Day 12: Crossing Washington and Oregon

After a comfortable night’s sleep, I awoke in Seattle cold. The window I’d left open instead of using air conditioning (don’t get me started on how much I loathe A/C from an environmental and health perspective) allowed the cool morning air from Seattle and the northern US to creep inside and surround my bed. I reached for the remote and turned on the local news channel to see how the traffic was (given yesterday’s long crawl) and found heavy traffic on all my outbound routes. So I decided to take it easy and get up gradually. For those who wonder, yes the days are taking their toll slightly – moreso because of traffic than anything else. When I started on this journey I never foresaw myself getting sick of driving at any point, and so far I haven’t. But I’m qualified to say this much at least; the traffic caused by phantom jams, selfish and inconsiderate truck drivers and road construction are a real nuisance. Despite my best efforts to keep my speed consistent and within the boundaries of acceptable norms, I watch the ETA on the GPS fall by huge margins only to be racked up again by contra-flow lanes or stop-go pilot crossings.

I guess I should say that before I left my hotel room in Vancouver, I picked up a bottle of coke I’d bought with dinner the evening before, threw it in my shoulder bag and headed to the car. There, I decided to take out the coke and put it in the ice box, only to realise that the cap was loose and Coca Cola was leaking down the inside of my bag, and into my lens and laptop. This took about 20 minutes to rectify and left me feeling rather annoyed with myself to say the least. When I got to the hotel in Seattle that evening, I set to work washing both the MacBook Air’s soft case and hard satin shell and also clean the inside of the shoulder bag. Suffice it is to say, this morning I thought better and just put the bottle of Dasani water into the paper bag and not the notebook bag (I bought a case in Jackson hole and have been rifling through it since). I’d had a plan then to go to the car and dump my gear and head to the ice machine to replenish the cooler for the day. But as I lifted the paper bag into the trunk, water streamed from the bottom – yeah, it happened again. But this was a paper bag with just a tshirt for laundry in it right? Wrong, it also had the remains of what was in the shoulder bag from the morning before. Soaked. Another clean up and another lost 20 minutes and more frustration and annoyance. After packing the ice box at this point I just wanted to get going. Turn the key and the Fusion groaned from its slumber with a tone warning me of an impending famine of fuel. Great – the most expensive state so far for fuel and it wants more.

After meeting one of the nicest shop attendants at the nearby Chevron who was clearly a veteran with his “roger 10-4” to my “40 bucks on six”, I hit the road close to 9am. No sooner was I on the freeway however but I hit traffic – this time an accident that seemed rather impossible as the second party was nowhere to be seen. These ‘fender benders’ are common and I’ve seen a few so far but there are signs everywhere to push the vehicles to the curb and deal with it from there – here, the female driver decided the centre lane of a 3-lane highway was more than an adequate place to leave her huge SUV and the rest of us just had to navigate around that. Lovely.

So the plan today was to get as close to California as possible. Now if you check your maps guys and gals, you’ll know that’s quite a feat. Basically Seattle is at the northern tip of Washington state and California is to the south of Oregon – another giant ass state. I also wanted to see Portland, Oregon’s largest city. I’m not sure why though and I’ve never been able to figure it out. After crossing the whole of Washington state and missing a trip to see the Capitol building in Olympia, I crossed the bridge over the Columbia River (which I’d crossed the two days before coming from Spokane) into Oregon – the second of the US states who don’t have a sales tax (Montana being the other one, which I just drove through three days earlier). As anyone who’s visited the US before knows, sales tax is a complete nuisance. It’s like VAT except unlike in Ireland where it’s a stealth tax, here it’s added at the register and varies from state to state. Now, unlike Ireland, it’s generally from 4-10% not the 23% we have back home. There’s a number of reasons why they do it but I think the biggest reason is that the price displayed is the price the item is, and then because of ‘government’ you must pay a tax on that. The reality is that in most cases the product is already quite expensive and the tax is marginal – it’s something endemic in US culture – a general malaise about government and taxes and them being a tithe on freedom.

