When our boat docked at the small town of Kalama (population just under 3,000) I had a strange sense of deja vu. That three-story tile-roofed hotel facing the beach, with verandas wrapping around all three stories – hadn’t I seen it before?
It turned out I had – years earlier, on a honeymoon trip to Lahaina, and then again on an anniversary return trip to the same place. Nestled on the beach side of the railroad track which separates the town of Kalama from the marina, beach, and boat dock is a replica of the old Pioneer Inn in Lahaina, built from the same blueprints. This recreation is especially poignant as the original Pioneer Inn had been demolished less than two months earlier by the wildfire which destroyed most of historic Lahaina in August 2023.
The Oregon version has an extra level, and the palm trees are replaced by a trio of historic totem poles, but the exterior and interior are meticulously crafted to evoke the historic Pioneer Inn. Inside, the bar has a tiki theme, the walls are pine-paneled , a bark canoe hangs from the ceiling and the furniture is vintage.
But the Mcmenamins empire includes more than a single nostalgic lodge. At this establishment, instead of mai tais, the customer is offered beer from the Mcmenamins’ brewery and hard cider from the Mcmenamins- orchards. The brewery is conveniently located right across from the gift shop, so you can taste and buy onsite within a few steps.
Mcmenamins also owns a number of entertainment venues across the states of Washington and Oregon, and the pine-paneled walls are decorated with posters of noted concerts.
There is a claim, enshrined in oil paintings though not in photos, that Elvis Presley himself stayed, not at the Lodge, but nearby in Kalama on his way to film a movie in Seattle, and it is quite true that Marlon Brando was a frequent visitor to his son Christian’s home in Kalama. The oil painting of the two icons fishing together, however, is purely imaginary, as their visits were two decades apart.
Our boat goes through our first lock – 80 feet or more down from one level of the Snake to the next. We move into the lock; a bridge is before us, an open space behind. Then a wall seems to rise from beneath the river behind us as the water level in the lock is let out and we begin to descend. The walls rise, only two feet from the boat on either side. The bridge before us is now far above, with a large and getting ever higher curving wall ahead. We descend and descend. The black wall behind us is holding back the river, though it appears there are leaks. The black wall ahead is now 80 feet high. On the side are dripping black concrete blocks a yard high piled up and up. Finally we stop descending. We wait. There is a loud shudder, and a crack appears in the wall ahead. Sunlight, and color, a view of hills and sparkling water. The crack opens wider – the feeling is like the scene in “The Wizard of Oz” where Dorothy steps out of the sepia-toned world of Kansas into a technicolor Oz. The engines throb and we move forward into the light and space.
We go through a second lock at night – it is still magical. There is only black and white, the white boat, the black night, the gleaming gate, the sparkling water.
Later we explored off the boat at the Bonneville Dam, whose Visitor Center is a self-congratulatory celebration of the transformation of the wild rolling Columbia river into “a damn fine machine” for generating hydropower, in the words of an industry lobbyist.*
We saw another aspect of the locks and dams at the fish hatchery, where tiny salmon fry are nurtured until they are large enough to release downstream from the dams and make their way to the sea, and at the fish ladder, where returning salmon are given a chance to circumvent the dam in a series of cascades. These makeshift replacements of natural features are an attempt to appease the fishermen and native peoples whose lives depend on the salmon run. In another section of the hatchery, a bit off the self-guided tour, the sight of frustrated salmon leaping in vain against a current backed by a three-foot fence made me sad. In the hatchery these fish are artificially milked for their semen or eggs before dying, so the salmon fry can be created. The salmon would die anyway after spawning, but as they frantically jumped over and over against the impassable barrier, theyseemed to know they are supposed to get further to their spawning grounds than a hatchery.
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*Quoted from Blaine Harden’s A River Lost; the Life and Death of the Columbia
Instead of turning north at the Granby junction off I-70, DM suggested that we continue another five miles and have our lunch in Georgetown, a discovery she and a friend had made in exploring the west side of the Colorado Rockies.
