Sun 25 – Mon 26 Aug 2019
The remaining fuel in the car would only get us 22 miles. The nearest fuel station was 9 miles away in Elkton and kept irregular hours. The next nearest was in Drain, another 15 miles beyond Elkton, which was beyond our reach.
We couldn’t risk a drive to Elkton without being sure that the fuel station was open – we didn’t have enough fuel in the tank to chance a wasted return trip and back out to Elkton the next day – and we had no phone SIM or wifi access to enable us to check the fuel station opening times.
We had to get this right, so it was time to seek help. Perhaps the sometimes-open reception at Sawyers Rapids RV Park would be manned, even though it was Sunday, and they could ring Elkton fuel station for us. Well, it was and they could ... they got a voicemail announcing that the fuel station was closed on Sundays and Tuesdays. By deduction, we thought it would probably be open on Monday, but no-one could be sure and we had no idea at what time. All we could do would be to set off at a sensible time tomorrow, be prepared to wait and hope they opened.
[Use arrows or swipe to scroll photos.] Amanda’s washing line with walking stick prop, and Dave’s contribution. So proud was he that he considered submitting his design as an entry for the Turner prize.
For today, however, there was nothing we could do: we were completely stranded at Sawyers Rapids. And what a wonderful place to be stranded! We used the campsite washing machine and some inventive ways of drying the load with limited washing line space, to help us get back on top of the civilised human condition, then we got stuck into some sewing and tent repairs. For the remainder of the day, we relaxed on our sandy pitch – visited by a friendly blue jay and protected under a sunshade that I constructed from our washing line and a couple of sleeping bag liners – and in and around the immediately adjacent Umpqua River.
The blazing sun took the chill off the river, which was strangely warmer in the deep central current than at the shallow edge – maybe it was caused by some sort of eddy. An osprey circled overhead, and two herons flew over and also what looked like turkey vultures or perhaps kites.
With the other children from the campsite, the girls played on the big boulder beside our tent and on the flat rocks of the river, and unsuccessfully fished in the river. They joined Dave in picking a few apples from an inconspicuous apple tree hiding on the campsite. They got up to their usual tricks of tying their sarongs in different dress styles and constructing bikinis out of two pairs of knickers and a length of shoelace ... then making and merging little videos whereby they were fully dressed and complaining about the hot sun, then snapped their fingers and miraculously pinged into their homemade knicker-bikinis.
The girls had recently succeeded at Dave’s third and final competition for the USA leg of our trip, to identify at least 100 words that are either different or spelt differently in British and American English. Having now succeeded at all three of Dave’s competitions, they were each due 3 bars of chocolate whenever we might reach a shop. But, more importantly, they had entirely run out of competitions.
Poppy stepped in to fill the breach when she spotted that American quarters (25 cent coins) are marked with different states and territories, and suggested that they should see how many different quarters they could find in their few remaining days. (Spoiler alert: even though we had run our change down, they managed 15 different states/territories before we flew home, including Hawaii and Guam.)
That evening, without so much as a single mosquito or midge bothering us, we made ourselves a little campfire and sat gazing into the flames, musing on the calm peacefulness of our much-needed restorative day, and reminiscing about past times.
We told the girls about some of the tricks we’d used to get them to eat things they didn’t like when they were little. At one stage, neither of them were keen on vegetables (what child is?) and I didn’t always want to be blending things into a slop for them. Hiding vegetables in stews and casseroles didn’t seem to work either – they could spot a particle of vegetable matter a mile off. So, I hit upon the idea of ‘the sacrificial vegetable’, usually green pepper, especially for stews.
I’d chop all the other vegetables into normal-sized chunks and pop them in the stew, but the sacrificial vegetable would be in chunks 4-6 times bigger. The moment the stew was served, with prominent pieces of green pepper floating on top, there were horrified squeals of, “I’m not eating it. You know I don’t like green pepper. Take it out. Take it out.” I’d go through the motions of saying, too bad, they had to eat it. They’d refuse point-blank. Then I’d ‘reluctantly’ back down and remove the green pepper (quickly and easily because the chunks were so big) and, having won the argument, they’d dive straight in and eat the rest of the stew without commenting on all the other vegetables in it.
Poppy also disliked gravy with any ‘meat and two veg’ meal (actually, meat and 3-6 veg in our house). So, for some years, whilst the rest of us had gravy, she instead had an identical-looking, identical-tasting liquor that I quickly renamed ‘meat sauce’. This was like the story my mum used to tell me of when I was little. I hated scrambled egg and, one day, refused to eat it as she served it up. “Oh,” said my mum, “But this isn’t scrambled egg. This is scrambled cheese.” I’d never heard of such a thing and my interest was immediately piqued. It looked like egg, it had the texture, taste and smell of egg, but it was actually cheese. So, whenever my brother had scrambled egg, I had scrambled cheese instead.
But my favourite child-feeding story was when Poppy was about five years old and used to have a slice of toast for breakfast before school. After a while, she started complaining that it was too big and she only wanted half a slice. So, I’d toast a slice of bread, then sneakily cut a thin piece of crust off one edge and present the remainder as half a slice. She ate it fine ... at first.
After a few weeks, she began to peer at it dubiously before eating, then said that half a slice was also too big: she only wanted a quarter of a slice. So, I’d toast a slice of bread, sneakily cut a thin crust off two adjacent edges and present the remainder as a quarter of a slice. It worked ... for nearly two weeks.
The problem was that Poppy has always been very mathematical – the early signs were there as soon as she became mobile and went round of her own accord constantly putting shoes into matching pairs (apparently, my brother did the same when he was tiny). So, one morning, Poppy decided to request four quarters of toast because that would make a whole slice. But she wouldn’t be palmed off simply with a whole slice – “No, Mummy, I want it in quarters like I usually do” – something was afoot, and I could guess what.
Indeed, I still remember Poppy sitting me down, putting the four ‘quarters’ of toast together in front of me, and earnestly explaining that something was going wrong when I was cutting them because, look, these four pieces of toast come out much bigger than a slice of bread ... and here is a slice of bread to prove it. I tried to look surprised. I tried suggesting that bread must get bigger when it was toasted. But she was not convinced. The game was over, and she had won.
The girls soon tucked themselves into bed, but Dave and I stayed out in the warm, gathering dusk, listening to the gentle water rapids and crickets, watching a bat flit about, and contemplating the endlessness of the night sky with its millions of stars and Milky Way stripe. We saw the bright pin-point of a satellite passing over, and were reminded of the only other time we’d seen one ... 18 years ago on a night such as this (but much colder) high up a mountain in a remote part of Yosemite National Park.
Next morning, we packed our tent away and, with some trepidation, set off 9 miles in the wrong direction (eastwards) to the fuel station at Elkton. Luck was smiling on us today because the fuel station was open when we arrived and the lady who topped us up was very friendly and chatty. (In Oregon state, someone always fills your car with petrol for you, like it used to be in the UK in the 1970s: you don’t fill your own tank.)
Very relieved to have fuel again, we drove westwards, back past Sawyers Rapids RV Park and on to Reedsport, where the Umpqua River meets the sea. We saw elk on the way and, although the signboards and seating suggested that it was a well-known elk-viewing area, we still felt fortunate to get a sighting during a hot part of the day.
At the grocery store in Reedsport, we topped up with food. But the chocolate choice was limited and, having already endured one Hershey’s bar between us in the USA, the girls were in no hurry to repeat the experience, so decided to delay their chocolate prizes until we returned to the UK.
It was time to turn away from the Umpqua River that had been a constant of our last three days, and now head south along the renowned Oregon coast.