Oregon Coast Edition of SORT
As of Monday, June 3, 2024 at 6:00 PM pacific time:
| Surf | Sand | Sun |
|---|---|---|
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| Rented a condo on the Oregon coast just outside the town of Seaside. The first two days were chilly and rainy but the next two were spectacular. | ||
The title of this post comes from the sentiment my cousin Louise (AKA: Weezie) wrote on the envelope of her Christmas card to us. And for good measure repeated inside the card as well. Donna has said she is going to write her a note explaining our relocation, but has been putting it off for the last week or 10 days, so I’m going to write the reason down here, maybe spurring her into doing it in that card.
For more than the past dozen years, in nearly every one of those summers, we have taken a 2 week vacation to come out west. One of those weeks has been dedicated to visit Donna’s youngest brother and his fledgling family. The first year it was to attend the baby shower for he and Beth’s first child. Along the way James has been joined by two subsequent sisters and this year that number one child will be getting his driver’s learner permit. Yikes!
The other vacation week has been to explore western America, just the two of us. Mostly Washington and Oregon, but we’ve been through a bit of California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. The desert southwest, while stunningly beautiful in its own way, didn’t hold a candle to the Pacific Northwest’s appeal to us. So this is where we visited more than anywhere else. We spent time on the Olympic Peninsula, in the San Juan Islands, central Washington, the Cascade Mountains and the Oregon coast. Every time we returned from one of forays out here we would come back, look at each other and say, “We need to move out there.” After 2017’s western trip we started seriously considering a move away from our home of 30 years, Aiken, SC.
We started with a couple criteria for our new home, 1) a small, but not too small, town, 2) was nowhere too close to the big cities of Seattle or Portland and 3) be close, but not too close to brother and family. We used started by looking in Washington state and the first serious contender was the town of Sequim (pronounced skwim) on the Olympic Peninsula. It was less than 100 miles to the Morrison Manse in Granite Falls, but took over two hours to get there because it involved two ferry rides. The ferry rides were actually a big plus for us though, as we always managed to get in several on every visit out that way, we enjoyed them so much. When we started home shopping on Zillow in our price range it was apparent that, even in a small town of just 6,000 souls, that that money wasn’t nearly enough to put us in something nowhere as nice as we are used to.
Our 2018 trip out west was to Lake Tahoe for a wedding, because we were both retired at that point, we drove and took our time. When we got back to South Carolina we were now more determined than ever to move out west. The leading contender had become Carson City, Nevada because we enjoyed ourselves there one weekend day visit. But when we started looking at houses on Zillow it had the same cost problem as Sequim.
I then made a spreadsheet of towns in several western states with some specific criteria, population of 25 to 40 thousand, altitude of a minimum of 2500′, fairly temperate (not as hot as Aiken, but not too much lower than there in the winter) and more sunny days than cloudy, plus the big one -housing affordability. The field was quickly narrowed down to one city, Klamath Falls, Oregon. We searched around the internet as best we could to look the place over, from afar it did look like a winner. We started virtually stalking house on Zillow and were pleasantly surprised with what we found.
Our trip out west for 2019 was now set, one week for visiting family in Washington and the other in Klamath Falls. We picked the last week in June for Oregon because there were lots of events scheduled for then and that left the 4th of July week to visit Granite Falls. We had an AirBnB for a week in Klamath and wandered around town, enjoyed several car related events, ate at a few local restaurants, did some geocaching and even had a realtor show us 4 homes that we had chosen from Zillow. We both agreed, we could live there.
We returned to Aiken on July 10th, we put our house on the market July 29th, we agreed on selling the house September 9th, we closed on it on October 11th and started driving to Oregon on the next day.
Found this cool Topography Map created by KRANKARTA on Imgur. See your state rendered like this there.
Not long after we got here we went to the local DMV office to pick up info on getting a driver’s licenses and registering a car in the Beaver State. We both studied the driver’s manual so we would be ready to take the knowledge test. Of course there would be a quick vision test, but what worried us was on the website one of the listed items said: Pass the drive test;. And on the back side of the application PDF was the Driver Test Score Sheet. But, when looking at the requirements for taking a drive test, near the bottom was this caveat: You may not have to take a drive test if you’re new to Oregon and give us your out-of-state license. It can be expired up to 1 year. The words may not were still slightly ominous…
To get a license we needed a permanent address, so we had to wait at least until we closed on the house. By then it was the holidays, so we waited until January. Then we had a big snowstorm. Then pretty soon it was the end of January. By this time we were pretty sure we wouldn’t have to do Drive Test and vowed to go get our licenses in February. Early this week we read through the driver knowledge test booklet again figuring on going Wednesday. We found another excuse not to go then, but today was the day.
