Rhonda Bracey: At Random

After meeting up with one of the people on the Lone Writers list this morning, I packed my bags, checked out of the hotel, got back into the car, and headed north out of Portland.

The weather was grey and dry for the I-5 section to Olympia and for part of the 101 beyond. But then the rain set in… right at the time the views started to appear! And it rained, and rained, and rained a little more. I went up the west side of the Hood Canal which I’m sure is very pretty in the sunshine, but is very grey and bleak and isolated in the rain. I looped around on Highway 104, then Highway 3 back to the Tacoma area, finding a place to stay in the charming Gig Harbor, which is where I am now.

So some 5-6 hours of driving and NOT ONE PICTURE of a view! Oh well, if tomorrow is clear, you’re meant to be able to see Mt Hood from here…

Update: The rain cleared a little late in the afternoon, so I took a walk on the main street of Gig Harbor, stopping off at the Tides Tavern for a meal of NW Coho Salmon (what a surprise!). So I did get a few photos.

Here are the photos of the trip so far. Some are without captions (coming…), but all those I’ve taken so far are there. Except the people ones, of course.  

Link to photos: http://community.webshots.com/user/sandgroper7

Postings specifically related to the WritersUA Conference are over at the CyberText Newsletter blog. More personal stuff is here, but they will be light on until I get on the road again, though I may add some food descriptions and photos 😉

Brunch today at Oliver’s where I had their delicious Eggs Benedict. The chef used a lot of lemon in the Hollandaise sauce which made it delightfully tangy. Those there were Char, Dave, Sue, Frank, Chris, and Chuck.

Dinner was at Porta Terra (?), where I had the wild salmon special. Those there were Sue, Dave, Frank, Rich, and Jack.

Because I can’t get fresh Pacific Northwest salmon where I live in Australia, I think I’ll be having it every meal I can! It is SO much better than the farmed Atlantic salmon we get in Australia.

After checking in to the conference hotel, unpacking, and settling in, we met up with Sue, Dave, Frank, and Bonnie in the foyer. Lots of hugs and shrieks all round! And miles of chatter as we walked to the nearby restaurant…

While some people in our little group see or chat to each other regularly, others don’t. For example, I hadn’t seen Bonnie since a conference in 2004, Frank since 2006, Sue and Dave since 2006 (though I email and chat with them fairly often).

On Sue and Dave’s recommendation, we went to “Oliver’s” which is REALLY close to the hotel. I had a Washington Apple cocktail (apple liqueur, whiskey, and cranberry juice) and Blackened Salmon with mashed potato and asparagus. The cocktail had almost no apple taste that I could discern, but was OK. And the salmon was a little overcooked and dry, which was a shame as Pacific Northwest Salmon is an absolute favourite of mine. I don’t like salmon half cooked, which is how some restaurants do it (i.e. still raw in the middle), but equally, overcooking something as delicate as salmon is also a no-no. The blackened spices were nice and hot, which suited me down to the ground.

Our poor waiter – Brody – has to be congratulated on serving such a rowdy and over the top mob! After starting to take our orders, I asked if we could have separate billing and he obliged graciously. Of course, separate billing gives him a bigger tip load at the end, but he deserved it.

It’s really interesting how a group of 6 people who haven’t seen each other in person for some weeks, months, or, in my case, years, morphs and changes the groupings over the course of the evening. When we were walking to and from the restaurant, at the restaurant itself, then to the local Rite-Aid and ATM, the pairings and conversations danced around like some strange bee ritual. I’m sure a sociologist or human behaviourist would be fascinated by the combinations, breakaways, joinings, etc.

Oh. My. God. Oregon is such a DANGEROUS place!! Seriously.

We left Brookings at 7:40am and headed north. At 7:44am there was a 5.9 earthquake off the coast of Oregon out from Port Orford which we went through less than an hour later. We didn’t feel anything as we were in the car (or out taking pictures of the very scenic views), but we heard it on the radio news. This is AFTER we’d passed through Gold Beach where we saw the “Entering Tsunami Zone” and “Tsunami Evacuation Route” signs for the first time. Obviously California is immune from tsunamis as there are no such signs there, but there are in Oregon.

Add to these the signs for elk and deer, and trucks. BTW, the elk here are very bright – they know which 2.5 mile section they’re allowed to cross! e.g., ‘ELK 2 1/2 miles”. Clever elk. But the trucks aren’t so bright – we saw many signs for ‘Slow Trucks’ 😉 And the wind is fickle too – we saw several signs for ‘Wind Gust’. Just one wind gust, presumably. We didn’t know if we got it or not. Later we saw a sign for ‘Abrupt edges’, when the ‘edge’ was about 2″ deep… this is after driving along Highway 101 where one section had no shoulders and about a 4 foot (or more) direct drop off. No signs there!

While the views were scenic, the rain wasn’t. It rained on and off all through the 6 to 7 hour trip, and once we were on the I-5 (we cut in from Florence to Eugene), there were some phenomenal downpours and purple skies. Fortunately, most of the traffic slowed to a crawl for the worst of them.

So, with the bright elk, the deer, the slow trucks, the earthquakes, and the potential tsunamis, along with the torrential rain, we’ve come to the conclusion that Oregon is indeed a dangerous place to visit!

Just kidding, Oregon’s actually very beautiful, and we made Portland by 4pm after stopping for a bite to eat in Reedsport late in the morning. I finally got to have clam chowder in a sourdough bun, with melted cheese on top. Terrible for the cholesterol, but it sure tasted good!

