Been There, Dean That: Oregon Trail

Hello everybody, and welcome to an all new episode of Been There Deane That welcome to have been there, see that.

Welcome to my podcast Kailin today.

What do you want to talk about?

Gosh, Dean, I got no clue, you know, I just.

One of these days. I want you to come with it.

Oh, I have ideas. No, no, no, I don't know where we're going, but I think we should talk about how we travel in just to carry on. We never check it back, so wherever we go we need to talk about our packing abilities.

I was thinking, sorry to maybe divert here. I was thinking, since we since I just got back from a great trip to Oregon, we talk about an even better trip that we went on to Oregon, the first one, the only well, yeah, I guess that's right. We happened back, but yes, the first one.

Actually, I love that you do. That was such a great trip.

What's a really good trip planned by me? It was planned by Kailin? Heck, yeah, where did I plan? I planned Sippy River, that's right, the Mississippi. I wanted to do a steam boat ride up the Mississippi, just like Mark Twain did. I even bought us little Mark Twain books to read while we were on it, and then COVID befell us.

Yeah, we actually went to we flew to Oregon, we flew to Portland, and this is when nobody really knew what was going on with COVID and the shutdowns, and I was getting crazy texts. People were like, you need to come home. The National Guard is going to be patrolling the streets, and do you remember that. Yeah, we landed in Portland and you were like, it's going to be fine, and it was like, I think we were there maybe four days before like the.

Huge shut Yeah, yeah, yeah it was.

But we're just like speculating. They're like, we don't really know what's going on.

I don't remember the exact dates of when COVID really kind of ramped up, but I remember we were I think, and take this with a huge grain of salt, I'm pretty sure we were in Oregon early March and then like mid March is when the lockdown.

Started happening something like that.

Yeah, could be wrong on those dates, but I'm pretty sure that's pretty accurate.

It was just funny, like the text that I was getting, it's like my grandma knows so and so the National guards. I remember people were like, yeah, freaking out.

Well, and I was only three months off of my hip surgery too, so I was quite hobbily.

Yeah, but still such an incredible trip and we had a different experience just because of the shutdown. There weren't as many people out and about.

Yeah, which was nice, I guess in that regard. Yeah, so what did we do. We flew into Portland, stayed one night in Portland, and it was kind of a ghost town, like we mentioned for the reasons earlier. The food I remember being good. I remember having like some good food truck, like Korean barbecue food or something like that.

We brought Pappy with us. Stayed at the Kimpton, which is always a great dog friendly hotel because you don't have to pay an additional pet fee.

Right, and there's a lot of other dogs for nice dogs to interact with. Alistairs not allowed at Kimpton.

Yeah, well, Patty was great for the Kimpton.

He's just like whatever, don't even bother talking to me, and I won't talk to you.

Yeah, he's a prima donna.

So the whole plan for this trip, I guess I'll let Kaitlyn describe it because she was one that planned it all those years ago, if you can remember.

Yeah, so pre COVID Dean and I decided that. But I guess once a year or twice a year, I don't really know, we would plan trips for each other. So we wanted to do it internationally. Dean planned Guatemala. I planned Saint Lucia, and then after he broke his hip, we were like, let's still, you know, keep this up, but let's do it domestically because it's easier for you to travel. So Dean planned the Mississippi River kept it

To go in like April or May or something, and everything was booked. It was like the Queen's Victoria boat we were supposed to be on or something.

Like that would have been fun.

We could do now, We could do it now. I'm looking right at our Mark Tween books.

Actually, yeah, oh, it's good to core actually yeah. And so I planned Oregon, and I don't really know what sparked this. I think I just saw a beautiful photo on the coast and my idea was to find to Portland and then just drive south into California and enjoy the coast, and it is one like California coast is beautiful, obviously, like so stunning, but the Oregon coast is so underrated. No, not enough people talk about it.

What do you think about the Colorado Coast?

Yeah?

Do you like it? Have you been there yet?

What?

The Colorado Coast?

It being so silly? We're landlocked us.

Dang it. I thought I was gonna stump beyond it.

I thought you were like talking about the edge of Colorado for a second. No, anyways, you didn't stump me. So that was my idea, and that's what we did, and it was such an incredible trip. The coast is just it's so gorgeous. There's these beautiful peaks jutting out of the ocean. Like every turn, every bend is just more gorgeous than the next. Something else that I loved because I grew up in Virginia, not a landlocked state, and you can't do this in Virginia. You can't drive

And Oregon for whatever reason, lets you drive on the beach, and I think that's pretty much statewide. I don't know if Washington does. I'm gonna for the sake of this story, I'm going to say that the don't. And that's what makes Orgon great. But also, like driving on the beach is cool because, like, especially living in California for so long, you never get to do it, and then you're on at the beach for two minutes and you're like, all right, that was cool. Now let's get back on the road, and.

