the sands of oregon

I know, I know. This is what happens when I don’t write while I’m away on a trip. I get back with a thousand things in my head, and then my life gets in the way. Here’s the last bit of my trip to Oregon.

I spent my last two days in Oregon in Reedsport and Portland.


While in Reedsport, KT and I hiked the Oregon Dunes, a state park of giant sand dunes that stretch along three or more miles of the coast. It’s a popular site for ATVs and dune divers. Like us! The dunes are enormous! I think they may be similar to Jockey’s Ridge State Park in North Carolina, but perhaps even bigger. We wandered along the dunes, (also similar to the Sleeping Bear Dunes in Michigan), climbing the highest peaks we could find, and then threw ourselves off the top. I highly encourage everybody to crash down a sand dune. Sand is much more forgiving than rock or ice, and although you feel as though you’re being buffeted on all sides, at least the blows are being delivered by what feels like giant cushions. Drawbacks include sand adhering to every surface, and often sneaking into unprotected openings. I was still cleaning it out of my ears a week later.

After brushing ourselves off, we headed into the small borough of Winchester Bay to buy some fresh seafood for dinner. KT introduced me to the local businesses, and some friends who owned them. The town’s cannery, where we bought Chinook Salmon, snapper, and ling cod, was owned by one of her old teachers. We also stopped by the oyster house and watched shuckers harvest the shellfish that were brought in that day from the beds just a mile or two away in the bay. We learned how they “seed” lines with old shells then suspend them in the bay for baby oysters to grow on—this way the fish are protected from taking on the nasty flavors from growing in the muck at the bottom of the bay. We bought a few and tried them in different preparations at home. Yeah, I still don’t like oysters. Sorry, KT.

The next day, we took a roadtrip Northeast to Portland. What a cool city! I don’t know how to describe it, other than genuinely clean-cut. There were a lot of skateboarders of all ages, which was odd to see. Moo had asked me to do some reconnaissance to find some grittiness in case she may want to move there some day. It was weird, but there really wasn’t much grittiness to that city. But it’s not the kind of place that looks like it’s hiding its poverty and lower class. There just didn’t seem to be any. Recycling bins lined the clean streets and a major portion of the downtown is serviced by free mass-transit. Another odd thing was how we kept running into teenagers sitting in groups asking for change. I didn’t know what was going on, but by the time I realized something was up, we stopped running into them so I couldn’t ask. I wonder if it was related to the groups of people we saw camping, hobo-style, in the Japanese-American Park and under one of the bridges that crosses the Columbia River.

The Pacific Northwest was beautiful and I fully intend to return someday. I still haven’t seen Seattle, after all. Perhaps Portland will become the city that I have to live in when the time comes for me to live in a city. A good public transit system, culture, political and social liberalism, and the great outdoors surrounding—what more could I ask for?