Donna was worried about the knowledge test, she was confident she knew the stuff, but she is terrible test taker. Me, I was not worried at all, most of it is common sense and you could miss seven out of the 35 total questions. When Donna came out of the booth she wasn’t sure she passed. She lost track of how many she missed, but the machine didn’t throw any red X’s on the screen. Well, she did pass and got her driver’s license. Me, I had my confidence shaken from the git go, I missed the first two questions! Then I aced a few sign recognition ones, before missing another one. I had now used up almost half my allowed misses in the first 6 questions, yikes. I tiptoed through the rest of the test and I passed missing 5 questions. Comparing notes afterwards we both had the same sort of experience, acing the signs and lane marking stuff, missing questions we were sure we knew and getting lucky on ones we guessed at.
Sixty-five dollars each later, we are proud owners of a gray scale temporary paper Oregon driver’s license. The real one comes in the mail in about a week.
We arrived in Klamath Falls a month ago today.
We are still stuck in that awkward time between agreeing on a price and actually taking possession of the house and the big hold up is the bank’s appraisal, there is a 4 week backlog. At this rate we will have to get lucky to get into the house by Christmas. We have agreed to extend our stay in the AirBnB until 12/21. The Host wrote back saying she was going to block off the place until the 5th of January, just in case we need longer.
Both the rental car and the Mini were returned to their respective homes this afternoon. On further troubleshooting it was determined that both the #2 and #4 cylinders were reading bad. Because we had the coil pack on #1 replaced in May and now #2 & #4 were acting up, we agreed to go ahead and change the coil pack on #3 because sure enough in a couple weeks that probably would have started acting up as well. Add in the cast of the rental car for a week and are out over $600.
Over the weekend I developed some pain in the upper left of my mouth. It really didn’t feel too bad, until this morning when the pain increased to about a 3 of 10. I though maybe it was time to see a dentist. There were 10 listed that were in our dental insurance network. Several were a little too far away so I eliminated them. There were two practically next door to each other, not far from our favorite grocery store, so I called one of them hoping I could get to see the doctor this week. The receptionist said, “We just had a cancellation for 4:00 PM. Would that do?” I said, “See you then.” They took x-rays. After the dentist took a look them, she then poked and scraped and prodded around the two bad teeth. She said’ “I don’t see anything obvious, maybe it is just a sinus infection.” She prescribed an antibiotic and said if it doesn’t clear up in a week, call me. Then she added, “And call me if it does work.”
We have had a fairly mild November so far here, but things are about to get real with highs in the 40’s and lows in the upper teens to low 20s. And next week leading up to Thanksgiving there is a good chance of a bit of the white stuff.
Started in one state (Alabama), crossed a whole second state (Mississippi) and ended in the third state (Louisiana.) Today’s drive was entirely Interstate free, we did cross over or under a couple though. Through out Alabama and Mississippi the state and county roads were mostly nicely maintained and smooth. As soon as we got to Louisiana we were greeted by the thud, thud, thud, of roads made from concrete segments. This annoying, constant, repetitive bumping is especially prevalent here because the soft underground allows the 100′ x 12′ segments to slowly over time shift up and down in comparison to it’s neighbors. So while Interstates in general suck, those in the Pelican State suck more.
I set my phone’s alarm for 5:00 AM, to get an early start. I woke up at 4:45 on my own, so we just got going. All the stuff we are carrying seemed like an awful lot while it was sitting on the floor inside the AirBnB. It seemed like a lot when making 5 trips from room to car too. But with the back seats folded down flat the Mini swallowed it right up.
I don’t know it was just one of those days or was it because the both of us are so frazzled from the whirlwind last two weeks, but we had a very eventful day. Here are the Top Five:
To the best of my guessing ability, either late today or maybe early tomorrow the Mini reached the 35,000 mile plateau.