After I took a last swim in Skagit Bay, we finished loading the Tesla, and started off on our EV road trip! (My plan is to swim every day on this trip....)
The trip to Portland was uneventful. Its a generally boring drive, with often bad traffic, but this time at least the traffic wasnt too bad. This part of the trip gave us a chance to figure out more about the navigation system, and we were able to add multiple stops in the correct order!
We stopped to charge up in Kelso and arrived at Bills cousin Johns place in the late afternoon. He lives in a beautiful Portland suburb, in a house full of Japanese artifacts hes collected over the years. He previously taught in Japan, in an English immersion program. We had a delicious dinner and great conversation. I walked around the neighborhood, which was full of flowers and friendly families. After a restful night (much needed after waking up at 5:00am, thinking we were hearing the dreaded otters...it wasnt them...), I went for a run, John made us breakfast and gifted us one of his late mothers paintings, and we set out for Medford.
Our first stop was a beach on the Umpqua River, at Cleveland Rapids. There were several fishermen parked on the beach, and a group of disabled adults playing along the shore. The water was very shallow, until I got out into the current, so I just took a short swim...
Next we visited the ghost town of Golden and walked into Coyote Creek Preserve to get some exercise. The pond there was more inviting than the river, and I wished I had waited to swim...The temperature was rising as the sun came out, and it was soon in the seventies!
We drove on over the mountains to Medford, where we charged up and had dinner at a brewery, before checking into our lodging for the night...the Rodeway Motel. By the lack of mask wearing, it appears that Southern Oregon eradicated the virus?
