August 3, 2024

“I stood outside in the summer rain”: Ashland to Gold Beach, 128 miles

I woke before Robert to misty skies, shocking after the heat of the last day, and made coffee in the room, then went to visit the graveyard. As detailed in my November trip, I think, I love to walk in the graveyard near the Stratford Inn, just behind Safeway, a graveyard I know from my childhood, and one I walked through to get to the High School during my one year attending it. I love to visit Parthena Ritter Spicklemier’s grave  because I love Parthena. That morning as I was walking the misty morning turned to a light rain, and I found myself singing the lines from a song we had sung at the memorial, “Family,” which has the line, “We stood outside in the summer rain/Different people, with a common pain.” I thought to myself how Dad’s death had been so seasonal, from visiting after his terrible fall in November with the trees in flaming colors, even collecting leaves to decorate Parthena’s grave, to the snow we watched fall at the Stratford in his dying, memories of driving down the street to Paula’s to try to say goodbye one more time, the snow flurries mixed with the pink blossoms on the trees, for it was almost March, trees that would erupt into crimson and orange flame as the leaves turned in the coming fall.

Love to the Swadley family!

We packed up our room, a big undertaking given that we had moved all the camping stuff up to share the Bus at the memorial and were only a little late to meet the Swadley family for breakfast at Ruby’s. It meant so much to me that the Swadley’s, my adopted family, had come north for my father’s memorial, because although we always say we are family, and I know that I would do this for them, too, the effort of traveling from LA to Ashland for a memorial for a friend’s father, no matter how cherished, was amazing, but then the Swads had been at my wedding in Ashland, too.

We had a great breakfast where every single breakfast burrito was ordered, from regular, to steak, to chorizo, to veggie, and then we had to say goodbye. After taking some great pictures of Ruby at Ruby’s, a sign that always makes me think of her:

Then we went to Paula’s house to say goodbye. Sadly, we missed Jake as he was at the airport, good ol’ Rogue Valley International where the music outside is always from 1985, a time warp place, but we had a nice talk with Jordan and Bronte Niles, my nephew and his lovely wife, then we had to say goodbye to Paula and Bree and Tom and Alex and Oak.

Before we left, Robert and Paula packed some of Dad’s ashes into a little vase I had found in Ventura the summer before, not sure why I wanted it, choosing green, my father’s favorite color, partly attracted by the powerful magnet on the back, which I knew would stick to the Bus’s metal dashboard. In Ashland Robert and I had purchased a stout cork on one of our many hardware store trips, and a green cloth bag at the Northwest Nature Shop when buying rocks and shark’s teeth for Dad’s memorial, and now some of Dad’s ashes were loaded and installed in the Bus on the dash, so he could be with us on our trip. It was one of those moments, something you know you want to do and yet so final, that made the leaving harder for me, but easier too, because now my Daddy would really be in the Bus.

Thankfully, Tom the Magnificent and his Awesome Offspring Alex and Oak were there, and I got to meet Gregory the Abomination, and then we were off, singing “Off we go, into the Wild Blue Yonder,” as we got on the I-5 headed for the coast. The reverse trip to the coast was hot, but not as hot as it might have been given the rain, and once we got through the tunnel in the mountains the breeze came cool as we descended through the terrible burn. I felt my old childhood excitement about going to the beach, the beach, the beach, and I shared stories from Dad trips with Robert, about how we would stop and swim on the Smith River, and then we were on the 101, heading North to Gold Beach to stay at Ireland’s for the night. Robert had booked us a “Rustic Cottage,” the cottages I knew so well from so many trips with Dad, and I was excited to get there, and happy to have this mini-Oregon Beach vacation.

“I can’t believe we get this whole place,” I said, and Robert was shocked, too—a place like this just slightly gentrified rented for much more on the California coast, but we parked the Bus in the old garage and set out for the beach. I wanted to get rocks to paint for dad, having seen the memorial stones, and after a conversation with yet another Bus guy, his wife patiently waiting while Robert and the man talked Bus, we were off to the beach.

After we returned to our rustic cabin, Robert wanted to work on the lights for the Bus, and the old garage was the perfect place for it. For some time the Bus had been stuck with what I thought of as Googly Eyes, each headlamp pointing in a different direction, neither pointing ahead at the road. The garage at Ireland’s was the perfect place for this repair, and as I sat on the old concrete wall in the back, Robert adjusted the headlamps. The rest of the trip would be replete with his satisfaction when he saw them shining straight on a bumper before us or guiding us at night.

We tried to get dinner at the Barnacle Bistro, a place we’d had a lovely dinner at years before, but they were closed, so we ate yet another dinner of bagels, cheese, apples, and hummus, and commenced to painting rocks.

We painted a heart for the big rock display by the “lighthouse,” a weird fake lighthouse they have by the beach, and one of just the Bus, and then I sat in the chair and wrote in my notebook, for my computer would not update Word, and I could not write. I was not writing this post, just making notes, but I was writing posts for earlier days, and Robert and I felt that special kind of bliss looking at the painted stones on the mantle, thinking of the good green rocks we had collected for my friend Christina, that makes you know you are having a good trip. Here are some pictures from that night, including Robert wearing Dad’s 70’s shirt rocking the Gram Parsons look:

As I listened to the waves that night, and you hear them all night at Ireland’s, I thought of my father, and how he loved it here, and I thought of what I could do to mark that, to remember it, more than these painted rocks and this blog and the photos, and so I decided to wake early, go to the beach, and build him a beach rock memorial. I was thinking and planning this when the exhaustion of the last days took over and I dropped into sleep, lulled by the waves.

Links:

Ireland’s/Gold Beach Inn

https://www.goldbeachinn.com/specials?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw_4S3BhAAEiwA_64YhnMfesF5twO-Wqy_F7QBsr7Lhz7ZQhHI_W43RUVuKKc-tP654l504BoCZrwQAvD_BwE

The Barnacle Bistro, Gold Beach, OR

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