Murphster Checks Oregon Off His List

Hi gang,

Well, I can certainly check Oregon off my list of new states to see. We ended up staying for longer than we expected...more mechanical problems with our truck set us back several days on our delivery to CA.

We entered the state from the west & started work in the city of Portland, which is the state's largest city. We had 4 deliveries there and we stayed in town for the weekend where they claim to have the "world's classiest truck stop" there, so that's where we parked. On Friday night we saw a couple up & coming new country bands that are being played on the radio and it was fun watching people line dancing to the music. The next day, we showed our New England Patriots pride & cheered them on while watching them win on the big tv's inside. Jen wore her Pats sweatshirt to show her support, she does that while away so people will know she is representing MA because she is proud of where she is from & of our Boston sports teams.

The truckstop has a movie theater inside of it, so we went to an early show then over to the restaurant for more country music. It is famous for hosting some of the biggest country stars of all time, so it's a fun place to be.

Oregon is crazy about their college sports teams & the OR University Ducks were in the college football playoffs on Monday, so we watched that game on tv, too and cheered for them, unfortunately they lost but it was a fun way to get out and about. Portland is on the border of Washington state, so we took a short drive over the Columbia River to Vancouver, WA to go for a hike to get some exercise.

We then started the new week with a delivery in Salem, OR which is the state's capital, when our truck problems started. We had to bring the truck to a garage where they needed to keep it for a few days, but we still had several more deliveries to do, so we rented a very small delivery truck to get the job done. We had to drive out to the coast to do 2 of them, 1 in Newport & 1 in Lincoln City, both are popular vacation destinations so it was a fun drive to see new places. Having the smaller truck was actually nice because we got to go on roads & make some unexpected stops at scenic spots that we wouldn't normally get to do in the big truck. Having the truck in the garage also meant we didn't have to hurry as much, it also meant we had to sleep in hotels for the time away from the truck so one night we stayed at the beach and we started our work day with a walk on the pacific shore! 

When we were done with our last delivery (we had 7 hospitals in all for stops, 1 Navy shipyard & The Oregon Convention Center), we were right across from the ocean and we were hearing sea lions "barking" in the distance...so we followed the sound & sure enough, found a very large group of them clustered together on a fishing pier where we enjoyed watching them & they enjoyed watching us, too! I enjoyed the pacific coast line here, as it is very different than New England because it is quite mountainous right up to the shoreline, so it's quite a steep decent to the water with a lot of cliffs & trees...very odd compared to "home" and our flat beaches. OR has pretty much every type of landscape you can think of, from deserts to mountains, volcanoes, forests, meadows & the pacific shoreline, it's quite an interesting state.

We are headed to CA for the morning, right near San Fransisco but then a lot further south to San Diego where I have been already. It will be over 1,000 miles from the start of our drive today!

We hope you all have a great weekend...more adventures await me for the drive back east for next week.

Yours truly,

Murphster