Soaking Up Oregon

 It’s been a bit since our last blog post and we’ve covered a lot of ground, by bus, by plane and on foot.  We’ve been on the road for almost 8 weeks and 2000 miles.   The bus seems to have hit its traveling stride- which is about 45 miles an hour whenever it can get away with it.  The veggie oil is flowing, the wheels are rolling smoothly down windy mountain roads, and we made it across the border into Canada without a hitch (Though, it’s usually the reentry into the States that is problematic).  Since our last blog entry we have: checked out the hot springs and lakes in the national forests of Oregon, visited with friends and biked the streets in and around Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, explored lakes, forests, and mountains in Olympic National Park and the Cascades, and flown to New Hampshire for a wedding and to visit with family and friends.   Below is the start of the blogging of recent adventures.  More soon!

Prairie Crane Lake - our free camping spot for a few nights.

Hot Springs:

                Oregon made up for its first impressions by providing many beautiful hot springs to relax and soak in after the stressful Boose breakdown. In total, we hit three springs. The first was Umpqua Hot Springs in the south, which was amazingly gorgeous with its seven lime-encased bright blue pools and plenty of good conversation. Unfortunately, it seemed to be a bit of a party scene for a few folks, as people tossed there cigarette butts about and carelessly brought glass beer bottles into the pools.

                After Umpqua, we explored Crater Lake before being chased off the volcano by a storm. Fortunately, as it began raining we found a beautiful free campsite in the National Forest on Crane Prairie Lake. As we arrived here, we were greeted by four or five bald eagles of all ages swooping over our heads. Betsy got some great pics. There were also large white cranes, osprey, ducks, and geese. The following day, the sun broke through and we rode a 25-mile circuit around the lake on back-country forest roads. It ended with a warm dinner in the bus back at the campsite and nice sunset to boot.

                Up the road a bit, Deschutes Brewery happened to be celebrating their 25^th Anniversary when we arrived for a tour in Bend, OR. We got to try a bunch of their brews and see their new facility. My favorite was their new 25^th Anniversary Black Butte Porter, which was an amazing consortium of malty chocolate, coffee and caramel flavors, without being  too sickly sweet. Yum! They were nice enough to let us stay in their warehouse parking lot for the night before we headed up to hot springs number two, Breitenbush. Rather, the “old” Breitenbush. We couldn’t get reservations at this Harbin-like resort, so we followed a path down to the old site, where the ruins of the old buildings still lie, with hot water flowing into their foundations.

Ahhhh!

                From Breitenbush we took a slight detour south to swim in Detroit Lake before heading to Bagby, or final Oregon hot spring.  Recently updated, Bagby is an immaculately maintained group of wooden tubs about a mile and a half from the road.  It offers  both the more common large wooden barrel tubs and novel long soaking basins carved out of the trunks of large trees.  The spring’s water is piping hot, but you can cool your freshly poured tub off by hauling buckets of cold water from nearby barrel. 

Portland, City of Many Friends:               

After leaving the hot springs and forests behind we came to Portland for our first city stop of the trip. We pulled into Try On Life Community Farm, where we visited with some old friends of Jori’s, Isabelle and Giles.  We spent most of our nights in Portland on Sauvie Island, just north of the city, staying with our friend Anne, who we originally met in Oakland several years ago, and her husband Travis.   The island is covered with small farms, including a wonderful lavender farm we visited one afternoon, and was great for biking around.    

We spent a good deal of our time in Portland reuniting with wonderful old friends who live in or near the city or happened to be passing through.  It was great to visit with everyone and hear about all of their adventures and pursuits over the last few years (or decade )and it made me thankful to have crossed paths with so many people who are doing interesting and positive things in the world.  In between catching up with people from various phases of our lives, we had a few great bike rides around different parts of the city, visited the famous Powell’s Bookstore (we made it out with only 3 new additions to our bus library), and sampled tasty offerings from a few of the many, many food trucks.

