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Friday 20th August 2004

the top of the Mackenzie PassFrom Lava Lake Campground to Super 6 Motel, Eugene. A distance of about 80 miles on the transAm route. We finally passed the 4000 mile mark today, so we are within a couple of hundred miles of finishing the transAm official route, and within perhaps 400 - 500 miles of finishing our route at the airplane in Seattle. We breakfasted on granola bars and then headed, once again, up to the top of the pass. What a wonderful place! The sea of lava stretchs for miles either side - now looking like a huge ash heap - broken rocks, strange shapes on every side. In the distance to the south the Three Sisters, with snow on their summits, cut into the horizon, and to the north there's the Belknapp Crater (responsible for all this mess of old lava) and Mt Washington, with a good covering of snow, plus various smaller mountains. I took so many photos the batteries on the camera started to fade (and am unable to upload them immediately because in Newport, Oregon, they're a bit paranoid about letting you put any CDs into the computers, sadly). We needed to get going though, so after a little while we started going downhill, which we continued to do for the next 30 or so miles! Our biggest downhill, as we went from 5000' to the coastal plain level of circa 1000'. To make up for a minimal breakfast we had two lunches, one in McKenzie Bridge and one in Blue River. I've never seen so many huge RVs as passed us on the downhill ride along the 126 towards Eugene. They are like dinosaurs ripe for extinction in my opinion.... Eugene is an excellent town, and we found a cheap-ish motel (about 40 dollars for the two of us). There didn't seem to be a campsite really near the downtown shops, etc, so it was hard to avoid. There's a hostel for not much less - and without the perk of a tiny swimming pool to cool off in. Eugene is, I think, the most livable town we have been through in the USA (not that we've been through very many that big!) - nice location, quite green, relatively controlled sprawl, only 1hr or so from the coast, and a university town with a generally open feeling. We went to the McMenamins Brew Pub (which actually does brew - as the name seems to require...) and saw the local headquarters of the stop resolution 36campaign. Oregon is currently arguing about whether to ban gay marriage - seems a curious thing to want to do in a country that is, apparently, all about freedom and liberty. Clearly this is a liberty too far for some people. As a philosophically inclined person, the idea of 'defining' marriage by statute seemed a bit humpty-dumpty-esque to me. If the meaning is the use, then it means whatever the extended community of communities that is America do with the word. Surely the state shouldn't be taking advice from the churches about how to define what surely is, in the US, a secular legal arrangement. Is the US becoming a theocracy (silly thought!)? Anyhow, I like the campaign to stop the amendment to the state's constitution that will prevent (?) any gay marriages in Oregon. Freedom is a slippery thing, I guess, but you generally know when you haven't got it. Eventually we returned to our room, having learnt something about the politics of the state we were in.

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