FROM PORTLAND, OREGON

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Return to Portland

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PORTLAND, Oregon, May 31, 2007 - The last day on the Oregon Trail has been the most uneventful.  I took a straight line from Bandon to Portland (see above map), and got there in early afternoon.  I had some thoughts of doing more mountain touring east of Eugene/ Springfield, but decided I'd had enough by the time I got there.  So I just pressed on on the I-5 until I got to Clackamas, a southeastern suburb of Portland, where I dropped anchor for the day.  

The only thing worth recording along the way was a herd of deer that I spotted along Umpqua River about 10 miles east of Reedsport.  They are so tame they did not even bother to look up at me while I was taking the pictures.

To recap, my own Oregon Trail covered about 1,250 miles in six days (see the vertical map along the right side of this page, where I had charted the approximate routes for each day).  That's an average of just over 200 miles per day.  Which actually sounds a lot less than it feels.  Considering the mountainous terrain through which I have driven about 80% of the time, and the concentration that it took to drive, navigate, observe, record and plan ahead, it feels as if I had covered a lot more ground than that.

Either way, it was an unforgettable and fulfilling experience.  As it turn out, maybe I had saved unwittingly the best for last? (Oregon was the last of the continental states that I had not visited before).  So I highly recommend it for an adventure in the Pacific Northwest, especially for urban dwellers anxious to get out of the rat race for a while.  Just like this "desert rat' did... :-)

And that's all she wrote on Day 6 of my Oregon Trail.

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