Portland turned out to be the sort of city we could see ourselves getting stuck in for a few years, but don’t worry families....We are still en route home.

From the Redwood Forests to the Oregon Waters

After the Lost Coast we spent several days exploring the beautiful rugged coastline and beaches along Rte. 
101, and occasionally searching for veggie oil. 

Score! Finally.

Big biodiesel operations have definitely gained popularity since we did our first WVO (Waste Vegetable Oil) powered road trip more than five years ago. Due to this competition, we were met with limited success in our first several attempts at sucking up the greasy stuff. Fortunately, in Crescent City our fortunes changed and we got permission to fill up with 50 gallons of free WVO fuel from a local restaurant. 
On our way up North we wandered though many groves of redwood trees as well as completing some serious biking and hiking day trips. 

Not a bear.

The easy part.

On one trip in particular in Redwood National Park, we started out biking a gravel road next to the ocean which soon turned into a serious mountain biking trail over roots, rocks and mud. We don’t have mountain bikes but we kept going anyways, carrying our bikes at times. The trail then smoothed out but gained 800 feet of altitude as we huffed and puffed over a steep mountain path. Part way up, we were greeted by a 200 pound bear lumbering ahead of us rather quickly. Quite a sight to see, especially since he was only about 20 feet away. She looked over at us, but fortunately wasn’t interested and kept heading over the mountain ahead of us. This was the second bear we've seen on our trip. We've also seen elk, deer, mink, seals, bunnies, banana slugs, bald eagles, osprey, and cute little gophers. It's a regular National Geographic special out here. 

Once we made it over the summit we were rewarded by a fun winding bike ride through redwoods down to the paved road. We then got to cool off as we soared downhill through these majestic trees in the dappled sunlight. It was one of those moments where it was hard to not feel overjoyed being alive.  (Check out the video of it below). We finished the day off by locking up our bikes and hiking back to our bus and campsite through a secluded and quiet old growth redwood forest. Many of the trees we hiked past were at least 1000 years old, some several centuries more. These massive beauties always fill me with awe and inner silence. I think the cathedrals we build intend to mimic the feeling you get in forests like these. The day ended  with a sunset over the ocean, a cold shower and some warm dinner cooked in the bus.

A few redwood groves, dirt roads and some chilly river swims later, we found ourselves crossing the border into Oregon. We didn’t make it much more than 35 miles into the state before the Boose decided it needed some TLC. It started squeeling, whining and clunking suddenly at a stop light. This happened at the perfect time though, because we were about to embark down a windy two lane road through the mountains with little to no cell coverage. But we were still on 101 and were able to call a diesel mechanic who highly advised us not to drive the bus, since our alternator had seized up (the clunking) and the serpentine belt was rubbing against it (the whining). Fourtunately, our AAA - RV had just kicked in a couple days prior (thanks Dad!) and we were able to get the Boose towed 85 miles to a mechanic in Coos Bay for free! 

Poor Boose.

We spent a night on the street in front on the mechanic, Kenny’s, shop, and all in all, the new alternator and repair was pretty cheap as far as bus fixes go. There were several honest and friendly people who helped us out in this ordeal, so we’ve come to really like Oregonians.

The bus is running smoothly now, and we're heading inland to explore the Oregon wilderness. Our first stop is Umpqua Hot Springs in the national forest to soak away the stress of a broken boose. Wish us luck!

We start out again.....by getting Lost



Jori driving across the Golden Gate Bridge

We finally managed to escape the gravitational pull of the Bay Area (Watch out, you go to visit a few months and somehow find that you are still there half a decade later!) and began our bus trip home to New Hampshire on the afternoon of June 11th. After packing and boxing and many sad farewells, we shed a few nostalgic tears as we made our way through San Francisco and over the Golden Gate Bridge to route 101 N and the start of our cross country adventure (Part II).

Our first destination: The Lost Coast for a few days of hiking with a couple of good friends.

