State #42 Oregon

Well, we were hoping to travel around in Oregon some. We had a house we rented off VRBO lined up and then the day before we left California, the owner contacts us and said the city of Warrenton, that we were heading to on the coast, closed the city to short-term rentals and hotels. Renters had 24 hours to leave. Apparently, the gathering of spring breakers alarmed city officials. Other surrounding towns said they were contemplating doing the same to keep the renters being kicked out of Warrenton from just moving down the road to their towns. We decided that it would be more prudent to move further inland.

It worked out good though, because we found this really cute little cottage in Grants Pass to stay at. It was super clean (cheaper than a hotel room) and the town had a pretty chill family kind vibe. Right before arriving, Governor Brown ordered a stay at home order for the state of Oregon. Gabriel, the owner of the cottage was great about being flexible with us regarding how long we stayed. He even dropped off some extra paper products.

Since we are out of hotels, we decided to just park it here for about three weeks and see what happens. Although, it slows us down from visiting all the states, the bigger picture was spending time with our boys and we can still do that even if it’s just playing games at “home” with them.

Having a home has been a great break. It’s been wonderful to cook at home and so far the stores have been well-stocked. The last few stores we went to in California had empty bread shelves so this was such a welcomed sight.

The boys have been cooking and loving it. I’ve loved having a home cooked meal that I didn’t have to prepare. I still got stuck with the clean up, though, but that’s okay.

Other state’s stay at home orders allowed for outdoor activities as long as social distancing was practiced. After hanging out at the house for four days, we decided to hit the playground at the park, however the playgrounds are closed except for the trails.

At least the boys could run around for a little bit.

Some days we got out of our pjs, other days not so much. But we are healthy and in good spirits.

That being said, after being here a while, we were starting to hear more reports of some cities/counties closing their doors to out-of-towners. We were starting to wonder if we should just go home. It has been all we have been talking about for days. Should we continue to stay put? But we could only stay here until the end of April before the owner had family coming in. We would have to move. But where? Hotel? Another house? Our home? Would the stay at home order be lifted by then? There were less cases in Oregon than Georgia. So we would be leaving a relatively safe area to head back to being around a hot spot. But then we would be at home if this thing goes on for months and the boys would have their toys to play with. We didn’t bring stuff like that with us while we were traveling. What if one of us got sick? Or if a family member got sick? Uuuugghh. So many unknowns.

I found this meme and I laughed and laughed. Although school is not our struggle anymore, being quarantined someplace other than home was. (Ironically, I pushed and pushed the boys to get done early with school and now that we have all this time, they’re already done. Man!). Anyways, I’m not usually a heavy drinker but this quarantining thing has pushed me to drinking about two of these a day. Yikes!

We found out our cruise was cancelled (which we kind of saw coming). Our cruise to Alaska was one of the reasons we stayed out west, so that if this thing blew over we would be ready to go. But now the stay at home has been extended until the end of April and we are hearing reports of maybe on into May. In the end, we decided, after much discussion, we would head home….for now and we would see how these next couple months go. If we still have time to get back out on the road then we will. We only have eight states left. 😦

Next…THE DRIVE.