^{Douglas A4-E Skyhawk and Consolidated PBY Catalina}

As we left Portland  , I suggested we make a run for home. Michele suggested wine tasting in the Willamette Valley and then sweetened the deal by mentioning that the town of McMinnville was home to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum.  I had never heard of  the Evergreen Museum but I love airplanes and was immediately sold.

To back up a little, I went to Washington in 1976 to see the newly reopened Smithsonian. I had been there a couple of years earlier but most of the Smithsonian had been shut down for a major remodel to celebrate our 200 year anniversary. After my first visit, my two favorite museums were The National Portrait Gallery and the Corcoran Craft Museum and I assumed that, once they were opened, the bigger, more famous Smithsonian galleries would be much better. They weren’t and I was very disappointed. At the time, I didn’t know why.

Maybe three of four years later – maybe ten, but later – I read a column by Stephen J. Gould that explained everything. I don’t remember if I fell in love with Gould’s column, This View of Life and then subscribed to Natural History Magazine to get them or the other way around, but, either way, I subscribed to Natural History and anxiously awaited each month’s Stephen J. Gould column. Gould wrote about evolution and I was deeply involved in trying to understand it.

As an aside, I never did understand Darwinian evolution and still have grave doubts about it. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in the fossil record, the facts of change, and the fact of change. I believe the earth is about 4.5 billion years old. What I don’t understand is the how of evolution and Darwinian Evolutionary Theory doesn’t satisfy me. Survival of the fittest seems to be a tautology explaining nothing; how do we know they were the fittest? because they survived! What is left unexplained is how everything, including Homo sapiens, evolves against the Second Law of Thermodynamics which says that everything moves towards equilibrium. The evolution of the universe is away from equilibrium. The Big Bang Theory – I think the Great Unfolding is a better name – says that the Universe went from nothing to a plasma of subatomic particles, to simple atoms, to molecules. Many of those molecules evolved into cells – life – and increasingly more complicated plants and animals. Eventually, those cells evolved into flatworms, and sharks, and frogs, and monkeys, and, eventually, us. That is a constant direction away from equilibrium. End aside.

Back at Gould’s column, he wrote about how museums have gone from being depositories of organized stuff, to teaching about the stuff. The example he gave was of a museum that had a display of beatles. They had several cases of hundreds of beetles carefully laid out and a sign that said something like A sampling of the many beetle species beetles found within fifty miles of this museum. The new display shows several beetles and a large plastic model showing the different parts of the beetle and how the beetles have hard wings that act as covers over their delicate flying wings. Gould liked the first display better and thought it gave more information especially showing the wild variation and number of different kinds of beetles (there are more different beetles than any other kind of insect and more different insects than all other animals, leading the British biologist J.B.S. Haldane to say to a group of theologians, when asked about God, He must have had an inordinate fondness for beetles).

I am with Gould on this one, I like the old museums, that featured collections of stuff, much better than the new museums and the remodeled Smithsonian is a new type of museum. One of the things I was especially interested in on my return visit to Washington was the Smithsonian Railroad Collection that I had heard about. But – when I was there, I hope it has changed – there were only two engines, beautifully restored but, come on, only two engines! The Evergreen Museum is old school with airplanes jammed everywhere.

^{Michele in front of a French Blériot XI with a Curtiss Model D behind, on the right is a Quickie Q2 designed by the great Burt Rutan, all under the The Spruce Goose}

 Great planes, famous planes, most of which I haven’t seen before. There are German and British planes of the kind that fought in the Battle of Britain, the Supermarine Spitfire and the Messerschmitt Bf 109,

and there is the ultimate WWII fighter, the mighty Messerschmitt Me 262 Schwalbe which was the world’s first operational jet with a top speed of 530 mph. I was surprised to read that the Germans actually built 1,430 of these planes but there are not many left and this is actually a recreation (accurate enough so that the factory gave it an authorized serial number).

There is a real Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird that can fly at 2100 miles an hour at 85,000 feet and once flew from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., in 64 minutes and 20 seconds.

behind that is a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter in NASA livery.

There are even drones, featuring a Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk, unironically posed above us with a backdrop of an American flag.

In short, this is the kind of old timey museum that the visitor can spend days wandering around. And when you get tired of airplanes, you can go wine tasting at one of the sixty – or so – nearby wineries.

While Michele slept in – in a comfy bed in a motel – I went out to get the car washed. The motel was a family operation in Prineville and, when I asked for the location of a car wash, the only carwash they knew of was a Do-It-Yourself carwash. Prineville is a town of about 10,000 people and, after driving around Eastern Oregon, that looked big enough – to me – for a carwash so I decided to go looking. Prineville is home to a new Apple data Center, a Facebook Data Center, and a Google facility; but it is not home to a carwash. There are five carwashes near where we live, but this is one of the richest areas on the planet and Prineville, like all rural towns today, even those with new Data Centers, is poor. Too poor to have a carwash.

