May 16, 2021: Comeback 2, Stranger Edition -

Two weeks ago, we took a celebratory Vaccination Vacation, looping through Western Oregon. We drove from Portland to Eugene, out to Florence and down to Gold Beach (on the Rogue), cross-country from Bandon through Coquille to Roseburg and up to Steamboat Inn (on the North Umpqua), back through Portland and then out to Manzanita. It was nine days in all, and a total blast.

Trip Report: everybody was genial, everybody was following the mask mandates or the COVID restrictions. The only pushback we encountered wasn’t so much pushback as dogged questioning, from an older woman in a lavender WISCONSIN sweatshirt, who wanted us to explain why we were wearing masks outside. As it turns out, she was about ten days ahead of the CDC. Well done, WISCONSIN.  

At the beginning of the trip, Eugene still had an inside dining ban, so we ate dinner outside. It rained. We had no table umbrella. The waiter brought us fleece blankets – not waterproof, but impressively absorbent! The next table was a three-family birthday party, wafting clouds of weed smoke towards us. Rick said, “We’re in EUGENE.”   I had to hand that to him.

Gold Beach was sunny and glorious, with agaves along the road, sea stacks and sea lions. We stopped for coffee in Langlois, which meant I got to ask locals to pronounce the town name. It’s called Langloys and Langloy in the feed store, Langless in the coffee shop, and - as Billy the coffee roaster said - “If you once had a year of French, you can say Lang-LWAH.” Billy was a keeper.

We were wondering about fire damage along the North Umpqua, after last summer’s devastation, and there were miles of burnt timber, which was being logged. The historic Steamboat Inn (Zane Grey! Major Mott! Other names you would know if you were a fly fishing person!) was saved. In a few places, new grass had come up bright green around the black trunks, which was visually dazzling, but my camera just couldn’t catch it. There was a new, very young chef at Steamboat, and he came out and told us his life story after our first dinner. He doesn’t like cities, which was lucky for us, since the McMenamin’s in Roseburg was offering a $1,000 signing bonus for cooks.

Manzanita was mostly open, and the wine bar with the huge outside fire pits was in full swing. Kelly’s Brighton Marina, the Tillamook Cheese Factory, and Camp 18 were also humming.  

We’ve stayed mostly in Portland during the pandemic, and I wasn’t sure if there would be urban-rural tension, political or pandemic-oriented, but there was none. In 800-plus miles, I saw five TRUMP WON signs, but three were on the same truck, so that’s three locations in total, and we didn’t meet those people. Nobody disparaged Portland. Nobody made a fuss, and everyone wore a mask indoors. Nobody was weird or unfriendly, and it was a pleasure to talk to the occasional stranger.

At one point, we were in an auto parts store, because Rick’s seat in his truck (which has a mere 250,000 miles on it), had turned into a crater, and I was looking for one of those thick seat cushions that cab drivers used to have. I said to the guy behind the counter, “It’s no fun being on a road trip with somebody who is in agony.”

He was not a “smile with your eyes” guy. I don’t think he was a “smile with your mouth guy,” even, though I couldn’t tell through his mask. He fixed me with a look. After a few beats, he said, without inflection, “My wife is six foot three. We drove across the country in a Honda Fit.” I felt we had bonded.