Following our trek up the Redwood Highway, we journeyed through Oregon, Walla Walla, and got one night near Rainier.
From Crescent City we went north to Florence, Oregon. We were supposed to camp north of Florence but we were a few hours behind, so we ended up staying at an available hotel, a casino in Florence. We’re not big casino people, so we walked around for a little bit and used a casino chip credit. Kelly went up 10 bucks on a poker machine and we called it a night.
The next day we picked up some coffee on the river and then went sand sledding—a pretty novel experience. We heard that Florence, Oregon inspired Frank Herbert when writing Dune. Apparently they are the largest coastal sand dunes in North America. We got there early in the morning and there was no one around, which was absolutely the way to do it.
Then we went to The Brass Bell, which is a cute bookstore and gift store in old town Florence that carries our book. We met Mendee and Josué, signed some books, and dropped some cards off. From there, we went up the coast, stopping through a few coastal towns along the way seeing some rugged Pacific scenery.
Eventually, we ended up at Tillamook for the creamery tour. We get to try some tasty reserve cheeses, and also look into the factory where they make their cheese and learn about their farmer-owned company and cheese-making process. We finished off our trip there with a chocolate hazelnut shake—yum.
After that, we headed to Aloha. We caught up on some Kickstarter orders in the morning and then went to our first event at Guardian games in Aloha. We played forage with a few different groups of folks.
Afterwards we went to our first McMenamins with our friend Reggie (@rolling.reggie), got to play a few games (even playtested some new games we are working on) and then crashed for the night at our friend Seth’s place near Portland.
We dropped off orders at the post office in Gresham on our way to Mount Hood. We visited the Timberline Lodge and then wandered around the PCT near the lodge for a little while. This is a great jaunt with views of a bunch of mountains in the southern Cascades in addition to Mount Hood.
After a hike there we headed straight to our event in Redmond, Oregon at Kobold brewing. We got to meet some new friends that came by just for our games, looped in by Dee (@dndwithdee).
Our friend Diana (@dianaoftherose) also stopped by! We got to play Forage, catch up, and chat about upcoming game conventions.
The next day we got to explore Bend. We had some great Thai food at The Wild Rose and walked along the river near downtown Bend. We then went to check on our book at Budd + Finn in the old Mill District and by a game store, Modern Games, before heading to Wildwood—a cocktail bar around the corner. To finish off our night, we playtested a new game in our hotel lobby.
The next day we went to Smith Rock which is a beautiful desert rock formation with the Crooked River running through it. We did the Misery Ridge trail, which starts with a steep hike up several switchbacks to the top of Smith rock—pretty tough in the heat—but worth it for views of the valley and over to the Cascades on the way down, followed by a walk along the river back to where we started. It was a great way to spend our morning.
From there, we headed up to Walla Walla, Washington in a drive through central and eastern Oregon. We went through some high desert, followed by a drive along the Columbia river, a pretty majestic site.
We got to our hotel in Walla Walla and were treated with a couple sips of complementary wine from the area. In case you didn't know, Walla Walla is known for a couple of things: wine and onions. We had both during our stay. The next day we walked around downtown Walla Walla with its cute historic core. We stopped into Book and Game and chatted with Julie, the game purchaser for the store. She was excited to see the book and the cards and ended up picking up some for the store.
We then went to brunch at the Maple Counter, ordered a comically large apple pancake that was way too much for us to finish. We walked around some more, dropped some Kickstarter orders at the post office, and hit a curb with a metal grate pretty hard on the way, taking a chunk out of our front tire.
Went to a tire place (thank you Marquez tires, we appreciate how fair and fast you were). We then went to Saviah cellers which makes a line of wines called The Jack. Their red blend was a staple when hosting playtesting nights for the PNW book.
We were supposed to head further east to Spokane and Coeur d’Alene Idaho, but there were a few wildfires that had popped up in the area. We didn’t really feel like camping in the smoke. Instead, we headed west to Mount Rainier National Park. We got some great views of Rainier driving up to it, and then we saw the mist set in.
We woke up the next morning and the mountain was gone. Lots of rain and mist. Very PNW. Thankfully, this wasn’t our first rodeo with Rainier—we still had a great time at the Paradise Inn lodge, then headed back east to Wenatchee for our next set of events.