Yeah, you know, it's fine experience. It is then even to just like if you have a Jeep or whatever vehicle and like put your trunk out and you're just like, they're on the ocean.

That would be yeah, do that like back up to a bonfire. I don't know if you're allwed to have bonfires on the beaches.

There, but it was cool, cool experience. And then the interesting thing to me with driving on the beach is like everyone's pretty aware of it because it could get dangerous pretty quickly. You've got kids running around, but everyone's like aware. You're aware obviously like not going to hit people.

Yeah. I wonder how many accidents there are involving cars and pedestrians on the beach.

Yeah.

Also like not that it's you know, there are people go to the sand dunes all the time and drive out there and there's no like lines or anything like that. But people are just kind of stupid. And this includes myself too, Like I'm not just saying, you know, I'm including myself in this and it is just kind of it does seem like a kind of a good recipe for some disaster. Occasionally I wonder, I wonder what this statistics are on that.

But back to Oregon, Yes, there are so many cool things to see and I would love to do it again, like do the same exact thing we did again. There's obviously other things to see, but there is a shipwreck that we went to see.

Do you remember any of the names of the places that we went?

No, So I just wanted to drive down the coast and then Dean found all of these cool places to go to, like the shipwreck. I think that was one of our first stops.

Mm hmm, that's very right. Yep. Basically in the northwest corner of Oregon is I don't know, wreck of the Peter Ayrdale. Yeah, so you had it right on the tip of your tongue. I could see it. I could see you basically mouthing it.

So check that out.

I just needed a nudge.

And then Dean also found and I wish we would have found this sooner. A plane someone like planted a plane. It looks like it was just crashed into the ground.

Yeah, I let's see if I can find it.

But a guy lives there.

So this is kind of the thing with places like Oregon. Colorado kind of falls into the same umbrella. California, certain parts of Montana. You taught Idaho, I could go on when you travel to the places like that, and especially considering the amount of of following, I guess you could say that we have and a lot of my photographer

We all live on the world, Like, why can't we just see it?

Yes, I'm not a big fan of gatekeeping information like that. I understand why people do it. I personally don't like to do it because there are so many times where even like my people that I would consider my friends, post a picture or video place and I'm like, hey, man, where is this I'd really like to go. He's like, oh, you know, can essentially gate keeping it for me.

Which there's one person in particular that I'm thinking of, in one place in particular that I'm thinking of, And it's so frustrat It's mostly the photography community, yeah, and it's like I get it, you got this cool shot and your shot went viral, but like, come on, just it's just frustrating that people don't share, right, But I get like maybe more so in the rock climbing community or like the naturalist community, where they want to protect yeah,

The reason I met brought that up is because I will be sharing some of the locations that I at least remember that we stopped by. If you just Google, all you have to do is google airplane home in Oregon and it'll bring it up. It's like maybe forty five minutes outside of Portland, and it was really cool. I think a lot of the times the guy lets you go inside of it, and I don't think we went inside of it.

No, because you have to email him. I think twenty four to forty eight hours in advance. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and we found it like twelve hours.

But it was so cool, just like walk around and see it's basically like this ERJ one twenty five sitting in the middle of the forest.

I didn't get out of the car because it says no trespassing. You just feel your drone.

And we walked under the plane.

I certainly didn't.

I certainly have a video of us walking directly under the flight.

How do I not remember that at all? I think, I force no why I swear I did not get out of that car.

I guarantee you. I could spend some time to pull up the video right now, but I'm going to save the time and just you just have to take my word for it.

I'll try.

But yeah, Google Airplane Home on Google Maps will bring you right to it. It's definitely worth it. Like if you do fly into Organ and go to the coast, because you're gonna have I think it's like a two hour driver or something to get to the coast and you won't really drive by it, but it's kind of on your way and so you might as well stop by and check it out while you're there.

Yeah, email Big Guy in advance though.

And then we went to Astoria. Do you remember a Storia?

Is that where we saw No.

So, Astoria is where the Gooney's.

House is, Oh right, yeah, which I didn't really need to see that.

Which we don't really care. I mean I don't. I don't love the Goonies movie. It's not like I dislike it, but there is a big cult following for it.

