I keep thinking back to a few weeks ago when Gus and I headed to Vernonia for the day. Do you ever have those magical days where everything aligns? The weather agrees, the restaurants you pick are the most delicious restaurants ever, traveling is easy and relaxed and filled with beautiful views, and strangers you meet are welcoming and fun and quirky and filled with tidbits for your road trip adventure. We had just such an experience in April. Gus wanted to get out of town for a day to mix up our routine; we couldn’t decide if we wanted to head to the coast, the Columbia Gorge, or elsewhere. How to pack in some variety and traveling without heading too far out of town, especially when we had some obligations earlier in the morning? Vernonia was an inspired choice on my feller’s part.
This quaint town – population around 1,300 – has a downtown that’s three or four blocks of pure
Northern Exposure-ish action. Antique stores are complemented by coffee shops, churches with attached resale shops (cue: kitschy/scary dolls through the windows), and – drum roll please – restaurants such the Blue House Café. This Mediterranean delight is the real deal. (This whole town is the real deal – not at all purposefully touristy or cutesy; I love those types of towns too – this just isn’t one of them.) The Blue House Café’s chicken gyro was a slice of heaven, and their lavender lemonade is one of the most refreshing beverages ever! No, really: it will change your life. Check this place out here:
http://blue-house-cafe.com/
Gus and I were fortunate enough to make
Made in Vernonia one of our first stops. This classy, cute boutique offers anything from pottery to artsy photographs to knitted owl pillows to children’s cribs, everything made locally and with love and great attention to detail. Such a good vibe when you walk through the door. Kathy, the owner, and her friend Carol, a local doctor, greeted Gus and I like they’d known us forever and proceeded to chime in lovingly with how we should structure the rest of our day trip. They recommended we stop at the local park & pond then take a peek in the old lumber mill, which – though abandoned – has been graffitied with art either profane or transcendent, and often something in-between. You pass through the door of the mill to see trees reaching up toward the ceiling-free sky. “Benches” – surely former parts of milling work stations – are evenly spaced throughout the chamber if you’d like to take a seat for a bit. Artists and non-artists alike have painted goblins and old-time radios, hearts and cigarette-smoking dogs, crosses and lips and cupcakes and unidentifiable swirls that evoke both fairy tale lands and urban ghettos. We did a “photo shoot,” the sounds inside the mill soft and echo-y and safe. You can feel histories and ghosts and muses flitting throughout the once vibrant and lucrative mill.
After our photo shoot, we took a walk along the pond and watched two gigantic falcons swoop down time and again to snatch up fish from the water. These birds were graceful, powerful. I was in awe of them. Other birds – some species we hadn’t seen before, or not very often – flew back and forth amongst all the blossoms and tree branches. We took Highway 30 home through Scappoose – after heading to Vernonia on Highway 26 – and music played through the car stereo as we drove under several train trestles that reminded me of old school roller coasters, or sci-fi creatures with dozens of wooden, spidery limbs. Trees pressed in along the curvy roads, many of the trees covered in dangly moss straight out of campfire tales and old English movies about haunted mansions.
