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The Timberline Lodge
The Timberline Lodge from the parking lot, while it's snowing. Cognizant of the poor weather prospects, I leave Bend with the intention of just driving around the Cascades until the sun returns. Mackenzie Pass is closed, so I take a primary highway that's always kept plowed. On the map, I see a road that goes north that stays in the mountains, so I take that. Not a very traveled road, I don't see any other cars. The road eventually becomes covered with debris and at one point, there's even a fallen tree across the entire road that I have to actually go off-road to get around. That should have been a warning for me, but I continue on. Eventually the road becomes snow covered. I try to drive on through it but get stuck. My emergency shovel comes in handy here to remove the snow around my tires and I back out off the patch of snow. To continue on would guarantee more trouble, so I reluctantly turn back the way I came.
Later in the day, I arrive at a little resort town near Mt Hood. I see on the map a road going up further towards Mt Hood- Timberline Road or something like that. I head up it,
The lobby of the Timberline Lodge
The lobby of the Timberline Lodge hoping to find a cool area to park and get snowed in. At the end of the road, it's indeed snowing, and there's a ski resort. I head into the Timberline Lodge to get permission to park overnight.
I find out later that the Timberline Lodge is where parts of The Shining was filmed (interior scenes). It's a really cool lodge built during the Great Depression. The front desk clerk explains to me that I don't actually need a permit or anything to park, so I take the opportunity to take some pictures of this historical lodge.
I'm curious where the restaurant is, so I ask a girl who passes me by. She explains it's on the 3rd floor and that she'll take me up to it. She's disturbingly outgoing, even tying my shoe in the elevator when she notices it's untied. She takes me to the bar and I stay and chat with her and have some wine. She's here snowboarding, is 30, and has a little 10-yo girl. She also claims she runs 3 businesses and has horrible memory problems. There are other people at the bar, mainly snowboarders.
Eventually it becomes obvious she's coming
More Timberline Lodge lobby
More Timberline Lodge lobby on to me, and I take her up on her offer to show me around the hotel. One thing leads to another, and eventually we're making out around the hotel. "How did you know I wanted you?", she says. "I didn't like all those other guys and kept saying where's Dana..". We go to the movie room and watch a short film about the lodge's construction and then hit the ping-pong table. Then she suggests we go to the hot tub. Well, I don't want to be unfriendly 😊 so I go get my swim trunks and meet her in her room. After changing there, she gets a call and says to go ahead and go to the hot tub and she'll meet me there.
I go to the hot tub. There's a hot tub and adjacent heated pool. They're both outdoors, and its really cool because it's snowing (light) and there's all of these snow covered conifers around and here I am outside in the hot tub. The only problem is, the girl doesn't show up. After waiting around for awhile and chatting with another couple in the tub, I dry off and go back into the hotel
The game room
Where I played ping-pong with the crazy woman. to find her. At the bar I find her sitting on the couch talking to some dude and she acts like nothing's wrong. I remind her that she was supposed to meet me in the tub and she says, "Ohh I totally forgot!". Talk about playing stupid. She sees my obvious annoyed look and says, "Oh did I hurt your feelings? I'm sorry if I made you sad..". This girl is obviously slightly insane so I deem it best not to pursue the issue, but I still need her to let me back into her room to get my clothes (and wallet). She obliges and I get my stuff and head out to my truck to sleep for the night. I assume she realized she didn't want to have a one-night stand, and instead of declining like a normal person she decided to ditch me and play stupid about it. Very mature. Unfortunately, she forgot my stuff was still in her room.
What a bizarre turn of events. I only entered the lodge to get a permit and take some pictures, and I end up in the hot tub being stood up by a crazy woman. But I was
The bar
The bar where I drank with the crazy woman. She's actually in the shot, but not visible (behind the black snowboarder). just going with the flow. In the end, nothing was lost and it was a memorable experience at least.
I spent the next day driving to Bend to get my oil change and check up. After getting the thumbs up on my truck, I drove to just outside Crater Lake NP (down a remote gravel road) and parked for the night surrounded by snowy forest (and it was still snowing). The plan now is to give Crater Lake another shot.
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