and the far hills looked misty blue-green-grey. Very pretty. Wants a painting, or a photograph, but we were around to No Good Turnouts at this point, and I wasn't settling for a tolerable excuse for one. Heh.
Got down into Astoria. Astoria has pretty homes. Astoria has a museum I decided not to go to. Astoria has a neat bridge over to Washington. Astoria...oops. Has gone by. Went right through it, after deciding I wanted to see it. Vaguely picturesque, but I'm not very impressed by what I saw of it, not in the "I must go back and see it" sort of way, at least. Stopped at a Fred Meyer's that was either at the end of town or in the next town over (couldn't figure out), opened my sunflower seeds, and had some with soda. Decided to hold out for a McDonald's for lunch.
Closed the sunflower seeds, and dropped them into my purse for ease of access later. Promptly forgot about them; the main pocket of my purse doesn't hold money/credit cards/checks, so I wouldn't go into that pocket until I wanted dental gum, about three hours later. At which point I would discover that the lid had not tightened properly, and 2/3 of a jar of sunflower seeds were all over the inside of my purse. Which I still have to clean up, almost 8 hours later. My poor purse. Anyway....
First place I took the camera out: Ft. Stevens (I think?) State Park, which has a day-use parking area for the beach that they don't charge for (unlike most of the rest of the park). The sun was sort of over the water, but I took seven photos anyway - of the water, the rocks, the coastline, and the brilliant greens of the plants back inland from it.
I also got to be very glad I know I'm a space-case, and build my life around it, with patterns and suchlike (granted, any pattern can be forgotten, but weave enough together and you're usually okay). I know sometimes people seem to find it odd that I always keep my purse with me; but it has way too many important things, ranging from my medicine to keys to money. When I get out of the car, I take the keys and purse at a minimum.
Except when I forget. Climb out at park, lock door, close door. Pause. Inventory. My pocket is empty: the keys are in the ignition. Ah, but I know I do this occasionally; and I did grab my purse (and the camera, which is incidental to this dilemma). Perfect. Open purse, grab spare key kept for such occasions, open car, retrieve key-ring. Put everything away, lock and close car without keys inside. Much better. And you know, that vastly beats being locked out of your car a three-hour drive from your home, on a public beach a mile or so from the nearest town?
I got a scare; some guy was letting his dog (black lab cross, looked like) run loose, and she ran at me. I gave a very firm, "NO!" (which is nonsensical, but I was scared-ish, and most dogs know it) and she went away again. A couple people made comments to each other and laughed that I'd told the dog no for that. Fine, do that. Not that many years ago, I'd have: (a) rooted to the spot and started screaming, (b) frozen and just stared, shaking, or (c) freaked and run. Frankly, I think I'm getting a helluva lot better.
Went from there on down toward Seaside. Seaside failed to impress me. Seaside failed dramatically. I was going to go to the aquarium. The turn was clearly signed; I was not paying enough attention, and saw it too late to make the turn. Okay, fine. Next light is signed: historic downtown. I'll head that way, see that, and if I can get to the aquarium from there, all is good. (If not, I'll come back out and go back to the right spot.)
The historic downtown is...full of tourist trap junk shops (and non-junk shops, to be fair), decked out in colors far too bright and primary-ish for me to believe it's been history for that long, full of one-way streets with brick crossings (look pretty, and threaten to disassemble car into component parts, stranding one in Seaside's historic downtown). There were some views that might have been pretty, but by the time I managed to navigate my way out of that trap, I went right past the public parking, right past the aquarium sign, and straight out to the highway. Found McDonald's, had lunch. I'd had enough of Seaside.
So I headed on out of Seaside and continued up the coast. Went about 10 miles past where highway 26 meets highway 101. Stopped at two lookouts (one with a historic marker!) along the way. At the second one, the view (height), distance (to next highway back home) and wall (of rock, with mesh over it to hold it back - real encouraging, neh?) combined to disturb me, and I decided to turn around.
I'd had a good day, but it was time to go back home. (And I wrote the second part of this first, so I apologized in advance if they don't mesh.)
Coming home was interesting. To put it mildly. I got up to a lookout point up on 101 south (scenic) and just about freaked. Pretty, but too high, and with mesh-restrained rocks hovering too high above me. Took a lot of pictures, debated, and then went back down the way I came. That was enough of the Oregon coast for me.
It was only about 10 miles back to where 26 meets 101, so I headed east on 26, a route I have taken before. It's pretty. Farmland, trees...just glorious. I spent a lot of time photographing with my eyes, but I didn't pull into anyone's driveway to get shots (which I could have done). I think I mostly wanted to be there.
