Road Trip - 1

Getting to the meat of things, eg, all the food.

A couple of years ago, when things felt really hopeless for my son, we booked the trip of a lifetime to Japan, which was somewhere he had always wanted to go. We thought it might spark a glimmer of light in the unrelenting darkness in his mind. We hoped it might make him want to stick around in the belief that things might actually get better.

We are very much last minute, impulsive type people, so to book something so far ahead was a gamble. Last year, many things changed for us. The move, some complicated and highly punitive financial shenanigans and a work based apocalypse meant that even though Oscar was doing better, we were not really in a position to jet off to Tokyo. We would have found a way. We do try to keep our promises, especially when they feel a bit like Seventh Seal type scenarios, but it would not have been easy or comfortable.

In the end Oscar came to talk to us about maybe not going, because we had accidentally booked the holiday in term time and he was, quite admirably, trying to make a go of his new college. What started off as an exercise in trying to save our son, turned into the reality of him saving us. The universe is a strange mistress.

We were able to redeem the hefty amount we had spent on tickets if we booked something else within thirty days of cancelling Japan, and took the holiday within twelve months. This was much more our style. We are good at deadlines and random yet huge decisions made on the fly. We set to with a will.

Sadly, within the limits of what was available, plus only booking things in school holidays Japan just wouldn’t line up. After some Mrs Merton style heated debate, we ended up plumping for a road trip from Seattle to San Francisco, via Portland.

Right up to the day we left, I couldn’t quite believe it was actually happening. The year before we failed to go to Japan, I also failed to go to Montreal. In between that, we had gone away for a few weekends where encroaching grimness still managed to reach us. I found myself only able to think about this holiday in stolen snatches before anxiety got the better of me. It was only when we were actually in the air that I truly let myself believe it was happening.

In all honesty, the whole holiday still had the faint whiff of a dream. I had to pinch myself a few times to be sure it was actually happening. Not just because of everything that preceded it, but because it seemed a very grown up type of holiday to take and not something for the likes of me. It turned out that all sorts of things I didn’t think were for the likes of me, turned out to be exactly for me in the end, which has been a nice revelation to have.

We had been to Seattle before, about fifteen years ago and really liked it. We had high hopes for the couple of days we were staying in the city. Everywhere else we had planned to visit was new to us. I had been wanting to go to Portland for years, ever since I read an article about it being a terrific place to go if you like food and alternative culture. These are things that are very much in my wheelhouse, so I was super excited to visit. San Francisco was also on my bucket list due to a decades long love affair with Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City. We made a list of all the things we wanted to do between these three destinations and planned our route. I’ve moved house with less deliberation.

We had never done a road trip before, so every aspect of the holiday was quite an adventure. We have also not spent two consecutive weeks with our now, grown up children in literally years. Now we would be spending every day driving hundreds of miles in a car with them, with scheduled stops for organised fun en route. That, for me, was the most daunting bit of the trip. What if we couldn’t do it without the involvement of the family courts? What if I fucking hated organised fun? I generally avoid it like the plague.

We learned a lot on our trip. We learned that we get along very well for the most part. There were only a few moments when we could have all done with a time out and a nap, which considering that we are four (Tilly was in Finland and couldn’t come), wildly different people with vastly different lives and interests was pretty good going. We learned that we enjoyed staying in small places outside of cities best. We learned that we all enjoy a road trip but we could have done without quite such a punishing schedule. There were places we would have liked to spend more time in that we had to shoot through and there were days when we could all have done without a day of travel to just kick back and not feel compelled to tick must see items off our list. On the whole though, we had a thoroughly fantastic time and every day we had experiences that I will remember for the rest of my life.

Writing about this trip is definitely a multi-post journey. Let’s begin and see where we get to. We will start with food. The most important bit of any trip, or any day even if you’re not on holiday.

In the years since we last visited America, prices have gone through the roof. I live in London. I’m used to high prices, but I was staggered by how much everything cost, particularly food. We went for lunch in Chinatown in San Francisco and the bill, without alcohol and with a compulsory 20% tip came to £200. It was a nice lunch, but it wasn’t a £200 lunch. I took Jason for lunch in Chinatown in London yesterday, and the bill, with tip came to £23 and the food quality was comparable.

