Portland, Oregon … a gorgeous city. Happy, friendly people, beautiful buildings
and tree-lined streets. Kinda groovy,
bohemian.
LEK fell on
her run the morning we left Vancouver and
strained her hip joint, so in Portland
we went to a sports injury clinic. We
both baulked at the price $170! But her
insurance covered it so she went ahead.
She was in there for more than 2 hours and came out with railway tracks
taped up and down her leg, bum and back.
It’s a couple of days later now and she’s feeling a lot better, though
this morning she put her foot up on the rear bumper of the car to do her shoe
up and pain shot through her hip … so not better yet. Her hopes of running each morning down the Oregon coast and me
picking her up after a few kilometers, are dashed!
We spent
our first night in a tent (so small our two sleeping mats overlapped and we had
to crawl in backwards!!) in the forest east of Portland and thought we heard something
walking around outside the tent!! Soft
foot falls, so not too big! LEK doesn’t
think there are bears in that area!
Anyway, whatever it was we survived.
Had half an hour’s power left on the computer so watched the first
installment of In Bruges. Was very good, though the sound quality was
poor. Watched the second half hour last
night. It may take a few days to see the
whole movie. The battery in the computer
doesn’t have very good staying power!
Bought a
new tent yesterday for $30 … much bigger with plenty of space for our two
mattresses and you can almost stand up in there. However, there was a rainstorm last night and
we had some leakage through the zips on the window and door, though not
much. Clever me suggested we turn our
mats around so they weren’t up against the sides with the leaks, then used our
sarongs to soak up the drips … an otherwise dry night. The tent was a bit wet this morning, and a
bit muddy around the bottom, so we’ve left it there to dry out while we came
for bacon and eggs (well, LEK the vegetarian isn’t having bacon), and café latte.
We are now
at Newport, on the Oregon coast. It’s lovely to be driving down the coast and
we will probably take our time. We might
see some whales and sea lions here today … here’s hoping. The countryside in Oregon is fabulous, mountainous or green
rolling hills, forests, waterfalls and now rugged beaches. I’m surprised at how much the people and
culture, the houses and shops, are like home!
Don’t know why??? It feels like I’m driving around Australia
sometimes, even some of the houses look the same.
Oh, we
called in to a couple of wineries yesterday to celebrate LEK’s birthday, which
was the day before, when she was getting her body repaired. The wine wasn’t very good, (well I would say
that because I don’t really like wine, but LEK didn’t like it either), but we
had fun.