We went out of our way to see it and we were like cool, yeah, and turned around. That happens sometimes, So this is our trip.

So and the reason I said is because I'm going to work us north to south. So we went to a story to see the Gooney's house. We went to the shipwreck of Peter Eyerdale, and then we continued down south from there. And some of these are just coordinate, so I'm not really going to be The shipwreck.

Is cool because typically with shipwrecks, they're underwater and you have to dive or snorkel to see them. But this one's just like right on the water, right on the sand.

And I really don't have many of the spots saved on my phone like I thought I did. I have like maybe eight, but I don't really remember many of these spots. So we went south and then we stopped at a place called Elk Flats Elk Flats Trail, which I don't even know if we did that or not. And again I was pretty hobbled. We'll get to it later. But I went on this like mini hike. Remember we went on a little bit here beach, Secret Beach.

Is that what we're talking about.

Yeah, I got poison ivy, Yeah, yeah, we'll get to that in a second. And then we carried down to Cape Mears Lake, which I don't really remember that.

Much of that. I don't think we did any of these. We definitely didn't go to it Li.

And then we went to Pacific City Beach, which I don't really remember. And then we went These are all just saved in my phone, and I figure we must have stopped and they're on the coast, and so we at least definitely stopped it.

We did not go to a lake.

Well it's it says lake, but it's still on the ocean. We went to Yaquina Head Lighthouse. Do you remember that?

We skipped that.

I remember We went to Thor's Well. Do you remember that?

Yeah? Freezing, but really cool.

Thor's Well was really cool. It's kind of like a kind of reminds me of like Hawaii when we were Remember when we in Maui and we sell like the blowholes.

Yeah, and you got water all over you.

Yeah, Well everyone gets water all over them when they.

Well the blowhole blue like right as you were seeling right next to it.

Yes, great experience. Great.

Thor's Well was cool because we were there in March. It was just like a little bit of iffy weather. It was nice most of the time, but we made it to thors Well, I think right or right after sunset, and it was super chilly, and so I just stayed in the car with Pappy, like I saw it for a quick second and then went back in the car and you flew the drone. But still really cool. So I would love to go back with the warmer weather.

And then we went to Cannon Beach.

Remember Cannon Beach, Yes, Cannon Beach. I loved get which so beautiful.

Which ironically enough, I don't have saved on my maps here, and that's where we stayed.

We found like a little hotel, yeah, because I didn't. I only booked one hotel and I was like, we'll just figure it out as we go.

Where'd you get that idea from you? It's genius traveling tech and I and.

I love that, and I love when we do that because then we're not rush. It's like, oh, our hotel's two hours away, like we got to get there, so you can really be leisurely and like enjoy the places that you love. And I love staying at Cannon Beach.

Yeah, Cannon Beach was beautiful. It would be nice to go back, like in this time of year June July, Yeah, and actually get to enjoy it because it was cold. I think the water was lower than it normally would be. Maybe not, I'm not really sure how that works.

But Cannon too, you get those beautiful views of whatever those peaks are. I want to call them petones, but.

I'm don't know if they're I think it's just a giant rock.

These massive, massive rocks.

Probably like I think it just one what I think it might be one?

Or but like through the coast of Oregon, you have those peaks rocks.

Oh like looking back from the water towards the land.

No, just in the water y.

Yeah, yeah, it's just this one. I think. Here's a picture of it with the horse in front of it. But I guess there's a couple.

Of there a bunch.

Yeah's on the coast. There's a couple, but there is one main, big one.

How do you get a horse on the beach? I would love to do that.

If you can bring a car, you can sure certainly will bring a horse.

Let's do that next time.

I guess you can bring a car on a highway. Probably shouldn't bring a horse on a highway. So I just I just got myself there.

Oh, I just love it so much. Like, I don't know if I could live there because.

It seems a bit dreary.

Yeah, but I loved Oregon so so much, and I really think it's one of the most underrated states ever.

Culturally speaking too, I feel like there's a lot of similarities between Oregon and Colorado.

Yeah, lots of granola people people.

Wise, Yeah, a lot of the granolas.

And I'm becoming more granola. I'm an organic gal. Now.

We're working on it. You've only been in Colorado four months now, five months now, and yeah, it's a slow burn, but it's getting there. I just can't wait to see how granola you get in five years.

Well, I'm still going to be myself, but organic, free range, yeah, free range. Yeah, I'm learning a lot. I'm learning a lot from a new Colorado friends.

