So, I am sitting in a hotel in Eugene Oregon, waiting for the birthday boy to wake up... My surprise was a 5 day weekend trip to Oregon. However, Eugene OR was not in our plans... Let me tell you how we got there...
The first 2 nights we stayed in Ashland Oregon. I had heard that it was a really cool town and the area of Medford was becoming a popular place to live. So I wanted to spend some time there to see if we liked that area. Ashland is a cute little historic town, but the neighborhoods are too old for us. It kind of reminded us of Placerville, CA if you know where that is. A town just outside Medford, called Jacksonville we liked. It had the nice old downtown feel but the neighborhoods were bigger and more spread out with farm land. Picture Kenwood, CA... We like homes that are not too close to the road where everyone can see your front yard, but can see your house a distance from the road.
We had fun in this area, we viewed a random Chinese parade in Jacksonville celebrating the year of the rabbit lol. We had delicious natural ice cream in and the best gourmet tacos ever at Agave in Ashland. We saw the tiniest temple I have ever seen in Central Point. But very pretty. Had a nice walk in Lithia Park and watched people feed a lot of ducks. And had a friendly continental breakfast with the only other person that seemed to be at our cheap hotel haha.
On Sunday morning we left early and headed to the coast. We stayed in Bandon and it was very pretty there. Gorgeous beach. The town reminded me of Sebastapol, CA. In Bandon, we of course had to visit the West Coast Game Park Safari. It is the worlds biggest petting zoo. All kinds of animals roam around free as you are viewing the animals that obviously have to be caged for your safety. We had deer and peacocks chasing us everywhere. We were able to pet a wild cat and some other random animals like kangaroos, skunks, possums, and raccoons. Dustin's face was lit up during the whole park haha. It was his birthday weekend. Of course we had to go to a zoo :)
We went to Cape Arago and looked for little sea creatures. Dustin poked a sea urchin for the first time. Later in Bandon we had crab at Tony's crab shack and local fresh yummy seafood at the local Seafood house. That night, it started to get very windy... We thought nothing of it...
In the morning we headed to Florence up the coast to see the worlds largest sea cave. It was full of 300+ sea lions that day and sometimes fits up to 500! We stopped at the Oregon sand dunes and ran around in the sand haha. Stopped at a few lakes to take pretty pictures. There are a lot of lakes there!
It is very cool everywhere you drive there is huge trees. Everywhere! It was like driving through a tunnel and all you see is big tall trees haha. There were a lot of cute little towns along the coast and we stopped in a random one with crazy looking people... and had some AMAZING fish tacos.
Back to the wind... Keep in mind as we are driving it is getting windier and windier. The guy working at the Sea Lion cave told us how fast it was at that time. 80mph! Then he said we were going to have a wind storm very soon. It was going to be at least 100mph! We were blowing all over the place haha. I originally planned on heading inland at Florence to go to our next hotel and still get there by daylight... Dustin wanted to see Newport, which was another hour and a half up the coast... It was his birthday so up we went. Got some fun souvenirs and it was a very nice city. It was about 4:45pm and was getting dark as we headed inland a different route than I thought to go to Bend, OR. It was going to be 3 hours to get there from Newport. I was excited to go there because it was this fun huge mountain lodge by a lake and a nice hotel. At around 7:30 we were starting to go through the Willamette Valley, which according to pictures online, I thought was going to just be their wine country with vineyards everywhere... Nope. There was a national forest we had to go through 30 miles long and it was raining... And we were like the only people on the road. Obviously a stupid place to drive through late at night... Rain doesn't bother me. But after an hour into it the rain started to get fluffy and thicker and thicker...I looked over at Dustin and said, "That is snow." We kept going thinking it was not much farther to the vineyards... The roads were becoming thick with snow and we were slowing down and then started to slide. Hands were tightening on the wheel and butts were clenching. Keep in mind it is pitch black and we had no idea what was to the right or left of us. We started driving up this little hill, seriously pathetic, and were sliding too much. We couldn't make it. So we stopped in the middle of the road because we couldn't move and I am freaking out. Dustin is holding his head not knowing what to do either. Next thing we know, we saw another car coming fast around the corner down this hill and when they saw us, they tried to stop. My eyes got huge and I started saying, "Oh no oh no oh no!" Annnnnd Dustin was just outside the car peeing of course... They started sliding and went to the left and were sliding for what seemed to be a long time and off to the left was a dark drop off. Who knows how far down. I swear I thought this car was going off the edge and we were going to be the cause of this guy driving off the road in the middle what seemed to be a snow storm now in the middle of no where! He stopped right before the edge and pulled up next to us totally fine. He offered to sell us his chains and they didn't fit so we grudgingly had to turn around. We looked at a map and we still had another hour in that area to go through. UGH. Good thing we weren't farther into it. So, I was very bummed turning around. I was quiet and sad. Dustin was handling it very well emotionwise. He kept trying to assure me things were fine and we will figure something out. I didn't want him to have a crappy birthday. He said, "As long as we are together I am happy. This will be a funny birthday story to look back on." I had to relax after that. I sighed and let go. We drove an hour to the closest city for a hotel and ended up in Eugene, OR. Stay tuned to find out how we get home!