Heading inland, taking in Portland and crossing over into Washington.

The Oregon coastal road took us through lots of rain, past the world's smallest harbour and across the world's smallest river. However the rain pretty much took away our chances of any decent photos of these phenomenas, so we carried up the coast to Tillamook. We found the huge cheese factory and ate yummy ice-cream while watching the workers and machines making and processing the cheese ( I felt a little guilty for gawping at the people working, but its kinda fascinating too). However the much smaller Blue Heron Cheese company we stopped by in had a much better sample selection, a wine tasting area, chocolates and a petting zoo. True we didn't spend too much time out here – even the goats were hiding in their sheds from the rain – but it was worth a visit.

Lindy and Steve (who we met at a campsite in Lotus) had invited us to stay with them in Portland and so we headed to their lovely house Thursday evening. We had a great time and got to do all those little necessities like laundry and enjoy luxuries such as hot showers each morning. Steve is an excellent cook and we were treated to delicious steaks, cooked breakfasts and chicken and pasta with homemade pesto – it was tough to leave!

Portland itself is quite a funky city especially on Saturdays when it has a large arts and crafts market and a farmers market. We managed to avoid spending too much despite the best efforts of the sale in North Face but did pick up a couple of books in the US' largest bookshop. There is a large park overlooking the city with a very poignant memorial to Holocaust victims and a beautiful rose garden, which had the most fab aromas. While at Steve and Lindy's, we found out there was a drive-in movie theatre pretty close and so we took Macy to see the late night double feature picture show. The films didn't start till it was dark enough but we were lucky to get a reasonable space at 8ish. In the end it was full, with lots of families playing outside the cars – there was a good, fun atmosphere and at half 9ish the first film (Surf's Up) began. The National Anthem was played finished with lots of horn honking and some birthdays announced with cars beeping for each year of age. The films were pretty good and I managed to stay awake through to the end at half 1!

The morning didn't bring a lie in though as we were meeting Simon and Cheryl to paddle the White Salmon. I decided to give it a miss but got video of the others running Hussum Falls. We met a guy called Jonathon at the get out who kindly invited us back to his for some food and a place to sleep. First we stopped off at Hood River and tried the goods of a brewpub which we found out has a happy hour during the week, picked up a new neck seal for David and ice-cream for dessert. Then heading back to Jonathon's we found he had probably one of the most enviable views over the Columbia river and across to Mount Hood – it was stunning. A few beers later (including a very nice homebrew hefeweizen), great sausage casserole (thanks Cheryl!) icecream, and some kayak porn, we slept before an early start.

The boys were planning to run the Little White Salmon, but at 8ish this morning, Rick (Simon and Cheryl's friend) was still in Vermont and with his experience being the most recent on the river, the others decided to reconvene at 3ish when he was scheduled to arrive after his delayed flight. So Russell (Jonathon's friend) went to do his homework and we ran the section that had been run the day before which was good fun. A quick wine tasting and we headed back to the Little White, where the boys got on. Cheryl and I ran the shuttle and left them in favour of the pub with the happy hour which is where I'm typing this now waiting for them I'm sure David will update us all on this soon.

The river which we're watching now is full of windsurfers and kite surfers which is very colourful and pretty cool to watch.

Unfortunately I did have some not so good news this week – my beloved dog Dell was put to sleep after some illness – it's been a shock as it happened very quickly. As those of you who met him will know, he was a great friendly dog who'll be missed.

Local wildlife invades and steals our food.

(ok, we fed it)

This question is: is it a chipmunk or a squirrel?

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Carrying on our tour in Oregon we stopped in to catch a play at a Shakespeare festival, saw North America's deepest and cleanest lake and found a bargainous campsite. A tourist leaflet took us to Ashland, a town we may not have headed to, but was well worth a visit for their Shakespeare Festival. The Elizabethan theatre is open air and it was here, we watched the Tempest – one of David's favourites and one I hadn't seen before. It was a great performance, made even better by the setting sun behind the stage. The gift shop was of interest as well since they sold some English novelties such as PG Tips, Tunnocks Caramel Wafers and Crunchie bars! It was a lovely end to a day that too much time had been spent in various car places while Macy's brakes were sorted out, and the drive shaft replaced for a second time! The wrong one had been put on the first time so at least this was done free of charge…

From here, we headed to the North Folk of the Rogue which had some very interesting geological sights. Its a relatively young area, with much volcanic influence. We saw lava tubes that had collapsed, and others which were plugged. At one point, the majority of the river is hidden as it makes its way through a network of these lava tubes, and all that can be seen are blow holes giving a hint of the turbulence of the water. We took a look at one of the gorges which was thankfully blocked with a tree, preventing us looking at it from a paddling perspective any more – it wasn't nice looking. David had a look at a gorge that is paddled but again decided he didn't fancy paddling it and so it was we ran a lovely section of fun grade 3 with a 6.5 mile trail to hike for the shuttle.

Oregon's only National Park is Crater Lake, a beautiful blue lake formed by the collapse of volcanic Mount Mazama over 7,000 years ago, making it the 7th deepest in the world] and [because it's fed only by rain and snow it's one of the clearest. There was surprisingly a lot of snow still there considering its nearly the end of June, but apparently the area has an average 45 feet of snow per year! The East Rim Drive was still closed because they hadn't cleared all the snow yet, and the walk we did up Garfield's Point certainly got more challenging because of the white stuff. It was a stunning place and though we saw no ginger cats, we saw a few chipmunks again.

A book at the gift shop meant we found a campsite costing $5.50 a night which had hot showers (a true luxury while on the road) and gave us chance to refill water. It was a great find, where we tried our best to burn one of the huge logs Macy had been carrying around for us, and ate yummy pizzas prepared by our own fair hands.

The next river on our list is the North Folk of the Umpqua, before we head west back to the Pacific Coast. In the meantime, David has been putting more thought into an English Macy – he's decided a caravan inside a minivan is what we need. Maybe some more thought is needed yet!

What we got to see off the water too…

While cooking dinner at a trailhead last night, a big white truck pulled up with lots of barking coming from the back. A man got out and warned us he had 6 dogs in the back, 3 were puppies, but that they were friendly and he would try to get in between them and us. We were slightly apprehensive when he opened the boot, and certainly hadn't expected the flurry of black and white, and a little bit of brown, furry bodies that jumped out. “You didn't tell us they were collies!” For those who don't know, border collies are my favourite dogs and I have two at my mum's. Waiting very patiently till they finished their walk, I got to pet the brown and white one which was as soft as you could imagine – a lovely treat!

We stayed at the trailhead and on the recommendation of some friendly locals, took a walk in the morning which led round several different ecosystems and was very pretty. However I did have to avoid the plentiful but nasty poison oak which can cause itchy bite like rashes that seem to last forever…

From here, we followed another recommendation and went to Wildlife Images which is a sanctuary/hospital for injured wild animals. We hadn't realised we should have booked on a tour, but was lucky enough to catch one leaving within half an hour. Here we saw a massive grizzly bear (I'd be glad never to get this close to one again, but the electric fence was reassuring), a few black bears (including one taking a shower), bald eagles, a golden eagle, grey wolves and a rather cute American badger that apparently is one of the few animals a black bear will stand down from! There were lots of other animals too, lots that we had seen in the wild which was great, and the tour was pretty educational. Definitely worth a visit.

We're going to Grants Pass now where we hope to treat Macy to a little oil change. I'm sure we'll be back on the water soon though!