Heck, yeah, that's great. And yeah. So then we just carried on down south. From there, we went to, as Kaylin alluded to earlier, a place called Secret Beach, which is one of the coolest It's not a secret, well not anymore.

Everyone knows about it.

After dozens of listeners listened to this it it really is one of the most beautiful, like coastal areas I've ever been to.

I would think, I don't think it's necessarily a secret, but it's kind of like a secret in the sense of it just looks like a forest and then you walk through this forest maybe thirty feet fifty feet, and I.

Remember being I remember being like half a mile or a mile.

Let's say it's half a mile max. It was pretty quick, and then you just walk out to the most gorgeous, gorgeous beach.

Yeah. You can also look up Samuel H. Boardman State Scenic Corridor, which is just it's basically the same thing, just for their.

South so beautiful. I could have spent all day there.

Yeah, that place was really nice. I will give a bit of a fore warning if you go down there. Don't get off trail like I did.

It's like, ooh, path, like, let me go. Yes.

I don't know what I was thinking. I like, I think I was kind of excited because I could sort of walk for the first time in three months, and I was like, watch me walk this crazy path. And sure enough I was like on my hands and knees crawling through certain you know, densely forested, wooded areas.

It's making it sound like it's as crazy like this is like max half a mile straight walk for me. For you know, as you were on your.

Hands and knee, I'm obviously only talking about my perspective because that's the only one I know. Hands and knees, blood everywhere, sweat everywhere, and I was brushing up against a bunch of like foliage, and some of that was poison ivy, which you know, I've run into that in California before. It didn't really we just don't have that in Colorado, and so I don't really think to register that as a possible threat for me myself.

What sucks is later on we find out that he has poison oak. And then we find out that he has poison oak, and then we get home a few days later, he's working on his motorcycle spills gasoline.

All over my gosh, I forgot all about that.

So then it was like poison oak mixed with a gasoline burn. Oh, he was miserable.

I felt so bad for I Like my gas tank had been sitting for like a year or two, and so I was like cleaning out the gas tank, emptied the gas until like clean it out whatever, poured it all over my arms and all over my legs, which I had to burn on the poison ivy burn, and

It's funny because now my friends whenever their husband gets poisoned ivy or poison oak, I'm like the go to person. They're like, how did Dean do them with it?

I just remember like sleeping on the couch occasionally because I couldn't bear to be in the bed and I would like stick to it.

It almost felt like chicken pox level.

Yeah, it was bad. Don't recommend it one bit.

Yeah, So follow the trail at Secret Beach. Oh my gosh, it's just we gotta go back.

And then we went down into California because I think we wanted to see some red woods, but we did. We did see a couple.

I was just actually talking to a friend about this trip. Where did we fly out of because we ended in Redwoods.

We flew to Portland.

We drove all the way back up.

Yeah, you don't remember. So we went to Crescent City, stayed at like a holiday in there or like a you know, some sort of motel, and then we drove up and went Instead of driving up the coast, we went we went like three hours inland kind of like central Oregon, and drove north in that through that town. So we went through like Eugene, which is where University

Okay, I need to say something because we have told the Saint Lucia story of us almost dying in Saint Lucia.

That was just that wasn't death, There wasn't a consequence of death. It was just eerie.

And then this, we've told this story too, and people maybe we're not telling it properly. But two of the scariest instances in my life. This one, like I never felt like I was in danger, but I felt like I was in a horror movie because it was like the way this person was acting, the way that they slowly turned with this smile on their face and like slowly waving, and we could see him in the rear view mirror. It was just like creepy. And then we

Weird, right. So the reason we were going that direction was because I wanted to go do this waterfall hike. And then we get to the trailhead and at the trailhead we see we hear a bunch of people just like firing guns in the wilderness, which is like pretty common.

But after that, I don't know.

We were on a high alert because of that.

It really freaked us.

And on the way there that remember the guy on the highway, he was like he was going like one hundred and ten miles an hour and I was going the speed limit, and he like cut in front of me and then or no, he was like stuck behind me and then cut in front of me and slammed on the brakes and then flipped me off and hunked his horn and sped off again.

Oh, I totally. That's why we were like on edge about a bunch of things. And every instance of that like hour, just reminded me of Chainsaw Massacre, like the beginning of Chainsaw Massacre, and I just had this probably nothing would have happened, but I've just had this really weird and creepy feeling. I was like, we just need to get out of this town.