But I didn’t know that when I started on my carwash quest. To get to the motel, we had driven all the way through town, so I now drove back towards the center. At the main intersection, I turned right to check out the side road, at the Fairgrounds – figuring that was the far edge – I did a U-turn and tried the other side of town where somebody suggested I go back to the main drag, turn right and try the Standard Station. The Standard Station was on the other side of the road so I drove past it and then did another U-turn. If you are keeping track, you would know that I am now going back into town from almost the same place I had started, but I thought I was going the other way. I tried the Standard Station with no luck and abandoned my quest, deciding to go back to the Motel. I continued back through town past the familiar landmarks I thought I had passed this morning but had really passed last night – the picturesque Courthouse with a fountain, past the Les Schwab Tire Center, and past the Essence Yoga Studio and Wellness Center – on my way back to the motel. The motel wasn’t there!

I thought I was going in the right direction because I recognized the Courthouse , Les Schwab, et al, so I went back into town and tried again. I was on the wrong end of town as you have probably figured out and I kept going back into town, turn around, and then, I would drive away from the motel. I did this three or four times, each time getting more dazed and confused because I was so convinced that I was on the right side of town. In my befuddlement, I could only come up with two theories, Aliens had abducted the Motel, or I was completely in the wrong place; they seemed equally unlikely. How could anybody get lost in a town of 10,000? Especially somebody with an excellent sense of direction, like me.

In Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals, Robert Pirsig writes about bringing a boat into a strange marina, in a strange river town, in the dark. He has the wrong marina or the wrong town, I don’t remember which, but the harbor lights didn’t match the charts and he kept moving the real lights around in his mind to make them fit his imagined reality. He was in the wrong place, but it seemed like the right place because he was mentally moving the data around. In other words,  Believing is seeing, not the other way around. My repeated passes through the wrong end of town, looking for a Motel that wasn’t there, is a classic case. After about four wrong passes, I was getting panicky. How could I get lost in a town of less than 10,000 people? All I could think of was an episode on The Amazing Race, in which an old, retired, couple, lost, not because they couldn’t handle the Race physically, but because they kept getting confused. Luckily, Prineville was a big enough burg to have cell phone coverage and I finally broke down and called Michele who calmed me down and got me back to the Motel, still rattled.

Finally, we started out for Portland, crossing the last of the high desert in the rainshadow of Oregon’s famous volcanoes. The first town we got to was Madras and we decided to stop for a Chinese lunch at the Ding Ho Family Restaurant (which specializes in Chinese and American food).

I have no idea when it started or who started it, but Michele and I have a tradition of having Chinese food on every trip we take and we thought this might be our last – and first – chance. Our strategy is to order Kung Pao Chicken to set a baseline and then a local or house specialty, in this case, Barbecued Pork Chow Don. The Kung Pao was not very interesting, but the Chow Don was very good. As an aside, a couple of years ago, I read an article on How to order food in a restaurant that has served me well. The basic theory is to not order the roast chicken or other standard dishes because they are only on the menu by demand. Other people’s demands, so they will cook it in a desultory fashion. Always order what looks like the place’s speciality because that will be a work of love and it will be cooked with real care. You’re welcome. End aside.

Then it was on to Portland for real. The road between Madras and Portland is straightish, first going across high desert, then over the shoulder of Mt. Hood, and – finally – down into Portland. Mt Hood is part of an arc of volcanos that run from Southern British Columbia through Washington and Oregon into Northern California and – from the east – it dominates the horizon. Once we entered the trees, however, we would only see it peeking through the trees in short flashes.

At some point, it became wall to wall trees, cutting off all the view lines. I remarked to Michele How can anybody think this is beautiful? About ten seconds later, I was able to pull over at a little turn out. As we had been driving through the walls of trees, would could see bright, sunlit trees hiding behind the darker trees nearer the road, and I want to see if I could get a picture across the road.

Looking the other way, through a clearing on our side of the road, we saw this lovely pond with ferns, some sort of big leaf plant – adapted to growing in the shade – and wild roses. Michele just looked at me and laughed.

As a child, Michele used to go to Timberline Lodge with her Gramma and, since we were driving right by, she wanted to check it out. The lodge was built during the Depression by the WPA – Works Progress Administration – out of local materials. Looking at it, I was reminded of a time when we thought we could tame this continent and, even, Nature herself. Of course we couldn’t but many of the attempts were stunning, especially those in National Parks.

At this point, we had about 65 miles to go to meet the Block Family in Portland. We had about two hours to do it, so it seemed like a slam dunk. The only thing we had to do was change but neither of us figured that would be a problem, but – of course – it was. First we were on Freeways with no place to hide, then a seemingly endless suburban road lined with strip malls and fast food restaurants. Finally we found a Business Park with a parking lot where we could park and we hunkered down behind the car to change.

Then, we were ready to go. Gabe had suggested Bistro Petit Oiseau as a place to meet for dinner and it was perfect (one of the many nice things about having Gabe as a son-in-law). We were back in civilization.