Georgetown is a town preserved in the 1889’s, except it has been somewhat cute-sified with colorful paint a la San Francisco’s Painted Ladies. What used to be the bank is now painted a trendy purple and contains an assortment of “antiques”, “local crafts” (some made in China) and kitsch shops selling Xmas ornaments, Colorado souvenirs, “Indian” turquoise and silver jewelry, etc. The town includes several attractive restaurants; we ate at “The Happy Cooker” – a cottage with a cheerful patio outside decorated with oddments, friendly bustling service, and ample servings of French fries to go with wraps and salads. Wandering around as we waited for our table to be cleared I even found a shop with a fine assortment of Georgetown postcards – increasingly a rarity in the days of email and Instagram.
There is also a railroad running just outside of town, a relic of the old mining days. We did not visit the railroad, being on a schedule, but we heard a very authentic-sounding whistle, and there were postcards. (If you go, check out the railroad and report back!)
After lunch we strolled the other side of the street and stopped in at the charming little library beautifully laid out with the more modern children’s wing tucked away behind so as not to disturb the overall quaintness.
A perfect way to break a trip from Denver or Boulder to the western slope!
We are ready for the parting of our ways: M and the trailer will return to Davis, where she will dive headfirst into the maelstrom of detail involved with selling a house and buying another, while I will catch a Capital Corridor train at Fairfield and spend a relaxing two hours reading, writing, admiring the scenery, and feeling sorry for the people in the homeless encampments along the tracks.
First wrinkle: There are now TWO Amtrak stations in Fairfield. Our faithful GPS unerringly directs us to the new one, Fairfield – Vacaville. I have been to the Fairfield station before it was re-labeled Suisun -Fairfield, and I am pretty sure this adobe “Transit Center” in the middle of a giant parking lot next to nothing at all is not it.
Moments of panic –I check my ticket and realize the error. Is this really a train stop? Where are the tracks? Will my ticket be good starting at a different station. Should we head off for the other station? Cooler heads prevail; I spot an underpass which leads toward the tracks, we trundle through and there are a couple of benches and a sign saying that the train I am scheduled to travel on will arrive in 15 minutes, and, most reassuringly, another passenger waiting.
I hug M, “Wonderful trip!” and watch her pull out of the parking lot. The train arrives as advertised, and the conductor doesn’t get around to our car to check my ticket until after we have arrived at and left Suisun Fairfield. My only regret is the lack of a snack machine at the new station – I had counted on a candy bar to get me through to my Great America stop. Rummaging through my tote bag, I find a forgotten granola bar. All is well.
Until we get to Richmond. We stop. And stay. An unintelligible announcement is made. I get out and find a conductor in the next car. “There’s damage to the tracks ahead. We don’t know how long the delay will be. Could be 45 minutes. Could be two hours.”
I go back to my car, inform my fellow passengers, and we stare disconsolately out the window – at the sign that says “Take underpass for BART”. The young woman across from me is distraught. “I’ve GOT to get to the Oakland Airport for a flight! I allowed an extra hour but…”
I look at the sign. “There’s a BART stop at the Oakland Airport”, I tell her. There is also a new BART station in Milpitas, not so much further from home than the Great America station. We gather our bags and lead a parade of passengers to the BART station.
To our surprise and pleasure, a BART official is handy who tells us “We have an arrangement with Amtrak. Just go through that turnstile there – no charge.” A BART train arrives a few minutes later, I phone my Personal Travel Agent at home, he checks the route to the new station, and I settle down to read, write, admire the scenery, and feel sorry for the people in the homeless encampments along the tracks.
Coda: The next day I get a standard email from Amtrak asking about my trip. I grouse about the lack of signage at the new station and most particularly about the delay and poor communication about it. The next day I receive another email from Amtrak giving me a voucher good for the value of my trip from Fairfield –Suisun to Great America. They are trying!
For the next two days we amble our way down the Left Coast, hugging the coastline, stopping once in a while to admire the sweeping surfline, the white sand dunes, the rock stacks, the redwoods. We spend a night near Florence at Honeyman State Park, one of the largest campgrounds in Oregon, we are told, but still offering fairly secluded hookups for our trailer and, I suppose, a hundred others.
We stop at Bandon to visit our nephew J, who is living a bachelor life in a fixer -upper in the charming seaside town of Bandon. When he has finished the re-hab, he will rent the cottage out as an AirB&B. On the day we visit it is still missing a fence, kitchen counters and appliances, but he assures us that his first renter will find it habitable when he arrives the following week. We can see what a nice seaside pied a terre it isgoing to be – but not quite yet.
