Goodbye Oregon

 
Oregon has been very good to us. This was where Brandon and I owned our first home, the first place we lived together without roommates. This is where I went to law school, got my degree, and had my first professional-type job. I suppose this is where I started to feel like a “real” adult. This is where Brandon and I discovered RVs, and Jeeps, and grew to love state parks. This is where we were when we decided to go on this crazy adventure. This is where we were when we decided to get married.

We’ve grown a lot and learned a lot while living here and we’re genuinely going to miss it. But we’ll be back. Oregon is a beautiful state. I can’t think of anywhere else where you can just randomly stumble across a waterfall because there are so many of them that they aren’t all marked. The Mexican food may be terrible but the wine is lovely. The nine months of rain are almost as bad as people say they are but summer is perfect. Flowers bloom and the farmers markets are packed with fresh veggies because everything grows here so well. But I miss the Texas heat, and swimming holes, and we both miss breakfast tacos. Seriously, every time we look around at how beautiful and green it is here and one of us says “Why are we moving again?” the other will inevitably respond, “Tacos.” 

But we’ll be back. We’ll be back because there is still so much that we haven’t done. We bought the Alpha Uno because we wanted to get out more and see more of this amazing state. We truly thought we would just be weekend campers. Well, we all know how that went. Weekends just aren’t long enough. So we’re leaving Oregon having never been to Crater Lake, having never been to Mount Hood when there was snow on the mountain, having never been anywhere at all in Eastern Oregon. We want to come back and do all of those things and hopefully more. We want to come back and see all of the friends we made while living here. Brandon wants to come back and conquer Firebreak 5 (the off-road obstacle at Brown’s Camp that continues to twart him). And we will. Oregon is still on our route even though we already lived here for four years. 

But for now we are gearing up to head south. The moving truck is packed, the house  is empty, and we are on board the Alpha 1 with Rudy and  the cats. We  are staying the night at Champoeg State Park, our favorite lunch hook and an easy exit out of town. We leave for Ashland, Oregon in the morning.