Chris Walsh (chris_walsh) wrote,
Chris Walsh
chris_walsh

Road Trip Practice

My car got a slight workout today. Up to I-84 and east to Exit 31, the Multnomah Falls exit, and back. A road trip, and an easy one, and one that I did kind of to remind myself: I can do road trips. This is a good reminder, because the next two weekends I'll go twice to the Puget Sound region: Friday the 12th to Seattle for Emerald City Comic Con that weekend, then Friday the 19th to Olympia for a Sooj Tucker/Tricky Pixie concert. I last road-tripped the first weekend of this year, down to Eugene; before that, except for a November trip for work, I'd gone most of 2009 without a road trip. Last weekend I'd considered a Saturday trip to the Oregon Coast, but I didn't have the energy for it. (Plus there was the "huge earthquake in Chile, tsunami danger anywhere in the Pacific, getting near the water may be a really bad idea" problem last weekend, too. Wow; it doesn't seem like only just over a week since that happened, does it?)

As yesterday was an easygoing day by design, I wasn't going to travel far then, but today was better for tripping. By the way, I considered having lunch at the View Point Inn, the historic inn over in Corbett (and, yep, where part of Twilight was filmed, that's probably the main reason I'd heard of it). I was serious enough that my first choice of clothes today -- other than, duh, my sleep clothes, don't be so literal -- was a white button-down and fancy pants. (And, I'll admit, sneakers.) Then I saw that the inn has a tres fancy brunch on Sunday, and not its lunch menu, which would've been more my speed. I changed into jeans, a T-shirt that reads "Hydromania*," and a University of Oregon sweatshirt. (And, still, sneakers.)

When I got to the Falls, I hiked about half a mile along the trail to the top of the falls. It's a mile total to the top, but I wasn't in the mood for a full trip. Beautiful spot, of course, and well-behaved fellow tourists, thank goodness. Weather cooperated: enough rain earlier this week for a good, strong flow for the waterfall, but no rain this morning, and the trails were mostly dry except where you're close enough for the mist rising up from the splash from the falls. After that, I got back to the car, read for a bit, then hit the road. Traveling was accomplished, and that felt good.

And my lunch? Instead of the fancy-pants brunch? Popeye's. I can have both experiences. I am large, I contain multitudes.



* Hydromania was a Hermiston-area summer camp that I covered for the Hermiston Herald. I'm amused that I incorporated into my article the Beastie Boys term "the sounds of science": "These are the sounds of science in the field..."
Tags: peregrinations
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