Seattle - Eugene

Woke up in Whitefish - drove to Missoula then to Seattle. Not a whole hell of a lot to explain, except that eastern Washington is a whole lot of nothing... it may as well have been dark out when I drove.


Got to Seattle Sunday night & stayed in Kirkland. I got in pretty late, I just basically just commandeered the hot tub for a half hour and went to bed. Woke up pretty early and went to check out the REI store and Pikes Place (there's so much to do in a big city, no point in trying to do it all in a day...) then left to head down the Oregon coast to Eugene.

I decided I couldn't go through Portland without having a microbrew, so one of my compadres in arms did a quick Google and came upon The Lucky Labrador... pretty good choice, beer was as expected. Tried two of them then hopped back on the train down to Eugene, home of the University of Oregon Ducks, via the coast (which was actually a terrible idea, because by the time I got to the coast it was almost sundown, which eliminated the purpose of driving along the coast...)


However, one of the more entertaining things happened to me on the way. En route back to Eugene from the coast, I took this random two-lane state road that the Nav on my Grand Cherokee suggest would be the shortest route. This particular road went right through Corvallis, which some of you may know is home to the Oregon State Beavers. The stadium, which was lit up like a Christmas tree against the night sky, was pretty visible from the road, so I decided to stop by and find a few more decent pics to add to my touristy facebook albums.

As it turns out, the field was being used for some sort of women's conditioning practice (either lacrosse or field hockey, I tried not to make eye contact) and practice for either a frisbee team or a disc-golf team... either one of which would probably have been laughed off the field by Jim Steele or Wags.

Now, the stadium was open - one gate near the main entrance was swung open for the "teams" to apparently leave when finished. This was more or less a ramp down to the field, probably not used as an entrance on game-days. I decided to hop a small fence and go up onto the second level to snap some quick pictures, and then went back down to the field level to do the same. I decided, in my infinite wisdom, that 9:45pm at night would be a good time to walk across the end zone and into the opposing bleachers to get some good shots of the field. I walked up what seemed lik 89719875981251 rows of stairs before I got to the announcers booth on the lower level. I set up my camera with the Gorillapod I bought in Albuquerque for this specific purpose. Got some good shots, started playing around with the settings, and then...


NOTHING. The bastardos turned the lights promptly at 10pm. My car, which was essentially parked behind me, was only accessible by walking down those same 89719875981251 of bleachers (in the rain, f###ing Oregon) in the pitch black dark. while these semi-athletes in Under Armor and "Beaver Disc" tshirts walked across the field wondering how ishtty it was for that guy in the pressbox. Oh well, makes for a good story...