Travels with The Rayman

We are now in Washington, the state.  We arrived yesterday in grand fashion.  It went something like this.

“Dianna, what the hell are you doing?”, followed by clutching his seat as I careened over a curb upending just about everything in The Dog House.

“Jesus Christ!”,  followed by the Rayman holding on for dear life as I swallowed up another curb in my wake.

“Perhaps you should check the refrigerator?”, I demurred as I soldiered on weaving my way through the back streets of Portland in search of the on ramp to the narrowest bridge I’ve encountered that was 4 lanes.  4 lanes for smart cars perhaps.  One lane for moi.  “Things might be leaking.”

In all of my driving, I have never rolled two curbs in a span of perhaps 42 seconds.  But, in my defense, the streets were beyond narrow making driving an RV a really stupid idea in retrospect.  The GPS does not specify width of road.  There.  I rest my case.

Rayman got so out of sorts, all I could do was to laugh.  That may or may not have been the appropriate reaction.  I was on a roll.  Literally and figuratively.  So, I rolled to a stop and we re-grouped.  Blood pressures descended.  Heart rates fell.  Calm was restored.  And then I entered the traffic lane.  And away we went on the west side of the river toward Washington.

We thankfully arrived at the Silver Lake Cove RV Resort which is located on the road up to Mt. St. Helens without any more driving faux pas on my part.  A lovely spot here after spending three weeks in an RV “resort” that had a lot of in and out travelers so we never had the same neighbor for more than 12 hours.  That’s okay.  We didn’t mind as we were zooming all around Portland meeting up with friends and family.

One night we went to Podnah’s Pit for barbecue.  In attendance were Ryan, number one son.  My cousin, Susie, and her husband, Larry.  And us.  First things first, we ordered beer (except for Susie who ordered Coke in a bottle).  Drinks arrived.  We ordered.  Drinking commenced.  After a few slurps, Larry asked, “Why is my beer so much lighter in color than yours, Ryan?  I ordered the same thing.”  Ryan, who works in the beer industry and is a guru of sorts, took a sip.  Pensive posed was held for a few seconds while thinking occurred.  “That’s hard cider.”

 

We all burst out laughing.  Seemingly it was the color not the taste that had Larry asking.  Another beer was forthcoming.  And remember, guys, I did say I was going to blog this.  Just saying.

On national ice cream day, we bought some ice cream.  The line was extremely long.  It turns out this ice cream biz always has long lines so employees come out and hand out samples for the patient crowd.  We skipped all that.  Ryan’s girlfriend, Tamara, told us the secret to line avoidance.  Go in the out door, pick up a pint and hit the register.  Voila.  Ice cream to go in about 3 minutes.  Mission accomplished.  Local rules.

One night we went for pizza.  The pizza parlor is famous in Portland because Anthony Bourdain went there and announced that the pizza was good.  The joint only offers one size pizza.  Ginormous.  Their Caesar salad was, like, outrageously good with mild anchovies delicately laid on-top the romaine.  On a cold, cold plate.  Pizza Sholls, I think it was named.  The only funny thing that happened is the waiter spilled Larry’s water.  People got wet.  We were all thankful it was water.  Not wine.

IMAX was on our mind as we elected  see Dunkirk, the movie.  Holy moly.  What a film.  A must-see on the big screen.  It was non-stop action without gore which was appreciated.  The soundtrack was very additive to the movie, strikingly so.  Sort of like the roar of the lion as you stomp around in the bush of Africa kind of additive.  Two thumbs up from us.  Actually, all five of us found it remarkable…the story itself is amazing.  I kept imaging the actual soldiers and boaters of the time.  War is hell.

Beau has found that he likes water.  This ah ha occurred because we kept taking him to the Sandy River delta where just about everyone in Portland shows up with dogs in tow.  It’s a place where dogs are allowed off leash.  There are paths that wind through the woods that line the river banks.  The woods are where we got lost.  Yep, we have taken to getting lost on foot to add to our repertoire of lost stories.  At one point, the trail looked like the end.  But we crashed through a bush (I have scratches to prove it), and emerged on the other side of the bush to find a trail of about 6 inches in width continuing.

But, I digress.

Beau went to the river for days and flirted with the water.  He drank the water.  He put his paws in the water.  Meanwhile all the Labs that were there dove into the water to fetch sticks, balls etc.  One day, Beau, mistakenly fell into the water (completely) and came up sputtering.  We lifted him out.  Then, the next time we took him to the river, he actually went in from a slow sloping river bank area and frolicked.  OMG.  He had a blast.  And so did we.

Today the sun has not emerged.  It’s in the 70s.  But it is gray.  So here I am blogging.  If the fog or clouds lift, we will drive up to Mt. St. Helens.

The clouds lifted and we visited Mt. St. Helens.  Here’s the proof.