BY CATHERINE DOOK Garabaldi & South Catherine reading “Wuthering Heights” on her Kobo Reader while at Seal Rocks RV Park.
In the fishing and logging town of Garabaldi in Oregon John and I found a $25 a night RV park with a view of a cannery and a marina. We parked on a little patch of gravel
next to a crooked post with an electrical outlet on the end of it. It was raining hard. “Darling,” I said, “this rain doesn’t show any signs of letting up. Let’s eat out.” ”I saw a Dairy Queen down the road,”
John said. At the thought his whiskers positively shone and his eyes brightened. We were both tired of the incessant rain pouring on the roof of the van, and we were starting to weary of soup and potatoes for supper, warmed on our Coleman stove between bone-chilling downpours. Our wants were few – thriſt stores, gas stations, grocery stores, enough books to read and an RV park every night, but now, nearly halfway through our trip (we could tell because we were nearly halfway through our money), we longed for a bit of fried meat on a bun. “Dairy Queen it is,” I said. “I’m lusting
aſter a burger and ice cream.” We walked through the rain to the
Dairy Queen, and enjoyed our food at a clean table in a building whose interior was identical to every other DQ I’ve ever been in. But the vanilla ice cream, dipped in chocolate, was a pleasant surprise. Te last cone I’d tried to eat had been while I was undergoing chemo, when really delicious food like chocolate all tasted like chemical waste, thereby ruining the experience for me completely. Tis cone tasted as good as recovery from cancer, and I savoured every lick. “Delicious,” I said with a sigh. “Absolutely delicious.” We walked back arm in arm through the rain, feeling fortified enough to face
22 RVT 147 • MAY/JUNE 2012
another night of rain in our cosy shag-carpeted Execuvan – a night warm with an electric space-heater and happy thoughts. Te following morning we awakened rested and began our morning routine of coffee
from a thermos leſtover from the day before in bed followed by a brisk rendition or two of ‘Yesterday’ on the recorder. Either the coffee or the recorder drove John out into the rain, desperate for breakfast. A little recon work, and he discovered that the RV park office would serve us coffee and microwaved eggs on a bun for a modest fee, so we sat, blinking a little, in the small restaurant there and enjoyed the drawling accents of the people around us. I felt transplanted and exotic. “How do you feel, John?” I asked him. “Full,” he replied. “Let’s go.” Fastidious travelers might turn their noses up at microwaved eggs on a biscuit, but
aſter five days of potatoes and soup and sandwiches, to us they tasted like a feast. We drove past the giant electric ‘G’ for Garabaldi planted high on a mountainside.
“Tourist attraction?” I asked. “Landmark for fishermen,” John responded. “Um,” I said. We passed an enormous smokestack, the only feature leſt
from a long-abandoned factory. I made John stop so I could take a picture. We passed ‘Elk Crossing’ signs and stopped at an enormous Fred Meyer store in Tillamook to buy a small $10 radio to replace the five dollar thriſt- store one we couldn’t get to work anymore. South of Tillamook I spotted a sign for the Naval Air Museum, where
during WW II the Americans built and stored the blimps they used to escort traffic up and down the West Coast. “Submarine spotters,” John told me. “Te blimps were submarine
spotters.” “Pull off here,” I yelled. We took a winding road across a flat field to the
old blimp hanger, paid the senior’s rate to get in and wandered through a wonderland of restored DC3s and other archaic aircraſt I used to ride in when I was young, all painted and most in working order. Te blimps were long gone, but they used to squeeze five of them in that hanger; it was a very large space. We drove through Lincoln City, and because I was feeling hungry, I spied three
candy stores and two Tai restaurants. I whined until John stopped for coffee at a gas station in Newport, where I was astonished at the amount of liquor for sale. A friendly cashier brewed a pot of decaffeinated coffee just so I could have a cup. “Americans are so friendly,” I said to John. By this time we’d discovered the milk and cheese of Tillamook County; our mugs
were brim full of Umpqua-brand milk and our sandwiches stuffed with Tillamook cheese and kosher pickles, put together while I sat on the porta-pottie lid and balanced a tray on my knees and reached across the interior of the Execuvan to the Styrofoam- lined cooler where we kept our groceries. Our lunches, we felt, would stand up against those of any cordon bleu chef.
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