J breaks for lunch and takes us for seafood sandwiches at Tony’s Crab Shack, and gives us a brief tour of Bandon’s interesting spots. That orange globe in front of the house facing the ocean? It’s a tsunami escape pod.
We continue down the coast, crossing into California, where the highway swings inland to introduce us to the towering trees of the Redwood Empire. More on this next week!
Off to Cowlitz Falls County Park. This park is maintained on behalf of the public by the Lewis County Public Utilities District. There are actually no falls here, as the river has been dammed for hydroelectric power, and the only access to the river, the boat ramp, was destroyed in a flood and is being repaired. Aside from the misleading name, this is a lovely quiet place with lot of shade, lots of woodsy trails between sites and restrooms, a sunny meadow with a volleyball net, a horseshoe pit (equipment for both available from the ranger) and a playground.
We set up in adjoining camp spaces, our tiny teardrop next to C&C’s Trailer Mahal. Instant conversation starters with folks strolling through the camp.
Then, just to make sure we meet everyone, we walk the dog, an adorable little white mop of a thing. Nothing like a cute dog to make instant friends along the trail.
The next morning we are just finishing a tremendous breakfast of eggs, bacon, toast (Thanks to C&C’s full kitchen) when our nephew P arrives with his wife T and five lively children.
Fortunately Cowlitz [no]Falls has lots of distractions to offer. A walk to the river. Fallen trees to climb. Back at the camp, Grandma C has provided plenty of hot dogs, sodas, chips, and watermelon, while Auntie M has a box of trailer games. Five-year-old G is surprisingly deft at removing blocks from the Zenga tower!
I’d forgotten how exhausting family gatherings can be for us empty nesters. M and I tumble into our trailer while C&C are still admiring the moon over a last glass of wine.
After the heat of our second day, the cool of the next morning at Schroeder County Park finds me up early. I find a small hotel soap cake in my dop kit and take a shower, even washing my hair with the soap. Feels wonderful. M wakes, sees my wet hair, and follows my example. Breakfast again of strawberries, blueberries, granola, yogurt. We both feel great. What could be nicer, with the river sparkling, the air fresh, and the heat wave broken!
Locked, loaded, and leaving by 10 , we are proud of the improvement in our getaway time. We think we have an easy 3.5 hour drive up to our brother’s house straight up I-5 in Washington state, so we are open to a scenic detour. M calls friend in Corvallis to invite them to meet us in Corvallis’s central park for lunch – M is eager to show her old haunts, and the detour would be pretty. but the friends are on their way from Corvallis down to Winters along with another couple that M knows well, and are on I-5 headed the other way. We rendezvous at a Wendy’s in Eugene and the five friends are soon in full catchup mode, with lots of exclaiming, explaining, and suggesting. I feel like a hat rack, but it’s ok. I use the loo.
On our way again. We stop for lunch at another rest stop. We stop for gas and check the GPS. Hmmm. What was a 3.5 hour drive at 10 AM is now, at 2, after driving 2 hours all told, still a 3.5 hour drive. What had been a clear blue shot through Portland is now blood red.
It takes us two hours to get through Portland. We are delayed a bit by M’s fear of the electric connection coming loose again, so we pull off on Swan Island, home of rail yards, lovely homes, and lot of homeless encampments. Vagrancy and loitering used to be crimes, but certainly there should be a better alternative to jail time than these ugly shambles.
A homeless campsite on Swan Island’s Lindbergh’s Beach. (KATU)
Once we clear the Columbia it’s an easy half-hour to Kid Brother’s house. We get a warm welcome, a bedroom for each of us and a tour of the latest quilts, wall hangings, glitter dot pix, and other crafty things which KB’s wife has put together since our last visit. .the fully de-frosted salmon in our cooler provides the centerpiece for a fine meal, with side dishes from KBW’s well-stocked fridge, and wine from KB’s well-stocked cellar.
KB plans to retire in March of 2023, and he and WBW are planning some long long trips in their long long trailer. There are sights to see north of the border, relatives to visit in Idaho and Montana and Texas and California. When vagrancy comes packaged in a 30-foot trailer, it becomes a lot more glamourous.
