Darling & Wolf: Oregon

Crater Lake is the hollowed out caldera of a formerly 12000 foot mountain which blew its top around 7500 years ago. At nearly 2000 feet deep it is also one of America’s deepest lakes. The lake is replenished only by rain and snow and therefore is an unworldly deep blue in colour and clarity. As we traversed the rim trail we noted the surface was peppered with what looked like a yellow oil slick only to realise these were probably seeds from the surrounding forest. The lake was beautiful and we could only imagine the beauty on a cloudless night when surface must mirror the moon and the stars. Back in Oregon the temperature was heating up again which we were both happy about considering the dismal weather we had experienced in Montana and Wyoming. The drive back to Oregon had taken us across the salt flats outside SLC where land speed records are contested and broken. It wound us through deserts comprising nothing but hundreds of miles of sage brush before raising us into the mountains of Eastern Oregon and greeting us with pine and more bearable temperatures.

One of our most enjoyable visits on the way south was Ashland where we had hung out with some locals in what was then a sleepy little town. This time we were greeted with the crowds attending the summer Shakespeare festival as well as the students of the local university and their families attending that weekend’s graduation ceremonies. This meant the town was bumping and we would have to spend the nights sleeping parked on the streets for lack of available accommodation. The first evening we drove up Mount Ashland only for Emma to turn us around again as the roads turned to 4x4 only trails and we were forced to camp parked up in a quiet and salubrious neighbourhood – not the most inconspicuous place to park a camper van. Fortunately we weren’t bothered and the next day we hung around the town, wandering the shops and drinking coffee in the sunshine. By evening I had arranged to meet Steffan, a local whom I had met on our last visit. We parked on a quiet street 10 minutes from downtown and popped into the local microbrewery where we met Emma-Juliette, the barmaid who had served us on our last visit. A lovely girl she told us how she was leaving soon to hike the Pacific Crest Trail just as Cheryl Strayed had done in the recent hit book and film Wild. As time ticked on and I heard nothing back from Steffan I began to get annoyed as I had specifically arranged to meet him and was looking forward to talking to him again. Many beers later and we had transferred to the bar across the creek where Emma proceeded to drink far more than she could handle despite us both acknowledging she would make herself sick.

Angered further by Steffan’s no-show I too indulged a little heavily until a young bearded fellow plonked down next to me in the bar and introduced himself as Jimmy. Jimmy was in town for his sister’s graduation but had decided to seek some company in the local bars as his family slept. Jimmy was my type of guy. He told us about his work as a computer game journalist and his life in San Francisco whilst we traded stories from our journey. We drank far too much but greatly enjoyed each other’s company. I immediately collected him on Facebook so I could have another friend in San Francisco for future visits and Emma set about trying to organise a night out the following night. Retaining some degree of foresight I mentioned that we probably weren’t going to feel well the next day and, later that evening, as I helped a very unwell Emma back into our van, I knew we wouldn’t be out the next evening. Instead we spent the sunny morning and afternoon lying under a tree in a secluded park nursing violent hangovers. As Emma moaned her way through the day I replenished my fluids and played with a toy plane I spontaneously purchased from the supermarket. I think I was still drunk. Jimmy sent some lovely messages as I apologised for not being able to meet up (see Steffan, not so hard) and I am certain we have a good friend to meet up with when we return to California in the future.

Northbound we headed towards Portland to celebrate Emma’s birthday and our first anniversary which falls the day before. We had visited the city before but as we had enjoyed it so much last time we decided to visit again and splurge on a hotel (well, Travelodge) and a night out. After visiting the rose gardens and enjoying the 30 degree heat we dined in a fantastic little Vietnamese restaurant called Luc Lac in Downtown before wandering across the Pearl District to an indie cinema called Century21 and its neighbouring Belgian beer bar. There we watched an excellent film on Yves Saint Laurent in the company of a dozen outrageously dressed gay people in town for pride week before strolling south again through the sultry summer evening to our hotel for the night.

After the civilisation of Portland it was time to hit the country again and make our way north towards the Olympic peninsula in Washington. We stopped at an out of the way creek in the Tillamook forest in northern Oregon, where an icy river provided plenty of summer entertainment for kids jumping off the bridge. As we sunned ourselves we were visited by an interesting gentleman and his friends who greeted me with “ooh look, a land Jesus.” It’s difficult to be annoyed at that greeting so I smiled and said hello which encouraged him to note that my accent sounded like Russell Brand, even though it definitely doesn’t. The odd bloke’s mate then asked if I was from Bolton which was a bit weird considering that, although I am not from Bolton I am from near Bolton and I thought he must have picked up on a bit of my northern twang. It then transpired that Bolton was one of only two places he knew in England because this is where Amir Kahn the boxer was from. As I quizzed Odd Bloke on where he was from he proceeded to do that quintessential American thing of listing half a dozen cultures other than American. I find it so bizarre that some American’s insist that they are anything except American, like being American is terrible. Emma jumped on the bandwagon and insisted that he was definitely American, much to the guy’s awkward displeasure. He blabbered something about Italian but took it in good spirit. Before he swam away again he wished us well and warned us that some people around the area could be real “assholes.” It was a bit of a strange warning but one which would ring spookily true later that night.

Down the road from the creek were a number of dispersed campsites, each one neatly laid out complete with fire grid. As we parked up in one of these we were the only people apart from the odd truck which trundled down the gravel road. We settled down to sleep and I was thinking to myself what a lovely setup this was for the state to provide for free to visitors. We were awoken at midnight to the sound of trucks spinning doughnuts next to our van and their occupants whooping and screaming. As they parked up at the campsite next to us I could hear them shouting and laughing, talking about vodka and beer and getting a fire going. I lay there wondering what to do but decided that as long as they left us alone they would drink themselves unconscious and we could put up with a few hours of party noise. Eventually we drifted off again before being woken with a start to the sound of shouting and screaming – this time without the jovialness of their arrival. From what I could make out there were around three guys and a girl and one of the guys was taking exception to something one of the other guys had said or done to his sister – the girl. When you hear words like “I WILL FUCK YOU UP” shouted at the top of a man’s lungs you begin to thing sensibly about your own position in the conflict, even as a benign observer. When those words are followed by “holy shit dude, have you got a gun?” – then you take action. I got Emma out of bed and dressed quickly before jumping in the cab and putting the keys in the ignition. The problem with our van is that it takes a few minutes to warm up the engine which meant that as soon as I started the motor we would attract attention but be sitting ducks. We took a deep breath and I turned the key. The engine started and I hit the lights on. I took a chance and shifted into drive but as soon as I did the engine cut out. I looked into my rear mirror and could see torch lights swinging in our direction, a cold sweat breaking over my body. I fired the engine up again and again it cut out. Twice more I tried but twice more it wouldn’t bite. Emma was shouting at me to pump the gas but I knew that if it wasn’t warm it wouldn’t bite. Finally I started it again and instead of holding my foot on the break whilst I shifted into drive I just floored the pedal and moved the shift lever to go. The van shot off and we spun our own doughnut out of the lot. We bombed it along the dirt track for 3 miles back to a pay campsite where we tucked into a quiet spot in the corner, all the time I looked back in the mirror waiting to see headlights that never appeared. I couldn’t help but wonder as I calmed my nerves and settled down to sleep at 2AM that the voices we heard could very well have been the people who swam up to meet us earlier. Either way the odd ball was right – some people in Oregon can be assholes.