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Oregon Road Trip
August 09, 2017This month I traveled throughout Oregon with my boyfriend, Mr. Darcy.* He grew up in the PNW (Pacific North West) and has some very cherished memories of his former Oregon home state. I really enjoyed seeing it through his eyes and spending time with his family.
*If you've read any of my adventures with my boyfriend on the blog you'll know I refer to him as Mr. Darcy for his nom de plume.
I flew up early in the morning from San Jose, CA to Portland, OR-where we spent a few days before our cross state road trip.
This was my first time visiting "The Beaver State" (before you get any ideas, it's in reference to the early beaver fur trade. The beaver is also Oregon's official state animal and appears on the state flag). After our stay in Portland we headed southeast through Central Oregon. We originally had grand travel plans: However, the day before I got to Oregon there were winds pushing smoke from B.C. and southern Oregon's wildfires. There was so much smog you could barely see the mountains and the air quality was very poor. Instead, we focused on quality time and seeing what we could.
Our Trip:
Portland --> Mount Hood National Park --> Mount Hood --> Crooked River Ranch --> Crater Lake --> Klamath Falls --> Mount Shasta
(Blue dots are my flight up. Red dots are a rough idea of where we drove on the road trip)
We stopped at Government Camp's Huckleberry Inn-inside Mount Hood's National Park. Before this trip I didn't know huckleberries were real! They're very similar to a blueberry and grow in the park's forests. The food was the best kind of diner food with milkshakes, burgers, pastries, pies, and breakfast all day.
Car Games:
There were a lot of long, windy roads we traveled on and to pass the time we played car games and cracked jokes. It really was fun and reminded me how my boyfriend is really my best friend and someone who makes me laugh a lot.
Game 1: Someone starts by saying a celebrity name and the other person chimes in with a celebrity whose first name starts with the first letter of the last celebrity’s last name. Ex: Player 1 - "Elisabeth Moss" Player 2 - "Michael Jackson" etc
Game 2: Player 1 names a celebrity and Player 2 must name a movie that celebrity is in. Player 1 must then name another actor/actress in that same movie. Player 2 then repeats by naming a movie this new celebrity was in. So on and so on. When one person loses and can't think of one, they switch roles who is naming the celebrities and who is naming the movies.
Once we passed through the majority of evergreens and mountains (see Mount Hood above) we got to the desert landscape of central Oregon. We stayed in the remote Crooked River Ranch with Mr. Darcy's extended family and went for hikes and enjoyed the desert terrain.
We stopped a couple more times as we made our way back south to California but by that point we were really tired and just wanted to get home and sleep in our own beds, so they were brief. My favorite of our last few stops was to see Mount Shasta (though that is technically in California, I just wanted to share it as a part of this road trip (see below)) and watching the different sun sets each night.
Sunsets!!!
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