Quick Catch Up: Portland & Eugene

Whew. The past couple of weeks have been crazy busy for us – lots going on, lots of new friends, lots of adventure – including some solo trips for each of us and some new awesome upgrades to the bus.

But before we get to the really fun stuff, we need to catch up on our travel adventures up until that point. So, I’m going to compress 10-days into one post. Fasten on your seat belt and join us for a quick recap..

Portland, Oregon

One of the reasons that made the trip up the Oregon Coast extra tempting as our October adventure, was a stop in Portland would be feasible.

Our dear friends Lisa, Wayne and Andrew had moved up there from Lake Havasu, AZ last summer and were continuing to love it there – and we always enjoy catching up with them.

So after completing our lighthouse tour, we headed out from Newport into Portland. We had contemplated a stop in McMinneville to view the air and space museum there (where the Spruce Goose is), but with the mobile internet news hitting faster than we could keep up with – there just weren’t enough hours in the day.

So on we pressed to Portland, and arrived to our street camping location in front of our friend’s house.

We just love their neighborhood and neighbors. They live on an especially wide road, and have perfect parking for our bus that doesn’t obstruct any traffic.

While RV parking on the streets in Portland is technically not allowed, we had no problem with it the last year. And all of their neighbors seem to appreciate us – so much so, they come out to help us get parked, visit with us and invite us to neighborhood gatherings.

We had intended to just stay a couple days to visit our friends, so we didn’t publicly announce we were coming to town. We just knew we wouldnt have time to meet up with everyone. Portland just seems like the kind of town we could stay months in and never meet all the awesome people there we’d like to.

We honestly didn’t do too much in Portland during our visit aside from helping our Mobile Internet Aficionado members make their October Cellular Shake-Up decisions, visit with our friends and enjoy urban living with everything we need in walking distance. There were many shared meals, lots of indulging in eating out, lots of casual hang out time and lots of rain. Oh goodness, lots of rain.

We did go downtown once for lunch and to fondle an iPhone 6 in person at the Apple store. Otherwise, we stayed in our cool little neighborhood.

Despite not announcing our location, we did get one random inquiry from a dude named J. D. Roth (who started the ‘Get Rich Slowly’ blog) who had been referred to us by mutual friends as a resource about RV living.

He happened to mention he lived in Portland, and we happened to mention we were currently in town.. and thus serendipity brought us together on our only unbooked afternoon for a fun afternoon of swapping stories and answering his questions about his upcoming RVing adventures. (See you out there J.D!)

Our weekend plans on the way into Eugene got canceled, so we opted to stay in Portland mainly to catch up on projects and sleep. With Verizon having started contacting Millenicom customers, we were working long hours fielding inquiries and distributing information we learned.

And ironically, the morning we were planning to leave anyway, the City of Portland tagged our bus with a 72 hour warning to move before getting towed.

That was a first for us, but not unexpected at all considering the length of time we were visiting our friends. We’re grateful for the warning and permission to stay for another 3 days, but we were ready to move on to Eugene. Ironically, some folks passing by saw the tow warning and stopped by to profusely apologize for their city – and thank us for bringing dollars to their neighborhood.

Just gotta love Portland!

Eugene, Oregon

Coming to Eugene had two purposes for us. It was the next stop after hosting at Cape Blanco Lighthouse for two months for our friends over at WheelingIt to get some repairs done on their motorhome before we start our caravan down to the southwest together. And because of that planned rendezvous, I had booked a flight out of Eugene to Florida to visit my mom for a special family event.

It was an easy drive down to Eugene, and we stopped at the city’s free RV dumpstation to empty our tanks after a week of street camping. We then pulled into our gracious hosts at AMSolar to spend some time with our friends Deb & Greg and return the sample solar panel they had lent us for our testing.

Upon arriving, they had plans for the evening, but we made dinner plans for the next night to meet up with them and Nina & Paul.

And almost immediately we had two blog followers contact us to see if we might be available for a meet up!

With only a couple nights in town, we proposed a meet up that evening for the six of us. The evening was spent getting to know Malcom & Debra – who are having a transit bus converted at nearby Paradise Coach (the same place our friends Ben & Karen are having their sweet Flxible converted). And also Patsi & Mark, who are newly on the road and had just had a solar installation at AMSolar done.

It was a wonderful evening making new friends, and we hope to see everyone down the road!

The next evening was spent with Deb & Greg and Nina & Paul, who had not met before but had communicated over the years. Deb & Greg graciously invited Nina & Paul to join us in their lot for their stay in the area.

The next morning I left out for my own adventures.. leaving Chris, Nina and Paul to carry on and meet up with me in a few days in Reno.

Stay tuned… lots of updates to catch you up on as to what we all did, including a long awaited bus upgrade that serendipitously came together!

Up Next: Our little caravan is taking a breather in the Reno area for a few days to catch up, re-stock and recharge. Then we’ll continue meandering our way down Highway 395 into southern California. We have no particular plans and no destination in mind once we get down there. Actually, we have no plans until early March! Everything is routing by serendipity baby!