So once you cross the Columbia River you’re in Oregon and almost immediately you’re in Portland city. I headed into town and parked in the first structure I could find close to what the GPS considered the centre of the city. I spent about 3 hours or so just walking around the city. It’s a difficult city to describe as it lacks the buzz of other cities I’ve been to and didn’t appear to have a lot of tourists (save for the ubiquitous Japanese tourists who frequent anywhere I go – maybe I smell good!). The city is clean, modern and also has a good deal of older buildings still proudly standing resplendent in their modern employment. Portland as the name suggests is a heavy industry port city but also has a softer side with lots of cafes and jewellery stores.   They have a huge Macy’s and when I went in to ‘borrow’ some fragrance, I noted a distinct lack of customers. I know this was 2pm on a Tuesday afternoon but still, Brown Thomas in Galway is thronged from morning to night full of women with nothing better to do but spend spend spend (dirty dig!). The rest of the city is financial in nature with heavy Wells Fargo presences as well as other banks. Overall I liked it. It’s a nice city to be in and doesn’t seem in any way threatening. It also doesn’t (from what I saw) seem to have much of a vagrant population either – which is nice.

Driving out of the city I opted to follow a commuter route to Oregon City to the south of Portland just to avoid the interstate highway for a bit and see how commuters live – and I liked what I saw. Pretty tree-lined highways and discreetly hidden railway lines. Oregon City is a nice sleepy suburb with all the stores you’d expect. I stopped into a Chevron to get gas though, and things took a decidedly odd turn. At this stage I’ve figured out that I can use my Visa Debit card at about 90% of Chevron and Conoco gas pumps so I can avoid the awkward walking in with my big Irish head on me saying I want gas  (you have to pre-pay for gas here 100% of the time – no trust whatsoever!). So as usual I hop out and swipe the card, select the grade and start to pump – ONLY TO BE ROARED AT FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FORECOURT. This young guy was literally shouting at me asking me what I was doing. I shouted back that I was getting some gas and he ran across the open lane and said I couldn’t do that, but that he had to do it – so I being my Irish self said that there was no need, I was doing it and he could go back about his business. I was clarified. Apparently in Oregon (and New Jersey too I’m told), you CANNOT categorically self-serve your own gas. An older attendant strolled by and said “Oh he’s from Ohio!” and I corrected him that it was a rental and in fact I was from Ireland and asked the simple question “why?”. They didn’t have an answer so I just remarked about how polite it all was and got the dig in that it was a bit lazy. They started fishing for tips then (all this time I’m leaning against the trunk as the young guy pumps gas and the older guy shoots the breeze with me amid glares of “out-of-towner” on the faces of the Oregon residents waiting for service) as they asked if they’d like my windscreen cleaned. I answered in the negative and said I’d do it myself, but they insisted I too had to let them do it – at this stage I just called a halt to it and asked they both leave the $40 of gas in the car at that and I’d go on my way.

Oregon State Hospital Museum

After all that hub-ub, I headed south on I-5 and decided to go as far south as possible. Passing by a sign to visit the State Capitol I left the highway in Salem, Oregon to visit what has so far been the most unusual State Capitol building. I also passed one of the prettiest hospitals I’ve ever seen and also where all the yellow school busses sleep (enough of them for the entire state, though I guess it was just for Salem). Turning on my heels I left Salem and continue to California. Passing Roseburg and Grants Pass, I decided in the end that Medford was as much as I could do that day – which is a lot considering how close to the Californian border I am right now. I checked into the Super8 motel after being accosted by the receptionists “puppy” (or what I call “dog”) and after I made my initials beside the section that said there were no pets going to be in the room (yeah, I thought the same too!) I headed to bed – exhausted. Tomorrow, California (cue the music!)