So now we’re settled in to the hotel for the next 4-5 days. Typically, the more you pay for a hotel room, the less you get. There’s no free internet here, or wireless – you pay $10 a day, or $45 for a week, plus $25 a day to park the car (which is cheaper than San Francisco, but still a hefty price). The conference registration is tomorrow afternoon, and then it starts.

LONG trip today. We left Santa Rosa, California around 9:30am this morning, heading up the 101. We turned in towards the coast at Cloverdale, heading for Mendocino, crossing the Mendocino County Line which was made famous in a song somewhere, sometime…

The drive to the coast was very narrow and winding, but also very beautiful. Lots of Californian Oaks with dripping mosses and lichens. The day was glorious. Mendocino was as pretty as ever, and as it was the first time Char had seen that part of the Californian coast, she was as taken with it as anyone who sees it for the first time.

We continued making our way up the coast (Highway 1 at this stage) until we rejoined Highway 101 at a tiny spot called Leggett, where we took the car through the drive-through tree. (photos to come…). Then we followed 101 to Eureka and beyond, until after some 9 hours of driving we arrived at Brookings, OR, where we grabbed a room for the night. In total I drove some 337 miles, and there’s another 333 to Portland tomorrow…
Some of the highlights of today’s trip:

• Magnificent redwoods
• Lush green forests
• Brilliant coastline
• Raging oceans
• Very winding roads
• Lots of rain in parts; beautiful sunshine at other times; cloudy for the rest; some fog in places
• Very cold wind!
• Expensive fuel ($3.79 average in northern California, but only $3.50 immediately over the border in Oregon)
• Smooth driving and handling in the Mazda6

Char and I walked down to where she was doing her training this morning. We grabbed a bite to eat at “Specialty’s” along the way, then she went on to the training group while I went and checked out the Wells Fargo Museum that Char had recommended, located – not surprisingly – in the Wells Fargo Bank. This museum is probably not something that most visitors to San Francisco know about. I found it interesting. And those coaches were really cool. You could actually sit in one upstairs. Surprisingly, they held 9 people INSIDE and another 9 on the top fully loaded (3 on the driver’s bench and 6 up on the very top).

I then went back to the hotel to upload some photos, do final email checks, and check out. Because the valet parking would’ve gone in to another 24 hour period (and at $43 a day I didn’t want that!), I asked them to get the car and I loaded it up (on the hotel staff’s advice), then put it in the parking garage up the street.

Off I went. I visited the Museum of Crafts and Folk Art (they had a textiles exhibition on), but for $5 it was a bit light on… Then I went to the SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) where I saw Klees, Mondrians, Dalis, Lichensteins, Warhols, Matisses, etc. So it was a bit of an arty farty day, not the normal stuff most people go to see in San Francisco.

But I had a problem. I realised that the hotel staff had really given me bad advice by telling me to put the luggage in the car and not leave it there in storage for collection late in the day. Silly me. I got all paranoid and stressed out that the luggage was at severe risk (memories of my sister and her husband having all their luggage stolen from the trunk of their car and having to deal with embassies etc. to get replacement passports).

So after leaving SFMOMA and having a quick bite to eat at a Californian Pizza Kitchen (HUGE appetizer!), I skedaddled back to the parking garage, checked that the luggage was all there (relief!), then drove on out of there.

But what to do for about 3 more hours, until Char finished her training course?

I ended up driving down to the Fisherman’s Wharf area and on to North Point as I remembered it being a nice place to just sit and relax, and vaguely remembered that there was open parking there. Yes! I found a 4 hour parking spot in view of where I sat. I read my book, glanced every so often at the car, and just chilled out looking over the bay watching the ships come in and go out. The day was nice and sunny, but the wind was pretty cold. Some very brave people were swimming….

Char called just before 5, so I headed back to the financial district in downtown San Francisco, picked her up and we hit the road north. The traffic was surprisingly good considering it was peak hour, and we were over the Golden Gate Bridge within 30 minutes.

We headed north as far as Santa Rosa, checked in to the local Holiday Inn Express, and had a nice meal at Applebees. Boy, have they got the marketing down right!! They do these ‘dessert shooters’ for $1.99 – they are just mini versions of desserts in a smallish glass cup. By being small and cheap, I’m sure they get MANY more people eating dessert than when they had those big slices of pie etc. I had the BEST Key Lime Pie ever – it was superbly tangy and with hardly any sweetness. Most Key Lime Pies I’ve had in the US have had a little tang and a LOT of sugar. Not this one. Highly recommmended.

The Holiday Inn Express had free wireless broadband, so at the moment Char and I are sitting on our respective beds working on our latops. Sad, really. And geeky. We even talked about playing Scrabulous online while we’re in the same room, as we don’t have a Scrabble board. What a couple of nerds!!

My new phrase of the day is “artificially heatened” (as in ‘artificially sweetened’), and it applies to all those houses and businesses in southern California that keep the heating turned on, even though the weather and temperature outside is magnificent.

No wonder the Americans are massive consumers of energy. Every private home I’ve stayed in so far has had the heating turned on, day in and day out. It’s springtime, people, and the daily temps are hovering around 75F. You don’t need the heating on. Open a window or door and ‘let the sunshine in’, and the breeze.

It’s springtime in the US, and that’s ‘skunk time’! I’ve seen a few dead in the road, but fortunately haven’t run over any.

If you’ve never smelt skunk, be aware that it’s highly pungent and almost impossible to get out if you get the smell on you – or under your car!