Portland

I took the greyhound bus to Portland, the bus was completely full and the front two seats being taken up by one very large human being. I befriended the least scary looking people and sat with them at the back on the bus next to the toilet and shared snacks. In the end someone got on and had no choice but sit next to what space was left next to the large person.
From the station I got the light rail to the airport where I had booked 2 nights in the Ramada*, a proper hotel, with the luxery of a selection of toweling, a double bed and TV, desk and all that other stuff you get in generic hotels. The reason for this extravagance was all hostels were booked out and I was hiring a car from the airport so being close by was useful. I spent the next half hour trying to make a cup of tea with the tea/coffee facities, which consisted of an mini espresso making appliance which looked rather like a Fisher-Price toy. After trying to follow the instruction** and muking up the first brew I managed in the end to make a rather aweful cup of coffee.

I spent the next day looking around the centre of Portland, there are many bridges in Portland, an excess of bridges. The centre is nice enough and every street corner has a weirdo muttering to themselves. The day after the Ramada shuttle bus took me to the aiport where I picked up the hire car. They gave me a 2012 new car, cringe, it was a Kia Rio or something. I was assured it was very eccomical at 37mpg, guffaw! Thats a land rover by European standards. I spent the next 4 hours*** trying to get out of Portland on route 26 to the coast. It was aweful, I had a Portland map, but still managed to criss cross the river a dozen times over probably every possible bridge before escaping a few times in the wrong direction and finally getting the right peice of tangled spagetti that is Portland freeway system to the coast. I was in tears by the time I achieved this and thought I was to spend the entire 6 days rental trapped in Portland, bit like The Prisoner when the big bubble comes and gets him just as he almost escapes the weird town. But I did escape and it was pouring of rain by the time I got to the coast, the first tow towns seems a bit grim. It was getting late and I was on the look out for a campground, I had stopped at a roadside information point and another car pulled up and asked if I knew of any campgrounds, I said I was looking for the same thing, so we joined forces and just down the road we found a very nice Oregon state park. They told me about a place called Crater Lake and that they were going there the next day, in the car also were 4 red haired girls, they were such a lovely family, the next day they were coming back from the beach and one of the girls gave me a gift of a crab shell she'd found on the beach and just before they left, the eldest gave me a colouring in picture she had done of a seal, so sweet! I put it in my important documents folder.


*Not excatly to the Ramada, that entailed a further 
**Usablity fail
***It was closer to 5.