Yeah, I think we went. We tried to go to Oopqua Hot Springs or Too Kat Falls, one of those two places.

But okay, back to this person just real quick, because I don't think we're doing a proper job again explaining it. This person is standing in the middle of the road just waving and smiling. There's no cars around. And then we slowed down and we're like, is this person okay? And then we slowly go past them, and then that's when they slowly turn around, still with a smile on their face in the middle of the road. Very creepy,

Explained it perfectly. It's kind of maybe one of those like you had to be there moments.

Yeah, And I think I just freaked myself out.

You did, and you do that occasionally, Yeah, yep. And then we went up to Portland and left. It was a good trip. I I mean, yeah, like I said, it was one of my favorite trips I've been on. I like you I like driving, and I liked scenic natural beauty, and that was filled with both of those things. I like. You know, like when you travel internationally, I think it's you kind of lean towards the idea of you have to spend some time in cities and do

So this, yeah, it's very us because they're and granted, you know COVID times, but there weren't a ton of people around and it was just like and there's so much beach and just so much land and it's easy to stay away from people if you want.

Yeah, which I like, which I want?

We The one crowded place we went to is that bridge.

Oh yeah, Moltnoma I think, or waterfall, not bridge. Well, there's a bridge over waterfall. Yeah, let me figure out the name of that, I think. Yeah, yeah, we shure it hanging in our in our office here Columbia River Gorge, that's what it is. Moult, Normana, I think is in Washington.

State, and that was pretty. It was rainy, gloomy, and there were so many people there. Yeah, because it's you know, it's easy access. So whenever you have somewhere with easy access, there's going to be a lot of people.

I was right. Moltnomah Falls is on the way to Columbia River Gorge. Nice, So I was right, but I didn't believe in myself, so I waivered on that.

Yeah. I think there are, like Inland More, a ton of waterfalls and hikes and lots to do.

Yeah. So if you go east from Portland and you could just kind of go up the what is that river? Do you know the name of that river, the Columbia River. I mean, yeah, I had to look it up. But yeah, if you go up that river, it's cool. A lot of a lot of waterfalls, a lot of gorg like. That's in my opinion, a day trip from Oregon. Just fly in, maybe sleep the first night, and then drive up up the river east from there and just get

That's my thing, too, is whenever we go on it like trips from years ago. We're both so much better with our cameras and have better cameras, So I just want to go back in.

I don't think I could get a better shot than that shot right there, though, What would you do differently about that one? That's perfect?

I think I would just want it to be a little bit sunnier.

It was just like I like the moodiness of it, Okay, And also the conditions is unpredictable. You could have the best camera in the world with bad conditions totally.

I just think with our new cameras it could be even better.

I'm pretty happy with that. I don't think I could make it any significantly better, Okay, but I'd like to see you go back and try. No, no, okay, that's a crazy idea. You're right, but I.

Do want to get better photos of the coast.

Yeah, okay, we'll go back, I guess, well, and it's funny too, because in Bandon, I was looking at the map and I was like, oh, we must have driven right by this place because it's right there on the coast. Obviously it's coastal Oregon, and we drove the whole coast from north to south. So I was like, I just I can't really piece together when or like where it would have been when we were on our trip, but we did nice. Yeah, anything you want to add before say goodbye?

I think we could do a separate episode about packing light because it's hard to get into like this was such a quick trip.

Of course I'm going to pack light, yes, and also start for content, so anytime we can stretch a little bit of content out a little bit more, and that's always good, good thing for us to do. So, yeah, what's the smile for? I don't know why are you smiling? Now? You're giving me that weird, eerie feeling that it feel so familiar.

I don't really have much else to say. If you're gonna do what we did, I would highly, highly recommend just booking one hotel in Portland and then just kind of flying by the seat of your pants and figuring it out as you go.

There you go. Wise words from a wise woman, and quite beautiful. Must I add thank you, You're welcome. That's gonna do it for this week's episode of Been There, See That. Please be sure to tune in next week. Thank you so much for coming to organ with us where maybe we suck just a little bit less. Yeah, I jumbled the sentences a little bit. I forgot to say thanks for coming with us to Oregon halfway through the outro, so I just kind of rolled with it.

Thanks for coming with us to Oregon where maybe we sucked just a little bit less. It doesn't really make sense, but that's okay.

I was rolling with it. Was an ideal. I don't think anyone's gonna notice until you hear this little last thirty seconds of us explaining what I was saying. So congratulations, you played yourself. That's me talking to me. We'll see you later.

Oh my god.