On the Run and On the Move, Part 3: Sketchy Dirt Roads and Abandoned in Oregon

Things got interesting when we entered Oregon, to say the least.  For one thing, we hadn't heard from our contact in Oregon since leaving Detroit, which was worrying us.  Once we entered Oregon, the plan was to contact John's family member to get more details as to where we were going.  She only gave us a few town names when we talked about things previously to give us a general idea of where we were headed, but we had nothing concrete to go off of.  Considering she answered the phone all the times we had called her recently, we didn't expect this to be too big of a problem. We were wrong. 

We entered Oregon and started calling her not long after, dealing with cell phone signal issues.  There was no answer and as we got deeper into Oregon we started to freak out a bit.  We kept continuing forward, enjoying the beautiful country we were driving through.  Eastern Oregon was not at all what I expected, full of orange canyon type areas with a feel similar to Colorado or Arizona in climate almost.  When I thought of Oregon, I thought of lush pine forests, not the near desert climate we were traveling through.  I was driving during the first stint in Oregon, as I remember admiring the scenery as I drove. 

Eventually we switched drivers again, back to the girl we were traveling with.  We were still completely unable to get ahold of our contact, which made things scary.  We had just traveled across the country with what's left of our stuff on her word, and she wasn't even answering her phone. This woman had a reputation for being flaky, but this was a bit much. Unsure of where exactly to go, we headed to one of the town names she mentioned, hoping it was actually near where we needed to go.  We were hoping we would hear from her by the time we got there, but we didn't.

John was navigating the way with the help of Google Navigation, to the town we chose to shoot for.  Probably feeding off of our level of anxiety (and her own, I'm sure), our ride share mate was on edge herself.  She had just picked up two strangers from the hood of Detroit that put an axe and a chainsaw in her utterly suburban car.  It got worse when our contact wouldn't answer.  She was clearly apprehensive the whole time, she wouldn't walk away from the car without her keys.  She stated that's what she always did during ride shares, as they were generally strangers.  It definitely seemed like she was dealing some anxiety over the situation.

It got worse when Google decided to take us the very scenic route, taking us onto some dirt roads.  All the sudden her anxiety boiled over and she was outwardly freaking out.  She kept asking why we were on the dirt road.  We were just as surprised as her, as we were only following Google's directions to a somewhat major city in Southern Oregon.  She even asked at a point if we were going to kill her, we assured her that we wouldn't.  We kept driving and eventually returned to dirt roads again, where she breathed a sigh of relief.  

Still unable to get ahold of our contact, we continued through Oregon, which was now dark.  We were getting into the forested mountain area, which made driving interesting.  I had a hard time dealing with her driving during this, as I'm prone to motion sickness and she was prone to slamming on her brakes then accelerating a lot. We kept trying to contact our person here, but she never answered.  Finally, fed up, we decided to call our contact's Mom. If anyone could rouse her, it was her Mom.

By the time we decided that we were deep in the hills of Oregon, with no cell phone service.  The girl we were with had some cell phone service, but she had a nearly unfunctional broken smartphone that made dialing nearly impossible.  After many tries, we got a call to go through.  Her mom picked up the phone, and after I tried to vaguely explain who it was, she got it.  I told her we were depending on her daughter and she wasn't answering the phone. She replied that she would call her and do what she could, and we hung up. 

Whatever she did worked, because we got a phone call from our contact.  She asked what was up and seemed genuinely surprised to hear how close we were.  She gave us the actual name of the town we were staying in.  She told us to camp behind the grocery store in town, that we'd be picked up the next morning by the people we were staying with.  We immediately protested and had to mention legal situation to get her to understand why we had a problem with it. We asked about campgrounds and she said there were none in the area, which is bullshit.  Oregon is full of free camping and paid camping as well. 

So we discussed getting a motel with our ride share mate.  It was late and we were all exhausted.  She was still nervous, as it was clear there was something serious going on with us.  She had less anxiety though, as she figured if we were going to kill her we would have done it on that dirt road.  After driving around asking for prices at different small hotels, we eventually found one worth staying at for the price and checked in.  

Exhausted, we all headed into the room to get ready for bed.  She took a shower as we did some dabs.  When she came out, we offered her one and she actually took it, which surprised us.  She had never tried them before, so it was a funny thing to see.  She coughed a lot (too much considering we were in a hotel with no smoking signs everywhere).  When heating up the nail for the next dab, the smoke detector went off because of some smoke from unvaporized oil burning off. We got the thing to shut up, all wondering if we'd be getting a visit from management for breaking thier rules and being rude to the other customers, but it didn't happen.  We were all freaking out but couldn't help but laugh.  

I immediately put the bong and dabs away and we all went to sleep.  It was just for a few hours, which felt like nothing considering we had just drove cross country without sleep. We woke up in the morning and got ready to go, headed to the next part of this on the run adventure.  This time to a place to stay and a supposed weed trimming job.  Our ride share mate was frustrated as her friend wasn't ready for her arrival, and it would be days before there was work ready.  By the time she got started, she'd have to leave to go to Germany.  She offered to send the work our way by email if we wanted it. Her plans changed to visit her friend and to move south to visit friends in California until she needed to head back home. 

We left the motel and continued to the town we were headed to, which was about a half hour away. We got into town and immediately noticed the tiny grocery store our contact was referring to, as it was the only one in town.  It immediately stuck us that we were out in the boonies.  The idea of camping behind that grocery store is ridiculous to me, I didn't care about the fact that she said she had done it before without problem. 

We had her pull behind the grocery store and we put our stuff under the dumpster as it was just starting to rain.  We were told that we would have to wait there until our ride got us.  She said it could be a few minutes or a few hours, that we would just have to wait.  So we said goodbye to our ride share and waited, standing behind a grocery store in a small town with all of our stuff, waiting and depending on total strangers.  

The photo is an image of Southern Oregon, taken from Google images.