Fall 2012 Trip to the Pacific Northwest

After a one month coachwork repair delay resulting from a regrettable operator error, Nancy and I and our kids Tammy Faye and Sophia headed north in mid October to have a look at Oregon, Washington, and southern British Columbia.

We had a full gas tank as we left Ben Lomond, and at around seven and a half miles per gallon, we hoped to reach the promised land of cheaper gas before having to refill.  On the second day, running on fumes, ignoring the "low fuel level" messages on the dash, we passed the Oregon border and found a gas station at $4.08 a gallon for regular, much better than the $4.70 at home.  If we had run out of gas, it would have been entertaining for a reader of this blog, but unpleasant for the heroes of the story.

The fillup cost $270.  With our nearly dry tank, I was looking for a milestone of $300 but will have to wait until the oil producers jack up their prices even higher.

One of the favorite campgrounds of our big trip all around the country last year was the Seven Feathers RV Resort.  It's near a casino in southern Oregon, but its charm is in the quality of its landscaping and the beauty of the area.  We were there for three days and used the time to reacquaint ourselves with trailer park life, to watch some important bay area sports programming on TV, and to check out some attractions in the area.

We drove our pickup truck, which we tow behind our motorhome, through the Wildlife Safari Park in nearby Winston, Oregon.  We saw elephants, zebras, lions, tigers, cheetahs, giraffes, ostriches, bison, and bears in something similar to their natural habitats.  The park has an impressive cheetah breeding program.

We also visited two wineries in the Umpqua wine region - Tesoaria and Hillcrest.  Charming someliers, decent wines, and we bought a bottle at each tasting room.  A young man sampling the wines next to us at Hillcrest Winery mentioned that he was from the area, worked on an oil rig in the Gulf, and liked to hunt.  His most unusual kill was a cougar, for which Oregon issues licenses, because they are not endangered.  He said it tastes like pork.  Along the way he also mentioned that after a lifetime of not eating pork, he finally tasted bacon, and loved it.  I asked why he hadn't eaten pork before that, and he said that it was a religious thing.  Let's see - an oil rig worker who hunts - Jews and Muslims are probably not well represented in that demographic.  But we'll never know, because Nancy and I were too polite to pry.  Damn.