Up by eight in our RV Resort near Castle Crags, hoping to beat the heat on a hike up to a waterfall and scenic viewing platform touted as not to be missed on the Camp brochure. Turns out the trailhead is up the highway a bit, so we lock and load, out by 10:30. We locate the trailhead, but the parking lot is already full of earlier birds than us, and there is no easy spot for the trailer, so we forego, and head up I-5 for Oregon
We stop in Ashland and lunch with M’s college roommate and her partner. Allison is a retired lawyer and her partner Madge is a retired CPA. They live in a craftsman bungalow remodeled tastefully and surrounded by a lush garden of fruit and flowers and art objects, a dream of retirement come true. The conversation is focused on the artistic life of Ashland, the lively drama scene and how it accommodated to the pandemic, and the advantages of bungalow life vs condo life.
Three of us decide to walk to Hither, a cute-as-can-be brunch/lunch spot about a 10 block walk away – the dog needs exercise and so do we. It is HOT. The trip there is downhill, and we are in no hurry. I stop often to admire some interesting old house or flowers or pretty art thingy, but by the time we get to Hither’s shady outdoor patio we are ready for iced tea/beer/iced coffee. They are out of avocado toast, but herbed scrambled eggs are delicious.
The walk back is even hotter. And more uphill. We pick the shadier sides of the street, and don’t stop as often. M and I are sweltering by the time we get back to the house. Maybe Ashland is not the perfect retirement paradise after all. We worry about the next few days, with 100 degree temps also predicted for our destination.
Brief goodbye’s and on our way again in our air-conditioned cocoon, which we now appreciate even more. We stop for gas. Still hot. We look for the closest Baskin-Robbins. Tucked around a corner we find it after cruising the hot asphalt parking lot from one end to the other. Thank goodness for the walking option on GPS! Mint chocolate chip, very berry strawberry, and triple mango swirl do a lot for our attitudes.
And much cooler weather as we arrive at familiar-from-last-trip Schroeder County Park west of Grant’s Pass does even more. We set up painlessly, put our camp chairs at the edge of a rise which wafts a cool breeze directly up from the river, and relax. Later we go down to the river and wade again, waving at rafters and kayakers as they pass. Then we bring out wine, hummus, cheese, crackers, and veggies to dip, and by the time we have nearly finished the wine we realize we don’t really need to cook dinner. Bed and books look good.
My sister promised me two trips in her tiny teardrop trailer as Christmas/birthday presents. For our second expedition with her favorite toy, we decided to do a variation on an earlier trip, going north to visit our brother in Washington state, but on our way we also planned to visit old friends up and down I-5 and US-101.
We had planned to leave early in order to beat the heat on I-5, but domestic circumstances (which I resolve NOT to talk about in this series) delayed our departure until nearly 11:30AM. We had loaded the trailer’s refrigerator with a fresh-caught frozen salmon courtesy of M’s neighbor, a partially-pre-cooked hamburger casserole courtesy of my Personal Travel Agent, some gourmet cheese, assorted fruit, hummus, and enough wine to keep us merry as we camped our way up the valley.
M drives for the first two hours, straight up I-55 aiming at Mt. Shasta. We stop for lunch at a rest stop, where our little cocoon is dwarfed by the semis also taking their breaks in the lot marked for “Trailers and RVs”. The rest stop offers shade and a bit of a breeze, and duly fortified we proceed to our first camp spot, Railway Park Resort at Dunsmuir. We pull into the registration office past box cars and cabooses that have been re-purposed as lodge rooms for families, a gift shop, and a history museum. A Dining Car is now a restaurant. But we have our own traveling accomodation, and continue further up the road to our RV site in a different area.
It is HOT, but in the shade bearable. We see other campers returning from a swimming pool located back in the railroad car section, but it seems like too much trouble to change clothes and hike over to share a pool with a bunch of teenagers and tots. Instead, we explore and discover a creek near our site ideal for wading in. Oh bliss!
Returning with wet feet to our camp, we discover that the electrical connection to the trailer has come unplugged. We can’t know how long we have been driving without blinkers or brake lights, but long enough so that the salmon is completely thawed. We cross our fingers against botulism and hope for the best. Our first night meal is the partially pre-cooked casserole layered with noodles and cheese in a frying pan, super easy to fix, and we have some (warm) red wine to wash it down and some chocolate covered cranberries for dessert.
