What would be a road trip to Oregon without the famous Oregon coast and the
Astoria bridge? So we headed out of Portland on the Washington side of the Columbia river.
The weather was reasonably pleasant, which made it the first time for me that I
actually could see the Astoria bridge, made famous by movie classics such as
"Short Circuit" or
"The Goonies". The bridge is known around the globe at least as well as the Eiffel Tower. Ok,
maybe not but hey, Short Circuit was funny! Other
acclaimed blockbusters, such as "Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles" and "Free
Willy" were shot at this location, too. Being the backdrop to such
works of art it was only right to use the bridge as suitable background for Pot
#2, as for him it was the first trip to Oregon.
Since
we've been to the Oregon coast before we didn't really stop at every tourist
point but rather enjoyed the drive and view. We stopped at the occasional beach,
most notably the "till I cum beach", looked at some crooked chimneys
standing in the middle of nowhere,
and enjoyed the low tide and the resulting tide pools around sunset.
Once it got dark we headed inland to Eugene. We listened to Essan's book on tape, "The Bad Place" by Dean Koontz, which was kinda entertaining in a funny way. A notable mention should be made to the fact that we got flashed only once that night, compared to bazillion times only two years ago on the same road; I guess people are getting more used to Xenon headlights =)
In Eugene we found probably the last bed in town in a Motel 6, where I walked up to the counter, where a customer just called to cancel his reservation. The whole town was overbooked due to some athletic meet and it was sheer luck that we got a bed.
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Well, the last day, June 23, was more or less spent driving south on I-5 from Eugene all the way home, listening to the remaining parts of the book (and you thought you've hear weird stuff before!). We made it home, did some serious laundry, and ... well, went back to work =)
It was a very wonderful trip with quite some unique experiences - snow in June, four bears, an almost friendly customs officer, and no entry stamp in the passport to name a few... plus a hard drive full of pictures and lots of happy memories!
The End