The Next Day

I've reached a point in the story where things start getting confusing, so I'm not sure that my recollection of the order of events is 100% accurate, but I am sure that it's pretty close - so I'm going to tell the story as best as I can remember...

We left Pasco on the morning of September 16th, 1972 headed for Vancouver, B.C... Yeah - that was a decision Karina had made during the night. I don't know if it was prompted by memories of living in Canada, or just stories of how beautiful B.C. was... Regardless, we found ourselves heading up though Yakima, Ellensburg and Snoqualmie towards the Seattle area... There was one spot along the way I remember in particular:
As you approach Ellensburg the highway suddenly drops off the high desert plateau to reveal a beautiful lush green valley (fields and orchards) down below with snow capped mountains in the distance... It's an incredible sight... Absolutely beautiful!

I don't remember much else up until we crossed the border into Canada on I-5. We had only gone a couple of miles when Karina decided it just didn't feel right so we turned around and headed back... Now, getting into Canada had been easy, but getting back into the USA - not so much... (Especially when you have long hair and tell them you only spent 5 minutes across the border.) But eventually they let us back in and we headed down I-5... After we got past the Seattle area we remembered that Snoqualmie had been a really cool place so we turned around and headed back there. But it didn't take long to discover that rentals were scarce (and outrageously expensive) and there were no jobs... So we poked around the Seattle area for a while longer and headed back south through Tacoma (there are some scary places in that town) and ended up in Centralia for the night. (It was really late when we got there...)

The next day (Sunday) we passed through Portland, gave it a cursory glance, and decided to head on down to Eugene. We got there around noon and really liked it...  So we bought a newspaper and started looking at rentals and quickly realized that apartments were a lot cheaper in Springfield. So after having lunch at the IHOP we headed out Franklin Boulevard and across the bridge, and found ourselves in a different world... Yes - whereas Eugene was a college town with a reputation for "organic / free spirit" types, Springfield was a solid blue collar mill town. And the locals did not want any college punks on their side of the river...

We only got three blocks down Main Street before a Springfield cop lit us up... (He was a tall skinny guy with a huge adam's apple - one of the goofiest dudes I've ever seen - I figure he must've become a cop because he was tired of people making fun of him.)
When I inquired as to why we had been stopped he told us that we were driving a new car with Texas plates and that made us "suspicious"... (Suspicious? A car with out of state plates near a major university at the start of the school year? Seriously???)

When he asked what we were doing there I told him we were looking for a place to rent, and that's when things "went south"... He informed us that we definitely would not like living in Springfield and then asked to see the registration. That was a problem because Bernie had (inexplicably) stashed it somewhere in his luggage instead of the glovebox. So the cop made us all get out of the car while Bernie went through his suitcases, and in the meantime he collected our IDs and got on the radio with his dispatcher (probably checking to see if there were any APBs out on us).
Bernie eventually found the registration, but by then the cop had started giving Karina the third degree because she had three pieces of ID with different names on them. (As I recall, it was her green card from when she was an infant, her Social Security card, and another piece of ID she'd gotten while she was married to Bernie.)

I'm pretty sure the cop was about to let us go when this happened:
As Karina was explaining the different names he said "You can see how I might be confused." and Karina's immediate response was "Yes... I can see how YOU might be confused"... (Yeah - it was one of those "Oh shit!" moments... I don't think she could help it - that's just how she was...)

So he went back to his patrol car and got on the radio - and we stood there on the sidewalk ... and waited ... and waited ... and waited... And eventually he came over and told us "I'm certain that there's something wrong here but I can't seem to prove it, so I guess I'll just have to let you go." (He acted as if we had gotten away with something... Very insulting...)

The traffic stop had lasted roughly 45 minutes and by that time Karina had already decided we should head for the San Diego area (where we had lived from 9/68 to 12/69). So we got back onto I-5 and stopped for the night in Grants Pass...

And thus ended "day 4" on the road...