Oregon Day 0, Arrival to Pacific City, Oregon

Our rental in Pacific City, Oregon

August 15th, 2025

Crazy how I was just on one trip and onto the next. Crazy or lucky? August, as you will soon see, was my month for travel. I returned from Hawaii August 10th, I grinded out four days of work, and then hopped on another flight to another state with a group of 16 people to explore more of this beautiful earth. I am absolutely addicted to the game. There is nothing I love more than traveling. I do love my job, and would do both if I could - travel and work my current job. But, I can’t have both, so I'm juggling the balance of being good at my job and living out my passion of traveling. This month is a bit of a slip on being a stand out employee, but it is me falling back into my true love.

I worked from 8am-12pm and then I headed to the airport. Earlier this week I got TSA pre-check, knowing myself well enough that I will be traveling a good amount to get good use out of it. So, I tested it out today and I literally got through security in two minutes. It's tempting me to never go to the airport earlier than a hour before takeoff, this being if I am traveling alone. To feel like a veteran traveler at the ripe age of 24 is quite the feat. 

I sped through the security line and headed straight to the gate to log back on and work a bit more. I was hoping I could get one more task done for work, so I put my head down and chipped away. My motivation was a mix of working more to take less PTO hours and making sure I got my tasks done so that the appearance of my travel to my coworkers was not me ditching my work and passing it along to others to complete. The sweet spot of work and travel is to go out and enjoy my trips while also getting all my work done. If executed, I hope is there is no issue with my rendezvouses.

I found my friends and we boarded the plane. I spent the entire flight to Oregon journalling my Maui trip (I hope you enjoyed those blogs!) so that on my flight home from Portland, I could write about this trip. There is no worse feeling to me than getting behind on my journalling and feeling as though I will lose all my thoughts and little memories about a trip before getting it down on paper. What I am doing in my 20s and how I am feeling will be something I might forget as time passes, so I want to have the best account written, in exact time, so that I can memorialize the experiences to the best of my ability. I also love having this blog to share my stories and photos with you all!

I finished my Maui journalling right before landing, perfect timing, and I was now in full Oregon mode and ready for our arrival to Pacific City Oregon. Jacob, Lauren, and Sam went to grab their luggage and Matt and I went to find my sister and get the rental car. The Portland airport has a unique layout, I won’t lie, but, we put our heads together and navigated to baggage claim and car pick up.

For this trip, since our friend group is so large, we had to break into several cars. Whoever is in your car, you end up spending the most time with and get the closest too, because like most of our trips, we spend a lot of time in the car driving around. This trip being no exception. In my car was Matt, our driver, my sister Rena, Jacob who is the best at car games, and Lauren and Sam, two super positive and fun people. I was so happy with our car and we had such a fun time. It was always good vibes, no stress, and gratitude over the view outside our windows.

We were starving because the flight was pretty lengthy and it had been about 8 hours since our last meal so objective 1 after getting our car was finding dinner. I knew we would want something quick and finding a place with a vegan (me) and gluten free (my sister) option would be difficult so I threw out my go-to travel fast food rec, Chipotle. And it was well received, so to Chip we went.

Our drive out of Portland, Oregon

We got in our blacked out massive Chevrolet Suburban, packed up the vehicle with our luggage, auxed some hype up songs, and journeyed out of Portland to make our way to Pacific City. We drove out of the city a bit before making our Chip stop, which ended up being the location on the Portland University campus. It was actually 'so college' seeing the young kids walking around in pjs or athletes post practice with the insomnia cookies lined up next to the Chipotle. I inhaled my entire bowl, sparing no leftovers. We ate our food outside, it was a beautiful night and my gratitude was already starting to sink in for this trip. The thrill of being in a new state, eating some Chipotle in the crisp Oregon air with great people. Have I mentioned yet that I am beyond lucky?

We hopped back in the car to finish our 2 hour road trip to the coast, Pacific City. I hadn’t heard of this town, however I didn’t know much about this State before arriving and what there was all to do here besides Mount Hood. I knew there was so much to do in Oregon and our trip would only be a sliver of what this state has to offer, so I am fully prepared to revisit. But, I’m glad I got a taste of Oregon and we made the most of the area that we stayed in.

Some of the scenery outside our windows

It was beautiful looking out the window while it was still light out for the first part of the drive. Then we played the music game for the second half of the trip where Jacob would play a song and we would have to guess the artist and song name. He knew I’d be good at this game because we played it in Colorado, so this time he crossed more genres and made sure he wasn’t just choosing rap songs because I would've swept that genre. Lauren and went 1-for-1 with guessing the songs first, however she was so locked in and got all the old bangers within the first second. The one rap song he did put on, Toosie Slide, I got both Drake and the song name within a half second, to the point that it was ungodly quick and Jacob stopped queuing up that genre once and for all.

Upon pulling into Pacific City, we stopped at the grocery store to pick up food for the week. We were going on a hike tomorrow and wanted to make sure we had food and snacks for it. I took one for the team and bought us the bread, peanut butter, and jelly. I also got myself bananas. Thankfully the place had coffee which covered me a lot of mornings. I made myself a pb&j sandwich everyday, but we did end up eating out a lot so I would have my daily sandwich more as a treat/snack. I tried a new travel trick for breakfast, I packed a bag of quick oats and another of seeds, protein powder, and a little coconut sugar. It made such a good and filling breakfast and will try implement on future trips.

Game night!!

We finally got to the airbnb around 8pm and the party was in full swing! We hung out that night, I was in such a goofy mood and was talking all around to everyone, so excited to see them and be traveling together. We had nightly traditions of hanging out, drinking, and partaking in trivia on the tv. We also played family feud our first night which was so fun! Ryan was the judge and it was actually so much harder than I was expecting to think of good guesses, especially if you had nothing in mind. I really enjoyed the game, even though our team got destroyed.

So, we just hung out that night, some people were in the hot tub and I was tempted to go in and join them because I wanted to shower anyways, but I was a chatty kathy and didn’t even make it to the tub before everyone was out. We got our room assignments as well, I shared one of the bunked beds with Rena because they were queen sized and we wanted to make sure that other people had somewhere comfy to sleep. Coming off hot from a hostel stay, I packed earplugs and an eye mask, always prepared, and I even helped out my sister with some extra earplugs. I have had enough travel experience to know that the likelihood of noise and light when trying to go to bed while sharing a space with others is high. Those two items were an absolute lifesaver because I consistently went to bed before others, oh and not to mention the earplugs drowning out the noise of Sean's snoring. My fellow roommates had some comments on the snoring, but no complaints from me (and Rena because of me) because of those beautiful earplugs.

I didn’t stay up very late the first night because I knew we had an earlier wake up call for our hike and I was so tired from work and Hawaii jet leg that I went to bed around midnight to catch some sleep before our fun adventures tomorrow.