Sometimes you just need to get out of town

Warning: This post is old. Not spoiled or rancid or decrepit or anything, it's just that's it's been poking around in the Fairy Queen's brain for going on two months now. Oh well.

Every year we in the realm of public education look at the October calendar and say, Really? When does the teaching happen? No school for this, that and the other thing. Honestly, people, is it a crime for kids to go to school on Fridays in October?

And yet...one of those Fridays is called the "statewide inservice day." Back when the FQ was a sad newbie teacher, the one who cried every day but refused to quit because she won't quit something while she's still bad at it, her terrible mostly absentee principal said one useful thing. When the FQ asked what she was supposed to do on the statewide inservice day, mostly absent but destructive when she was present principal said, "Stay home and soak your feet."

One time in 10 years have I used that day to take a class. It was amazing (Jeff Anderson at Wordstock...if you care about writing with kids you'll find his books). But more recently that mid-October three day weekend has been about reconnecting with my beloved soul sister E (or is she W in these pages? I can never remember. Phrodaux calls her E, so I'm sticking with that). We've had rejuvenating girl time in her home town a couple of times (they have a combination spa/wine bar in that town! Why doesn't every town have that??? Champagne and pedicures, ahhhhh). But I digress.

This year we decided to change things up, meet somewhere in between our far-flung cities.  I was up for anything, because leading into this weekend the DRAMA! in my classroom had left me feeling like this:

What better tonic than to drive up the Columbia River Gorge? If you haven't been there, get yourself on a plane or train or bus or something. Right now. We'll wait.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/Columbia_River_Gorge_%283%29.jpg

See? Nothing like some wide open spaces, geological marvels, historic highways, groovy tunnels, and dramatic weather to clear the head.

E and I met in Hood River, took a long walk by the water (so-so day for windsurfing), then took a drive in the country out by Parkdale to pay homage to the recently departed, much-lamented Pumpkin Fun Land. Imagine a pumpkin patch with views of both Mt. Hood and Mt. Adams. Add a corn maze, u-pick flowers, and a fruit stand offering a zillion variety of applies at 20 cents/pound. Add to that the trippiest display of gourds you've ever seen! Pick a theme: 50 states, famous books or movies, whatever...they would create a series of vignettes out of gourds. Oh, Rasmussen family, how you will be missed.

Uh oh, I may have digressed again. Damn that Phrodaux. He seems to be wearing off on me.

Eventually E and I found our way back to Hood River in time to wander, shop, and have dinner. Partly because we are old ladies and partly because this is the best part, we were back in our fancy river-view hotel room to talk talk talk talk talk by 9:00pm.

The next day we caravaned to the next amazing part of the journey. Once you leave Hood River, the land changes, opens, widens. Suddenly the sky is VERY BIG and it's hard to take it all in. Back when I taught 4th grade, teaching about the Oregon Trail was the best part. And I never could convey how it must have felt to easterners or midwesterners to confront the landscape here. Because really, how could you?

 Our destination was the Maryhill Museum, this link is to Wikipedia which I feel sort of squishy about but it's a good way to convey the outright WEIRDNESS of the collection here. The people who work there...I think they don't really get how odd it is that one museum has Rodin, chess sets, Native American artifacts, and all sorts of overwrought eastern European stuff from Queen Marie of Romania (related to both Queen Victoria and Tsar Alexander, and a woman who knew how to cultivate a signature/brand).

 

(Phrodaux here, I'm not sure how evident it is, but this place is really out in the middle of no-where, really, no-where. I only went once as a kid, and you are driving, driving, driving, then you get past the green, out into the other Oregon, then up on the hill, just across the river in Washington, you see a patch of green and this big house, really, just past the stonehenge, really? yes, out in the nothing is this place, there is no starbucks, no mcburgervillekingland, nothin'. )

 

But the BEST PART, the best part when I visited as a kiddo (when my family of origin was escaping their family of origin one stormy Easter), as a mid-20 something taking herself on Artist's Dates, and now, this time, was the Theatre de la Mode, post-WWII Parisian fashion on 18" tall mannequins because there were no materials just after the war. Have I mentioned that E and I were roommates in Paris in 1988? That we were not fashionistas but we had a really good time? That we knew where to find all the best chausson aux pommes and while our French didn't get a lot better, our lives immeasurably did? While enjoying the 1946 fashions we kept getting too close to the displays and setting off the alarms. Man, we are bad ass girls, still.

The best part of the museum is the Frenchie fashions, but the best part of the weekend was still to come. Lunch on the terrace, in the sun, t-shirt weather with my best pal.

 Sigh. Too soon it was time for our last stop: Stonehenge. As if Sam Hill's museum wasn't weird enough, there's his WWI memorial, scale model of Stonehenge just up the road. Trippy indeed.

Too soon, time to drive home. East for a million hours for her, west for just a couple for me. Weather changed as I drove, morphing from sun and warmth to gray and wet and menacing.

 But it was all good. I was in my newish car with the seat heaters and the MP3 player, Vampire Weekend on "Play All." I had girl time and sunshine in my rearview mirror, snuggly nap bed with my sweetie and my pups waiting for me up ahead. Sometimes you just need to get out of town, but after that you just need to go home.