One dish dinner! Our camping standard.
M’s sleeping bag has a velcro-fastened interior lining, so we could pull off the warm layer and sleep under the lightweight sheet. Despite the heat of the day, the trailer cools fast with side windows and a ceiling vent open. We have no trouble falling asleep.
Having nothing scheduled, we sleep until 6:30, when we both wake with the same need, scrambling for our camp shoes so we can hustle off to the nearby loo. If we were at home, we would have stayed upright, made coffee, and begun the day. But in camp, it seems still too dark to do anything serious, so M curls up for an additional doze, while I pull out my iPad to churn out another 1500 words of my latest imaginary adventure.
After a lovely camp breakfast of Raisin Bran, blueberries, raspberries and oranges, washed down with French pressed coffee, and milk, I do the washing up while M puts together a portable lunch in preparation for our hike to Buzzard’s Roost. We intend to leave by 10, but what with one thing and another it’s 11:15 by the time we set our feet on the path toward the Buzzard’s Roost trailhead.
It’s a lovely walk under the Highway One overpass, up through stands of redwoods terribly scorched by the Basin Complex fire of 2008, but still bravely pushing out green shoots of new growth. Then we’re in ceanothus and scrub oak country, then manzanita, and finally barren red rock with a vantage point that looks over to Mount Manuel landward and to the brilliant blue Pacific to seaward. We spread our unneeded extra layers of shirts over the red dirt and set out a lavish lunch of hard-boiled eggs, carrots, hummus, crackers, string cheese, grapes, apples, and prunes – all finger food, no grease. We stay looking out to sea until our spines begin to protest against sitting unsupported on the hard ground, then round up the eggshells and cheese wrappers with other leftovers and set off on the return loop.
One of my perennial games on a hike is to count how many different kinds of wildflowers Ican spot. In Edgewood Park near where I live, I have counted as many as forty in the spring, due to the many different micro-biomes there. On this day at Big Sur we tally twenty one, including columbine, native iris, wild strawberry, dandelion, buttercup, trillium, and others of which I do not know the names. Counting varieties is a great way of forcing yourself to be on the lookout and to really notice what is around you.
Our plan after returning to our campsite had been to hop in the car, take care of a couple of small purchases at the general store down the road, and then to drive down to Pfeiffer Beach. But after our purchases M turns to me and asks “Do you mind if we don’t go to the beach? I just want to veg.”
Instead we drive to the end of the road on the side of the river opposite our campground, just to see what is there. We watch a family playing softball on the weedy field for a while, and I want to check out the “seasonal footbridge” that the map shows opposite our campground (See the dotted line crossing the river at the end of Day Use Lot 4 on the above map?) M drops me off at the end of Parking lot 4 and drives away, while I follow the trail from the sign that says “Footbridge.”
Guess what. No footbridge. Must not be the season yet. I debate wading across the shallowest portion of the Big Sur River as it ripples past where the bridge should have been. I’m wearing my water shoes, and my cargo pants with the roll up option, and the water looks shallow. On the other hand, the bottom of the river is paved with rounded stones of varied sizes which could be very unstable and slippery, the water is so clear that it’s hard to gauge how deep it really is, and getting up the steep bank on the opposite side looks chancy. So I opt for the half-mile walk around to the far bridge at the end of the campground. (It would have been shorter, but the most direct route was “authorized vehicles only,” and a ranger directed me in a friendly but definitive way to the trail around, not through.)
By the time I make it to our campsite, M has gotten worried and set out in search of me. By the time we reunite the sun is definitely over the yardarm. She lights the portable campfire, I run cold water from the camp faucet over my tired feet, and we settle to reading, phoning, and munching the last of the crackers and hummus.
Dinner is experimental but turns out well. A vegetable medley cooked in Frying Pan #1, sliced parboiled potatoes with onions sautéed in frying pan #2, and lamb chops sauteed in Frying Pan #1 after the veggie medley had been evacuated, along with a nice Pinot Noir, dessert of shortbread and chocolate squares, and some sisterly discussion ranging from “Do you think Mom resented me?” to “Have you smoked marijuana?” to “I have this genetic deformity. Do you have it too?”
And by 9PM we are snuggled in our teardrop cocoon once more.
Allyson Johnson 