I recently traveled to the Oregon Coast with my Mom and sisters. While driving through Portland, I recounted the visits I made to the region in my youth. As I listed them, I was struck by just how many there were — five independent trips to or through Oregon before the age of 24.
“Why so many?” Mom asked.
“I suppose I always felt drawn here, like I belonged here,” I replied. “For most of my early 20s I was convinced I would move to Portland, but life didn’t work out that way.”
While I was attending my first semester at the University of Utah, my friend Becky announced she would move to Portland. Becky and I had been friends since fifth grade. She had always been a rule-follower and an stern adherent to the expectations of our religious culture, so this sudden bout of spontaneity came as a surprise. She had no plans for Portland — just a cousin who lived there, so she’d have a place to stay. I liked to think of myself as a free spirit, but I’d chosen the path of continuing to live with my parents and working two part-time jobs while attending classes at my local university because that was what people did after high school. Never mind that I had not declared a major and had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. And here Becky was, throwing caution to the wind, untethered in a new city without a plan.
“I’ll go with you,” I shouted.
I wasn’t brave enough to join Becky in moving to Portland, of course. The plan was to follow her in my 1989 Toyota Tercel and help her move. I recruited our friends Liz and Tarrah to join, although I refused to let them drive my pride and joy, my new $2,000 car that I paid for with graduation money and earnings from my $6.25 an hour job at Einstein’s Bagels. I couldn’t wait to put “Otis” to the test on my first independent road trip as a full adult.
We left Salt Lake City a few days after Christmas — December 30, 1997. My parents were “frantically paranoid” about my plans to drive a beater two-wheel-drive sedan nearly 2,000 miles in the middle of winter.
“They think I’m going to break down in the biggest blizzard of this century in the most desolate part of Eastern Oregon and while I’m still there in my crippled car some homicidal maniac is going to broadside me at 115 mph,” I wrote in my journal. “Yeah, it could happen. If it does, and I never see 1998, I bequeath this hopeless jumble of notepaper (my journal) to my dad, who I think will appreciate the satire.”
Looking back, I think it’s admirable that my parents let me go on this trip. I was still living under their roof; they still had some say. Growing up I always thought of them as strict, but in truth, they never discouraged me from pursuing anything I wanted to pursue. They let me make my mistakes while continuing to offer their support. I’ll always be grateful to them for this.
As an adult who is now hopelessly dependent on Google Maps, I can only marvel at how I, a dumb 18-year-old, somehow managed to navigate my way from Salt Lake City to Portland in the era before GPS and Google Assistant, even before MapQuest and cell phones. The era when my friend Liz was no doubt sitting in the front seat poring over a Rand McNally road atlas and reading off the exit numbers as we went.
“By the time we got into Portland it was getting dark, we found ourselves winding through a maze of freeways and bridges and ‘street spaghetti’ as Becky calls it. Soon we were hopelessly lost in an industrial sector of downtown Portland, aimlessly circling one-way-roads.”
Three girls from out of state lost in a bad part of town — what could go wrong? By sheer luck, we found our way back to the freeway and managed to land at Becky’s new apartment.
Unfortunately Becky and her cousin — who we lost contact with somewhere near the Idaho border — hadn’t yet arrived. The third roommate at the apartment had no idea we were coming. Imagine the scenario: Three strange girls show up at your doorstep and tell you they’re friends of the new roommate you’ve also never met, and they’re here to spend New Year’s Eve with you. Do you let them in your house? Yes you do, and then stand in the doorway and grimace as they overtake an entire bedroom.
We had spent the night of December 30 with Becky and her cousin in Rupert, Idaho, so it actually was New Year’s Eve when we arrived unannounced. Becky and her cousin showed up a full two hours later; by then the other woman (both Becky’s cousin and this roommate were in their mid-20s) had ordered us a pizza and was sitting in bewildered silence on the couch. Becky’s cousin decided to entice us out of the house with a New Year’s Eve party, which turned out to be an event for single adults at her LDS church. Only Becky had packed an appropriate dress, although most of the other LDS singles were also in jeans.
I was a little bewildered about having to celebrate such an important occasion — my first New Year as a fully independent adult — at a church, but it turned out to be a fun night. We danced and I met “a bunch of Portland snowboarders.” As midnight approached, I looked up at the net full of balloons dangling over our heads, waiting for them to be released in “a glorious storm of color.” Instead, several people pulled the net to the floor, where the crowd set to maniacally stomping and popping all of the balloons. I was simultaneously horrified and intrigued. I’d witnessed milder performances of rage in the mosh pits of the all-ages shows I liked to attend. These churchy Portlanders were punk!
The following morning we were up reasonably early — the alcohol-free event cleared out within minutes after midnight. However, according to my journal, we stayed up late watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show. We probably had residual hangovers from all of the laughing and quoting of that classic film, so we walked it off during a tour of downtown Portland.
We visited Hawthorne Street and “saw the great buildings,” but we weren’t able to do much else because absolutely everything was closed for New Year’s Day.
“Portland is like this city planted right in the middle of a giant forest and nobody lives there,” I wrote in my journal.
What to do when a city is shuttered on New Year’s Day? Visit the local splash pad, I suppose. Never mind that it’s, you know, January, and “very windy and cold.” Seriously, girls, get some coats!
On January 2, we drove “up and down a big mountain through beautiful mossy trees,” making a stop at the famous Tillamook Creamery on our way to the coast.
Ah, the Before Times, when businesses would leave out plates of perishable food samples for unknown masses to touch and breathe all over.
I guess we were really into the beef jerky.
We stopped at three beaches that day, mostly to frolic in the surf in our shoes, spread out a blanket on the rocky shoreline, sit in our soaked cotton pants, and shiver.
I marveled at the beauty of the rock formations, the winter light shimmering on the ocean surface, and the fact that Oregon was so intensely green even in the dead of January.
“Becky is so lucky,” I complained to my journal. “She gets to live in paradise and I am still stuck in Utah.”
Ultimately she didn’t stay in Portland for long. I don’t remember what happened or why she left, but she moved to downtown Salt Lake City before the end of 1998.
When I look back on this first foray as a fledging road tripper, what I remember is that perfect feeling of freedom. I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going, but I didn’t care. We didn’t have money but we didn’t really need it — a gallon of gas was $1.06 and I was driving a car that easily covered 45 miles per gallon on the freeway. As I recall we divided up a $60 gas bill three ways — for the entire trip — and Tarrah thought that unreasonable and only reluctantly paid her share. It’s the most cliched kind of nostalgia, I know, but it evokes a little heart flutter all the same: “When I was young, I didn’t need anything, and because of this I had it all.”
We were back on the road east by January 3, and I drove the entire way from Portland to Salt Lake in a 12-hour span.
“Around 6:30, we were entering Utah in pitch darkness. There were no towns for miles, just the endless drone of what little road my headlights caught. It was hypnotic. I thought I was going insane, like I was traveling through time or into deep space. But we made it.”
Drawn to the coast
A cyclist from Homer is to compete in the "Tour de France Femmes." Kristen Faulkner age 29, to captain Team Bike Exchange-Jayco. 8 day race beginning this Sunday, July 24?? Worked at Threshold Ventures (Homer??). Parents own Land's end resort.
In case you hadn't heard. Rich.
I'm stumped navigating what my grandkids would laugh about. Thanks Jill for these memory vignettes so well written, with wonderful photos. Rich Runser