Very mundane and pointless, but sort of relevant to the eclipse.
On the final leg of what turned out to be a fourteen-hour journey from my eclipse viewing site to Klamath Falls, I pulled off Highway 97 at the Beaver Marsh Safety Rest Area to check my car. All along the way I had passed dozens of vehicles stuck on the side of the road, out of fuel or otherwise disabled, and my gratitude for my good luck in avoiding a similar fate put me in a generous mood. I was also fortunate that, because I took advantage of the cover of the trees by the roadside some hours before, I did not need to endure the crush of humanity at the restrooms. Having seen the state of the rest area facilities on the Northbound side over twenty-four hours previously, I could imagine the mess awaiting the poor travelers heading for the stalls.
As I slowly drove through the lot to the exit, I approached a man and a woman making their way from their vehicle to the buildings. On impulse I grabbed my box of tissue paper and caught the attention of the man next to me.
“You’re probably going to need your own toilet paper” I announced, and handed him the box of Trader Joe’s Facial Tissue.
I pulled away from the couple, but not before I heard the man say “Thank you very much” in in slightly puzzled way, and heard his companion laugh.
The best part though? He’d replied with an English accent.
So to the couple who I imagine were tourists from the UK, come the see the so-called Great American Eclipse in central Oregon: the disheveled Yank in the the red hatchback says hello, and hopes you weren’t traumatized by the state of the bathrooms.
I would say most of the volume of traffic was due to eclipse viewers, yes. There was a nineteen mile stretch of 97 in the boondocks that took four hours to traverse, with no accidents or other blockages, and even in summer that can’t be normal.
In alluding to the messy condition of the rest stop, I did not want to give the impression that the State of Oregon was lax in its maintenance. It’s just that the facilities were overwhelmed and I’m sure the official priorities were elsewhere.
So you shit in the woods. Hope you did the Boy Scout-ly thing and kind of buried it. Or something. If all those guys waiting in line for the cans just, stepped off the path, well, you know.
I urinated. In the aforementioned boonies, at night, completely concealed from the highway, with no buildings in sight and certainly no bathroom facilities. Which helped prompt my concern for a fellow traveler who was also faced with substandard toilet conditions. But hey, thanks for insinuating that I’m a thoughtless roadside dumper.