We've had a few outdoor adventures with Pete and Mary in the past (most notably the infamous misadventure to Snow Creek Cabin a few winters ago, which is a story for another blog) and we quickly settled into that easy rhythm that you find with great exploring companions. We were off to tackle the several hours of rutted and bumpy dirt road driving required to deposit their car at one end of the trail and our bus at the other in preparation for our thru hike. You might not guess from looking at it, but the bus makes a decent off road vehicle as long as there are not low hanging branches and you take it slow.

The Lost Coast is a section of the California shore deemed too rugged to build the ocean-skirting Route 1 along, which has left it beautifully undeveloped and crowd free. We hiked a section of roughly 20 miles between Needle Point and Usal Campground, spending 3 nights on the trail with a “rest day” left for relaxation and exploration in the middle of a couple of longer day hikes. The trail took us up over the sides of tree covered mountains, through brushy meadows, into deep valleys, across bubbling streams, and onto sunny sandy beaches. The crashing of the blue Pacific was rarely far off.

When not hiking, we explored beach caves, sat in the warm sand, took some chilly dips in the rivers and ocean, sat around the campfire, and enjoyed the finest in campsite gastronomy (no prepackaged hiking food for this crew!). We managed to avoid the itchy unpleasantness of poison oak with some post-hike Technu and cold river plunges. Plus, we didn’t get lost when the trail occasionally disappeared into the bushes, but all of us had a few thorn bush scratches and nettle stings at the end of the trip as testaments to our wilderness adventures and overall badass-ness.

We ended our backpacking venture with beer and burgers on the drive back to our starting point and the little blue boose, where we said goodbye to Pete and Mary and the reality of the long adventure in front of us began to sink in!

Testing to see if we can still access our old blog. If you're subscribed, we'll start posting about our journey back home in the next few weeks. -B&J

Mariposa Grove / Willow House

So, in case you haven't figured it out yet, we're settling in the San Francisco Bay area for a while. We found a co-housing community focused on permaculture gardening called Mariposa Grove (In case you're wondering it is not a commune, just a place where people have torn down the fences between their yards and started gardening together. They have a small communal space for shared meals, meetings and socializing and many of them are in the process of buying their individual apartments as condos). We are parked in the driveway of the "Willow House" (there's a large willow in the backyard) and use their bathroom and kitchen, while continuing to use the bus as our bedroom. It's pretty warm here now, so its not a bad arrangement. Mariposa Grove is located in North Oakland (near Berkeley, where people don't get shot as much) and an easy 20 minute BART ride (the BART is like the "T" or "metro") under the bay to San Francisco.


Wine Country and San Francisco

Once back in good old Fairfield we were surprised to find that my Uncle Bob and Aunt Karen had turned into our own personal resident tour guides. Over the course of a few weeks we went to both Sonoma and Napa to taste at the finest vineyards, we toured great Fairfield establishments such as the Jelly-Belly and Annheiser-Busch factories (both providing free samples of their latest products). We checked out art galleries and sculptures, enjoyed fine dining (Bob's specialties of course), and were given a tour of Oakland, Berkeley, San Francisco and the Marin area. When they brought us up for a view of the bridge, Betsy and I both had the feeling of wow, we finally made it, we're in San Francisco, since this had been a major goal of the trip.





Karen and Bob have been the most wonderful, hospitable, and generous people. Letting us stay in their house for at least a month all together, and even offering up their condo for whenever we want to use it, including when Betsy's mom and sister come in to visit. Not only all that, but they are really fun people to hang out with too. We've already been back to visit since "moving out" and I'm sure we'll be back often. It's been fun to hang out with my cousin Chris and his girlfriend Katie as well. They took the ferry over to visit us in the city last weekend and we checked out Fisherman's Wharf and Haight Ashbury with them. It was alot of fun. Hopefully we'll be able to go out camping with them some time soon too, and try out Chris' new motor bike. . . if he lets us.

Whoo. So we're almost caught up with the blog. Next post, we'll tell you about the place we found to live out here and the job hunt. We need to download some pics first though. Until then, keep those comments coming. We love to read them