Kilpchuck Campground (Leaving)
I could hear the wind blowing through the campground. I could actually hear it swirl through different areas and anticipate when it would reach my tent. As I fell asleep my plan was to aim for Cascade Locks KOA in Oregon tomorrow but leave the option to stop somewhere along the way (like Yakima KOA). I was still concerned about my future. I began to wonder if this was the start of a period of uselessness for me. A period where I had nothing to give to anybody. If so, what would be the best way to handle that. Retire to the country and live anonomously until I had something to give? Fight back and force myself to give something? I wondere if there were any examples of people I knew that went through something similar and if I approved of how they handled it.
I was on the road again by 7:30 am listening to oldies on an AM station and passing a mountain that looked remarably like Hobart mountain which dominated eastern landscape of the farm I grew up on near Cottage Grove. I was transported back to my childhood and nostalgic for those Sunday mornng rides over Shoestring road to Church in Drain. I liked the area I was poassing through in that it was wide open like Tucson. I was in a valley, but the mountains and trees were back far enough to give me a view of a good portion of the sky.
By 12:30 pm I was in Yakima looking for gas and a book store. I stopped at an Arctic Circle which I had not eaten at in years (although I saw on in Montana also). I found the KOA to be too crowded for my taste. I looked in the phone book and found that there was a Waldenbooks at the mall at the next exit. To make a long story short, after being misled by signs to a basically abandoned mall, I found a Borders bookstore after about an hour of driving through construction and traffic in the hot sun.
I seleced two new PKD books and a collection of recent SF short stories and another book from the bargain rack. All the experienced tellers vacated their posts as they saw me coming. The only teller left was nervous andd could not figure out how to ring up the bargain book. She had to call the manager who, judging from her end of the telephone conversation, was not anxious to come down. He showed up five minutes later after the teller had rung up 2 or 3 other sales. It turns out here terminal was asking her a question which she was ignoring. The answer to the question according to the disgusted manager was the I then the R key. I did not like Yakima. It reminded me of South Tucson. (Was that a long story, short?)
The wind picked up pretty good as I hit the Columbia Gorge around 4:30 pm. I was not impressed with the surrounding hills which were covered with dry brown grass, ala Klamath Falls. This was kind of bothering me all day. I had been driving by large rivers with ample water, but all the plants seemed dry and brown in the surrounding area. I guess I don't know much about geography or geology or biology. The best part of the drive that day is being able to see the snow covered mountains in the distance. I don't know which ones. Probably Mt hood anyway.
Things were looking better when I pulled into Cascade Locks. I found a nice secluded site at the KOA under some larger fir trees. When I asked the proprietor if he had a site away from the highway he said not to worry about it because I would not be able to hear it over the train. He was right. Like Larabee State Park this site had a private railway running right next to it and the train ran through several time blowing its horn right into my tent.