Since it has been raining quite heavily all week, we have added only a few pics, from a brief stop at the "Spruce Goose" museum, to our photo album for this trip.
While at Coos Bay we checked long term weather forecasts for the different places along the route we planned to take home to Calgary. Forecasts didn't look particularly good but we decided to move on anyway and try to place ourselves where we could get home within a few days once a pretty good weather window opened up.
The first night this week we stayed at the KOA in Lincoln City. Pretty well the only ones there, except for the rain. Drove around the town a bit before deciding to go to the local casino since the food at the casino buffets was pretty decent and we could spend a couple of hours lounging around there anyway. End result.. won $18. WOW, that's $53 we've taken from Oregon casinos, not counting a few drinks and dinners of course... so they likely came out ahead in the long run.
Next day we headed inland through McMinnville and stopped at the Evergreen Air Museum to get a glimpse of Howard Hughes "Spruce Goose". When we arrived in McMinnville we didn't know where the goose was so asked a guy for directions. He told us the direction then said "look for the waterslide with the 747 sitting on top of it". He was right, couldn't miss it!
We expected to see the goose stored in an old warehouse, but not so, What a fabulous museum. Since we wanted to get to Portland early in the afternoon we didn't spend anywhere near the time warranted at this museum. Snapped a few pics, which we added to our picasa album, but not too much showing of the goose because of it's massive size (check their website). Definitely a return trip is in order.
There are a couple of RV parks fairly close to downtown Portland but we decided to stay a bit further out. Reviews we read about the ones close to downtown were not the best, so... Anyway, we ended up about a half hour east of downtown in Fairview at the Fairview/Portland RV Park which apparently is rated as one of the top 100 in the country by Good Sam and Woodalls. Park was fairly empty except for a section that is clearly long term stays. Decent washrooms, good showers and a nice clubhouse we were able to sit in, use our computers, read or whatever if we needed a break from the wee trailer while the rain poured down.
Since we have been travelling in the rain for the last week or so, our carpet (in the trailer) got quite wet. We assumed it was just from us walking in and out with wet feet. While in Portland we noticed that it just was not getting any drier and decided to take it up. It was then that we noticed a fairly steady stream of water running in along side the door. Aha, it wasn't just us! Somewhere in the door closure there was a place where the rain was finding it's way in. We couldn't find the source so had to resort to other measures, ie. if we couldn't stop it, could we at least control it. Off to Fred Meyer we went and bought some cheap towels and some... get ready for this... sham-wows... to use to build a temporary water containment system. The sham-wows were laid across the door and they did a great job of soaking up the water. Vince was right. The towels were laid on top and across the trailer floor to act as a temporary "carpet" which could easily be washed. Voila! Worked very well. It took about 3 full days to get the real carpet dried out (when we went out for the day, we left the heater on, in the trailer, and pointed at the carpet then at night we just rolled up the carpet and put it in the car... not much else we could do).
Anyway, we hit a weather system that made us decide to stay in Portland for the entire week rain or not. Well, it was pretty well all rain. We still took the opportunity to explore various neighbourhoods and found some pretty cool districts including, but not limited to, the Arts district, the Pearl district and Hawthorne. The muni is very good. Where we stayed was near downtown Gresham where one of the muni train lines to downtown Portland ran. Downtown Portland in about half an hour with no hassles about finding a place to park. Nice. Unfortunately, we timed our return a bit poorly as we hit rush hour out of downtown. A tad crowded but we made it back in a relatively decent amount of time but rush hour is definitely to be avoided if possible. All in all, Portland is definitely a city to come back to in warmer, drier times.
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