After Mount Shasta we headed up over the California/Oregon border to see my friend Shannon and her family in Klamath Falls. Before meeting up with them we grocery shopped like no-ones business. For the first time this trip we actually had to use a grocery cart, if you know anything about me I HATE, yes thats a powerful word but i mean it, cart people. What are cart people you ask? Essentially they are everyone who goes to the store and vigorously pushes carts at people, zig-zaggy through the aisle and whipidly throws that huge basket aimlessly around corners. I will do almost ANYTHING to not use one and become one of these awful human beings. :) But yes, we used a cart and awful it was. :)
We were able to hit up their Saturday farmers market and get some extremely fresh strawberries and tasty coffee from downtown. Two guys made a bet on whether I was a white girl or black girl..one of them walked up to me to better investigate and realized that he lost $5 thinking I was black. I guess it's time to sunscreen up some more?!
Once we got to the Currans house we were treated with the most incredible food to have hit our lips in the past couple months. Steve BBQ'd up some chicken, sausage, and steak accompanied by multitudes of salad and bread. I'm not much of a steak eater but to this day he made the most incredible flavored and perfectly cooked steak I've ever tried. I'm assuming he laced it with crack-cocaine, maybe LSD, but either way i never want another steak that isn't prepared by Mr. Steve Curran. After dinner we wandered out into their yard and admired their chickens; I even got to hold one! Once dinner was complete, and beers were consumed we made our way into movie watching zone and settled in for a most relaxing evening. The morning treated us just as well with a home cooked breakfast using freshly laid eggs with copious amounts of coffee to get us going.
Our next destination was Crater Lake National Park with ambitions to bike the 33 mile loop around the lake. The weather was horrendous and was unrelentless with downpours of rain so we spent a few moments looking at the volcanic lake and continued North to Bend, Oregon. With more rain and more rain forecasted, we spent 2 nights here hoping that the skies would clear up so we could climb at Smith Rocks. After 2 days of patiently (kind of stir-crazish) waiting and the weather not clearing up in the forseable future, we chose to continue on towards Portland. We have found that we can't spend too much time in cities because they are just tooooo much fun! Coctail bar? yes please! Imported food store? I'll take two of everything! Cute bistro on the corner? I'd spend all afternoon here!...we like being cultured and involved in the ongoings of towns but have to pull ourselves away so we don't blow a six month budget in one afternoon. We did splurge on going to the Portland Zoo. Holy Hootenanie that was awesome! One of the most interesting animals we saw was the Honey Bear AKA sugar bear. Look them up, they are odd creatures. With more rain still in the forecast we had to find something to occupy ourselves until the sun came back around, decided to head to the Oregon coast and do some swimming in the ocean. The ocean is an incredible beast to sit and watch and walk along it's beach-shores. We spent a few days meandering and jogging along the beach. I REALLY REALLY wanted to do some biking while we were here so luckily the weather finally cleared and I was able to do a 30 mile stretch down Highway 101, which runs next to the Pacific Ocean. Sam was a great support team and picked me up in the town of Tilamook where we went to the cheese factory, had samples and watched the production lines. As we check the weather once more, a heat wave had blown in and we are now on our way to Mount Raineer!
Posted with Blogsy
No comments:
Post a Comment