#travelingfool

In which our heroine ventures out into the great unknown, has lunch with an old friend, reserves a room in the wrong town, and eats filet mignon. 

I wake at 6, shower, pack the car, kiss my husband goodbye and am heading south on I-5 by 7:45, Starbucks coffee and breakfast sandwich in hand. I remember to turn on the trip mileage tracker at the Mt. Luther King exit. First stop for gas at Centralia.  

The first day of a road trip is such a high – don’t we all love the sensation of leaving it all behind and heading toward unknown adventure?  I feel lighter, freer, and ecstatically happy as I sail past the last possible exit that I would take for a routine day trip.

I listen to Brock and Salk on 710 KIRO and then to the Professor until the station fades and falters in Portland. From then on, I search for oldie stations so I can sing along with songs from my youth. I’m wide awake and full of zim and this mood takes me all the way to Sublimity – a tiny town near Salem Oregon, where I make a stop to visit Irene Marchbanks.   Irene and I worked for SSA back in the day.  We were both pregnant with sons in 1980 and 81 and exchanged notes and tips and doctors’ names and so on throughout.  I was one month ahead of her so I filled her in on everything I was experiencing.  Our sons weren’t in the same school district but they went to each other’s birthday parties and various other celebrations until Irene got promoted and moved first to Eastern Washington and then to Salem where she was the District Manager until she retired.   I hadn’t seen her in something like 20 years, so we had enough news to keep us going through lunch – a slice of great pizza with a yummy salad at PanezaNellie Breadstick Shoppe. (If you’re ever in Sublimity I recommend a visit.)

Then back to Irene’s house so I can say hi to her husband Don who is a superman when it comes to gardening,  hunting, fishing, growing vegetables and making wine and jam.  He gives me a tour of his shop which is organized to the Nth degree and contains a dizzying array of tools and equipment.  Also impressive is a two-story wall filled with skeletonized deer heads and antlers.  I get a tour of the garden – grapevines trained along the tops of fences, several types of berry bushes, a huge garden and a greenhouse for delicate produce. A bottle of homemade wine and a jar of jam are parting gifts.  

I head east on State Hwy 22 through the Santiam State Forest and along the shores of Detroit Lake. It’s a lovely sunny day so the lake is bright blue and the forest lovely shades of bright spring green.  Then it’s US Hwy 20 to Sisters and on to Bend. I first encountered Sisters many years ago when I was working in this part of Oregon. It is named for the mountains that cluster west of town.  I remembered it as a cute artsy place and as I am driving I decide to spend the night there so I can explore the shops and drink a glass of ale in an imaginary super cute pub. I also imagine a healthy pub meal (contradiction in terms?) to go along with the ale.  As I navigate the twists and turns and stretches of road construction I keep thinking about how great it will be when I get to Sisters and use the mental image of the pub and the ale and the healthy meal to keep me going.  At one point I pull over and quickly book a hotel in Sisters using Hotel Tonight .  

As I draw closer to Sisters I pull over again and put the hotel’s address into the GPS in my phone. This is when I realize I’ve accidentally booked a hotel in Bend, another 20 twisty, exhausting miles further.  

This is the kind of thing that can happen when you book too cavalierly on Hotel Tonight.  You may put Sisters in the search engine, but Hotel Tonight will pull up any hotel it deems close enough and sure enough it had pulled up the  River House in Bend which I booked without realizing the hotel wasn’t situated in my destination of choice.  Bookings in Hotel Tonight are nonrefundable, so I was stuck.  Those last few miles to Bend were not fun.

I checked in, located my room and somehow found the strength to haul in two suitcases, the CPap bag, the Yeti cooler (very heavy), another couple of smaller bags that held electronics and assorted books and entertainments, my yoga mat, and PT paraphernalia.

Exhausted I headed down to the bar I’d seen next to the front desk.  It was very crowded but I managed to score a seat and ordered the beer I’d been promising myself for the last 60 miles. I struck up a conversation with the guy next to me who said he lived in Sisters.  You’re kidding, that’s where I hoped to stay, but booked here by accident.

Oh well, they’ll take care of you here all right, he said. He was friends with the bartender.  Turns out he is also a bartender plus he has a sideline business making barbeque sauce and in fact has some of his sauce entered in the 32nd Annual American Royal World Series of Barbecue Sauce Contest to be held that weekend in Kansas City.  He tells me he has created several flavors of BBQ sauce and sells it all over the northwest.   Cool job I said.  He shrugged.  Not a lot of money in it and it’s a lot of work.  It’s good when I get a big order, but also daunting because if I don’t have enough sauce on hand I have to make it fast  in order to fill the order.  Keeps me busy.

I order a filet mignon.   I’m ready to switch from beer to red wine and the BBQ guy offers advice.  Seems that he eats at the River House often and knows the wine.  He suggests a Zinfandel, but I hesitate.  How about Pinot Noir, he says.  Okay, I know this makes me a Philistine but I just do not like Oregon Pinot Noir – it’s too fruity.  I tell the guy this and add that I’m okay with Pinot Noir from California.  (I’m not proud of this exactly but do feel that it tempers the Philistine label slightly.) That’s because the Californian Pinot Noir is blended with Merlot and Cabernet he says.  Shot down again.  

My favorite wine is Syrah. There’s a Syrah on the menu and I order it. It works well with the filet mignon which is the best steak I’ve had in years, no exaggeration, the kind of steak that seems to melt on your tongue.