Then I get up higher. And there's snow. On the ground. Pretty snow, but I was wondering if it would get on the road. It never did, but it was pretty solidly there on the dirt - even seen through the trees well back from the road, so not just the remnants of the plow's work. One bridge had a flashing "ice" sign (needless to say I took it slow), but the road there was wet, just as the road was all the way. Which matches the weather reports and my perceptions of the temperatures, but actual snow on the ground didn't, so I was being cautious.
That is just a gorgeous drive, coming down 26 from the coast to Portland. Well, maybe until you reach Beaverton. However, I'd been in the car so long that by the time I was coming down the last long downslope, my tailbone was bitching royally. I saw the mountains, still crisp and clear, and I thought of taking a picture, but didn't want to stop, and try to frame it...I really just wanted to see them. So I did.
And then I got off at 185th, and browsed a used music/movie store and Craft Warehouse, as an excuse to let my poor tailbone recover. (Okay, CW was supposed to be the excuse. But I always forget the right lane is forced to turn before CW, and the used music place was in a handy spot for a semi-graceful recovery. So there.)
Got some music, actually, but not much else. The prices were okay, but only because I'm lazy and too honest to play the join-and-leave game with BMG over and over. Not worth a drive, certainly. No big shock there. Only a few things are worth a drive for me, on an average day. I locked my keys in the car again at Craft Warehouse. Same 'use other key' routine as before. No, I don't usually do this twice in one day; in fact, I don't normally do it once in six months. Apparently today was just destined to be amusing.
Coming home from there, as I turned up Canyon, I saw Mt. Hood. It was dusk, almost dark, and the sky was a shadowed blue behind it, and it was softly, snowily white. Very pretty. Very postcard-esque. I almost stopped to try to capture it, but my chances of accurately holding it with a camera were close to zero, and I knew it.
Stopped at Powell's Beaverton on the way back. They've moved graphic novels up by roleplaying games, and appear to have more. I suspect someone who liked them or was more curious than I might enjoy it; me, I just peered around the corner to confirm that, yes, their roleplaying selection still sucked rocks. Actually, it's worse now. You could stuff the entirety of it onto one of those shelves if you had to. Sparse doesn't begin to describe it....
Laura Resnick definitely doesn't have any other books there, let alone the sequel to That Book. And no one else had anything new out that intrigued me (one or two got to the back cover; those provoked winces and went back). There's a new David Brin out, but it's hard cover; I didn't bother checking it out, I'll do that in about a year. I have enough reading material, it's not like I really need to tempt myself.
One last stop at the grocery, and then home. Alas, the convenient grocery was Safeway, which I prefer to avoid, since they've stopped stocking my milk in quarts (the size I use) and only stock half-gallons. Since it goes bad before I can finish a quart, buying a half-gallon offends me. I didn't get any of Scott's milk, though; he's drunk this stuff for a week before, so hopefully he'll forgive me. As is becoming habit, I filed a complaint about the milk idiocy. This time, someone said they'd actually talk to the person who stocked it. Yay.
Budget Gourmet has some new bowl meals that look good, calorie-wise and food-balance-wise, and aren't painfully expensive anyway. Shrimp stir fry sounded like a nice start tonight.
I'm home.
Update: Looking at my purse to clean it, I am reminded that last week several of my aspirin spilled, and apparently at some point, so did several of my orange tic-tacs. This looks amazingly silly. Now to get it out.
huh?
Admittedly, it isn't quite so hair-raising, to a dedicated "fear of heights" person, since they paved it... OTOH, it's easier to slide off of. (hedging)
(So much for not ending sentences with prepositions - just add a parens, to distract?)
Glad you liked the bread.
Love,
Me
Re: huh?
And I do the key thing, too. The Toyota came with a duplicate key cut into a credit card sized piece of plastic. Sits in my wallet quite comfortably. Only had to use it once. Glad you didn't get stuck.
One of the drawbacks of driving while wanting to take photos is you usually can't stop. Or it's too much of a hassle to stop, turn around, get back to the neat scene you saw, find a place to park, etc. I haven't been out highway 30 in several years, but I had the same fascination you did. Maybe we could share driving/picture taking some time.
Re: huh?
And that sounds like it might be a plan.
Actually, the best way to do that might be in a pair: drive out it, stopping where you can and the passenger snapping shots where you can't. When it comes time to turn around, switch off driver and passenger, and repeat the experience - but probably with fewer stops.
Except that damned garage would still be a bitch to get. It's on the left, and the best shot is straight in. The driver would have to slow down, it would have to be on the outbound leg (too close coming back, I would think!), and the passenger would need to be in the back seat (otherwise, most of the photo would be of the driver).
Hee. I'm debating where to wander with my camera today. Portland is tempting, somewhere, just because so much of it does have spaces where you can stop, unlike a country drive....