Living on the road isn’t easy. The little things that as humans we exploit on the day to day are starkly missing. Things like showers, flushing toilets, and all the amenities we have in our homes are few and far between while living out of your vehicle. And to be completely honest, I am loving every minute of it.
'Where we going, man?'
'I don't know but we gotta go.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road
On April 11th I hopped in “Cassady”, my 2015 Subaru Forester, and never looked back as we made our way down the Oregon Coast. If you haven’t been on the Oregon Coast, it is one of the most dramatic and scenic of the coastal drives in the country. Dense pine forests drastically end at sheer cliffs that drop straight down to the white-capped, crashing waves of the Pacific Ocean. Sand dunes seem to rise out of thin air and rock formations grander than the Goonies could ever show us protrude from the foaming body of water that stretches past Hawaii and crashes on the shores of Japan and Australia.
The second night spent in Cassady was at a trailhead just south of Cape Perpetua about two miles from the highway. Pacific Northwest rain covers everything in a glistening dew-like glaze. I maneuvered Cassady back and forth, side to side, to try and level him out and after a few tries we are level and ready to set up for the night. To block the light (and peeping eyes) the windows are covered with reflectix coverings I made before the trip began. I traced the shape of the windows onto the reflectix, cut out the shapes, and used friction tape on the edges to avoid fraying and as a means to keep the coverings in place. Then I laid out my sleeping bag, fluffed my pillow, and changed my clothes to make myself ready for bed. After which, I cooked some dinner on the Jetboil, ate in utter silence, then crawled into bed at 7:15pm as I awaited dawn and the trip to California.
Highway 101 twists and turns its two lanes north and south like a snake skating out of the way of an oncoming vehicle. It seems that every bend in the road leads to another spectacular view, and within the first two hours, I am already two hours behind the schedule that was set in my mind. But the beauty of living on the road, with no job or obligations to rush to means that being behind schedule means absolutely nothing. So, that turn off that says “Ocean View”? Yeah, I’ll take that. “Scenic Viewpoint”? Which way do I go? Historic marker? What can I learn more about today? And this continues for two days before I hit California. And my first night in California was a glorious one...........