"Scenic" Routes

I made a last-minute decision (well, if Thursday is last-minute, anyway) to go to Eugene City for the weekend. I was mostly wanting to see Mike. I started early on Saturday by doing trash pickup along the highway. Our office has 2 miles of US 101 adopted. Anyway, after that several of us had omelettes, then I poked around at home for a while and watched some football before finally getting on my way.

I headed down 101 and stopped at Lincoln City to do some quick shopping out the outlets. Unfortunately there was not such thing as quick shopping yesterday afternoon there. I guess the weather was too nice to keep people from coming to the beach. I just realized that I may becoming too "local" now that I am complaining about the tourists. Oh dear. Anyhoo, I was soon on my way south, heading inland at Waldport to go up the Alsea river valley. I had never been up this way, so it was all terribly exciting for me. It was a nice autumn day, the trees are turning colors, so it truly was a lovely scenic drive.

40 miles up I hit the town of Alsea, which really was as small as Jennifer had said. A little down at the heels, but I always see potential in these places. At this time I turned off the state highway onto a Benton County road, hoping eventually to reach Monroe. I made a turn, and soon found that in this case a "scenic" route translated into "not paved." I decided to continue on for a little ways, and the gravel sections were only a few miles before coming to a nice paved 1.5 lane-wide stretch. This was pretty much the middle of nowhere, as far as I can tell. After a bit, I can to the little burg of Alpine, then before I knew it was back at 99W at Monroe. From here, it was familiar driving south via Junction City to Eugene. It only took 5 hours (!!!) all told.

First I found my poor hungry sister, and we had tasty Burrito Boy! And we chatted for a while. Then she went with her cool pals to see an all-girl band play with her boyfriend drumming for them. hm. I stayed at her place and read a book until I fell asleep, and them Mike called and woke me up, and told me he was done with work. So I went to his house, and we chatted for a while, then went to bed.

I slept the best I had in a week.

This morning we eventually dragged ourselves out of bed and went for lunch. We watched some Simpsons and NFL, then he was off to work, and I was off to see Kristin. We just went on a walk around her neighborhood, and saw lots of cool houses, and my second time ever to the Masonic Cemetery. But I couldn't hang out in Eugene City forever, and I was on I-5 before six.

I decided that on the way back, I should try to go through Independence, so I stopped for dinner in Albany, and made my way on wacky Benton County roads (again) up to Independence. By this time it was dark, so I didn't really stop to see the stuff that i wanted to see, because I couldn't really see it anyway. I made the quick trip to Monmouth, hopped back on 99W, and was shortly on my way on 22. I stopped at Spirit Mountain real quick, only because I had urgent needs, but I fed the slot machine a dollar for the use of the facility.

October 19, 2003 10:22 PM

Comments (2)

10/19: kelley said:

you are a party pooper.
it turns out it's a good thing you didn't come, because when we got there, they weren't letting any more people in. band members and girlfriends excepted, of course.
you missed an ovulatin' good time!

10/21: Trevor said:

mmm ... ovulation.