Even junk food was extortionate. The kids had a list of fast food places they wanted to try, and even the worst McDonald’s I have ever had in my life came to £60 and that was so bad that none of us finished it. I dodged a few of the fast food forays, because it’s all a bit depressing but the best we had was from Chick-Fil-A, which came to around £56 for four of us. I hate the politics of the place and ate a very strange salad which consisted of 85% fruit, but at least it tasted like actual food. In and Out Burger came a close second and was significantly cheaper but you can only get those in California.

Some of the time we bought groceries and did some of our own catering. This was both expensive and super wasteful, because you can’t buy small portions of anything and we ended up having to throw so much away it was upsetting. Also, everything has significantly more sugar in than in the UK so after throwing some things away because they tasted terrible, we ended up reading the packets in every supermarket like a bunch of oddball detectives. Generally, if you want less weird ingredients, Wholefoods is your friend, but of course, it is way more expensive than Safeway or Walmart. We got some really delicious fruit in Pike Place market in Seattle. Oscar and I had a variety of plum called something like ‘Ohmygod,’ which made our tastebuds do a little dance.

I did get stressed by the insistence on flavouring everything to the max. I bought a tin of sencha tea to travel with, because I was getting a bit strung out on coffee. It claimed to have a delicate cherry flavour. When I opened the tin it smelled like an Airwick plug in. Not content with the natural aroma of the tea, they had added extra cherry and vanilla. Of course they had. The general rule of thumb seems to be; If one is good, ten is better, followed swiftly by: That’s a nice flavour, we must have MORE of it and why not throw in some other flavours because we’ve got that cupboard open anyway? Flavour wise I learned to avoid anything that claimed to be ‘London Fog’, flavoured, because that is shorthand for bergamot. If you love everything tasting of Earl Grey tea though, London Fog is your friend. You also have to watch out for cinnamon, which is basically a third condiment after salt and pepper.

We ate in diners. Local, small town diners are the absolute best. If you can’t find one (this seems unlikely), we still love an IHOP. We no longer love a Denny’s, which seems to have taken a significant nosedive from the low bar it set itself previously. The one time we ate in one out of desperation after miles of driving through forests, they sat us on an ants nest. It was the high point of the meal.

Food wise, money ran through our fingers. At one, highly recommended coffee shop on the coast outside San Francisco, four coffees and four slices of cake set us back £50, and it was simply fine, which is stressful when you could have bought a Pierre Marcolini eclair each and still had change. You can see why people survive on packets of ramen. On a few days we found delis, where we bought sandwiches for lunch. Of course, these were expensive, but they were so big you could have them for two meals, which saved us some money, and they tasted pretty good, which helped ease the pain of the price point.

It wasn’t all bad on the food front. I still love a Dairy Queen dipped cone. I am forever on board with a short stack of pancakes. I love the quality and variety of pickles that are freely available. I love the fact that you can get good coffee everywhere, and most places do free refills. Even the worst Mexican food beats whatever the British do to Mexican food all day long. Ice cream flavours are many and varied and I became a fan of buttered pecan, which I have never had in the UK. Cheesecake Factory still do great cheesecake in every flavour you can ever want or imagine. One slice of cake from Cheesecake Factory took three of us, two days to eat. Portion sizes are insane.

In terms of individual places to shout out, we had a terrific lunch at Deschutes Brewery, Portland Public House where I had a beef sandwich with dipping gravy and fries that will linger long in my memory. Also in Portland, a delightful woman I met in a stationery shop who had walked the South West Coastal Path in the UK, directed me to Blue Star Donuts, where I had a Valrhona chocolate crunch brioche donut filled with vanilla custard that blew my socks off, and I don’t even really like doughnuts. On my birthday, we went to Screamin’ Mimi’s ice cream parlour in Sebastopol, which it turns out is not in Russia, but near Santa Rosa in California. I had a mint choc chip ice cream sandwich which was exactly what a newly turned 52 year old woman should eat on her birthday.

In Lincoln City, which was the most disappointing place we stayed for our whole trip, we had one of our best dinners at a place called Hearth and Table. It’s a tiny place that does wood fired, European style pizzas using super fresh ingredients. They also do a very fine cocktail. Our best meal of the trip, hands down though, was a place in Port Orford, Oregon, called Redfish. It’s a stylish little glass cube, with views out to sea and along the spectacular coastline. The service was terrific and the food was better. I had something called cioppino, which I think is the Italian equivalent of a bouillabaisse and it was heavenly. I would make a trip back to Port Orford just to eat there, and when I tell you that Port Orford has a population of 3,000 people and nothing else but one small high street and some glorious beaches to recommend it, you will know how good it was.