The Colossal Weight of our Expectations
- Otherwise known as our trip to Oregon.

Around the end of March, my wife and I were slogging through a mediocre semester at college. I had met my demise in a French class, and my wife was regularly stuck in a lab studying soil samples. Around that time, everyone around us started going on trips. The West Coast, Florida, Disney Land. We were stuck in our basement apartment doing four hours of homework a night. We survived, barely, thanks to sitcoms and ice cream.
The travel bug can only nest for so long, and we caved. “Why aren’t we traveling?” we asked. “We’re young! We have no obligations!” Before we knew it, we had booked two Airbnb’s (our first time), one in Portland and one in Seattle. We did our best to milk every discount out of the system. Needless to say, our campus jobs didn’t bring in an impressive income. That was that! All we had to do was endure until the summer. The end of June rolled around soon enough, and we were off.
Oregon confused us. From what we had heard, anything short of a rainforest would disappoint. Call us ignorant or call us spellbound, but Oregon was to somehow combine the Amazon, lumberjacks, hippies, and the Swiss Alps all into one. You can imagine our surprise, leaving Boise on day two of our drive, when nothing but barren hills of dry weeds met our gaze. Were we deceived? Was Oregon merely a step above the wilderness of eastern Idaho? The summer heat reminded us of the Utah desert we had desperately hoped to escape.
Finally, we reached La Grande. “Aha, trees!” we thought, ignorant again of the even bleaker landscape that awaited us across the narrow stretch of the northern Umatilla forest. Yet, despite our misconceptions, Oregon slowly unfolded herself. Trains weaved in between steep hills. The cliffs of the eastern Columbia river lit up in the afternoon sun. Windmills stretched for miles across the plateaus.

Our funky amalgamation of tree huggers, rainforests, and snowcapped mountains, though false, didn’t evade us for long. Mount Hood was the first glimpse of our imaginary world. Rising above the copper rolling hills, it stood like a gatekeeper to a mysterious world. It dodged in and out of our front window, always growing larger and closer. All of a sudden, and without any warning, we found ourselves deep in the trees of the Historic Columbia River Highway. Lush ferns and towering pine covered the hill to our left. The river sprawled to our right, steady and content. We stopped every couple of miles, strolling up to waterfalls and meandering on nicely paved paths. As we walked through old tunnels and dipped our feet in cool streams the colossal weight of our expectations began to lift from our shoulders.
Portland was roasting the two days we spent in the city. Hotter than our departing state, in fact! Antique stores in Sellwood and the dense Forest Park kept us cool. We drove wherever the bridges would take us, sometimes even immediately over and back, though not intentionally. Of course, we went to Powell’s Bookstore. I bought a graphic novel, my wife, an old Nancy Drew. The hills led us up to the Pittock Mansion, letting us peer back at the city and Mount Hood. We spent our last evening driving around Lake Oswego and sniffing roses in Washington Park.

Sunday morning, we woke early and set out immediately for the coast. We weren’t the only ones seeking cooler vistas: Portland ended up reaching 101 degrees. We took the route through the Tillamook Forest. Though Tillamook itself was sunny and pastoral, 20 minutes west, a low cloud blanketed the hills and the temperature dropped drastically. The scene was moody, and exactly what we wanted. Slowly, we made our way up the coast. Oceanside, Cape Meares, Rockaway, Oswald West, Canon Beach, Seaside, and finally Astoria. Fish and Chips at Tom’s. Each beach was different, sometimes rocky, sometimes smooth and long. There was no real sunset. Instead, the light slowly dimmed to a grainy black, and we drove the long way home in the dark.
What was Oregon for us, two Rocky Mountain kids? Was it the fulfillment of the ideal we had concocted in our head? Was it the total release of all our anticipations? No, but it was better. The next morning, we drove to Seattle. Though the transition between states was seamless, we knew we had left the trains and the bridges, the beaches and the gorge, and everything that was Oregon. It was our first time there together, most certainly not our last.
