“In one thousand feet, you will arrive at your destination,” the Witch announced.
I sat up to see the luxury campground that would be our home for the night. “Look, Mom! A Wendy’s! And it’s right nextdoor!”
“I wanted something near town, not smack in the middle of a strip mall,” Mom told the Witch.
"You have arrived,” the Witch replied, like she wasn’t even sorry.
“We’re so close that we can walk through the drive through,” I suggested helpfully. “We’ll have dreams of bacon burgers with extra cheese and french-fried potatoes all night. Do you think Wendy herself will make them for us?”
“Hang on, I’ll be right back," Mom slammed the door without reminding me to be good, or even telling me that she loved me. She marched toward the door of the only stuck-building in the whole village.
I sat in the driving chair, scoping out my new kingdom. It looked more like a car kennel than a car village. The car-houses were squeezed in right next to each other with no room for a picnic table or a campfire, let alone somewhere where a dog could dig for buried treasure. Not that I could dig anyway. The ground was made of the same rock as the road.
Mom stomped back out of the building a lifetime later. I jumped out of the way just in time to not get squished as she threw herself into the driving chair. “Sixty-five bucks for the night and they don’t even have laundry!” She twisted the key behind the driving wheel like she wanted it to hurt.
The Wagon rolled into a spot a few steps away, half-hidden behind a towering bus. The car-castle had more awnings, railings, and outdoor seating than a Wendy’s.
When Mom came around to the bedroom door to let me out, a pomeranian appeared at the palace gates. “Who goes there?” she barked through the screen.
“Your red carpet is on my land,” I barked back.
“Come on, Spud. Don’t get involved.” Mom blocked my menacing stare as she clipped on the leash.
“A leash! But we’re home. Who ever heard of a dog wearing his leash at home?” I whined. What would the pomeranian think?
“It’s not that kind of campground,” she said like it was too much effort to agree. “Come on, you needa go potty?”
The pavement was warm on my paws when I dismounted. “I can’t potty on this,” I said. “And how am I supposed to dig for moose eggs when everything is buried under the road?”
“I know. Let’s just go to that dirt patch they call the dog park. Hurry up so I can get a shower before dinner.”
When Mom came back to the Wagon, soggy and smelling like ocean breeze, she sat in the driving chair scowling at the Witch. “Wendy’s, KFC, burritos...”
“I’ll take one of each, please!”
Mom made a stinky fart face. “I don’t want any of this junk."
“What about Denny’s?” I drooled.
“There isn’t a Denny’s for 130 miles,” the Witch said smugly.
“Oregon sucks,” Mom added by way of explanation.
Later that night, as the sun set behind the car dealership across the street, we sat eating the same bowls of kibble and canned chili that we’d had every night since California. Mom shaded her eyes with one paw and looked up at where the moon should be. “Are you kidding me?” she grumbled. “Who puts LED street lights above a campground. They’d better turn that bullplop off after quiet hours.”
The lamp was standing so close that the Wagon could’ve reached out a door and punched its post right out from under it, but the light didn’t flinch. It called Mom’s bluff, glaring right back into her eyes and challenging her to do something about it.
When Mom gave me a wake-up kiss and a gentle scratch behind the ears, the light was still shining so brightly that it hurt to open my eyes.
“Rise and shine, Spud,” Mom said like she meant it to be an insult to the light more than a welcome to the day. “You needa go potty?”
“But it’s still night time,” I said in a sleep-talky groan without picking my head up off the blankie. Maybe she would let me snooze through whatever madness she was up to if she thought I hadn’t woken up.
But Mom was bustling around the Wagon like someone who’d forgotten how to sleep. Her afternoon-energy clashed with my midnight mellowness. “I want to get an early start so we can get out of here,” she said. Daytime-Mom never lets me nap through an assignment.
I stretched and puttered to the door, where Mom waited impatiently. The light’s brightness made everything outside of its beam even harder to see. I lowered my nose to protect my eyes and found my way to the potty patch by smell.
When I galumphed back into the Wagon, something fell on the pavement behind me with a quiet womp.
“Careful!” Mom threw a pillow at me and slammed the door.
After living in the Wagon for the whole Oregon Trail and back, our rolling home was more of a jumble of stuff held together by the Wagon walls than a house. I dug in the blankies, trying to re-make the nest Mom had pulled me from a little while before.
I was still making the bed when Mom mounted the driving chair. “Careful!” she said again. She reached back and scooped up a Walmart bag by its pigtails, holding it up so I could see how much trash was waiting to spill out. “You’ll get coffee grounds everywhere.”
She dismounted with the bag. By the time she came back without it, I was done making the bed. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
The Wagon roared to life and darkness filled the bedroom again as we rolled out of the night-silent car kennel-campground.
“See? Didn’t I tell you? Oregon is the worst,” Mom said as the first light of the day lit the windows and the buildings outside gave way to trees.
“Just because of one the lousy car kennel and one rude street light?” I asked.
Luckily, I heard the danger left in the silence before Mom answered. “I mean, Yuck!” I saved. “Those foolish wagoneers must have wished they’d stayed in Vermutt when they saw this lousy pile of overgrown toothpicks.”
“Bend has a reputation for being such a cool, quirky place, but every trail listing looked exactly the same.” Mom sank lower in her seat and glowered over the driving wheel. “Having the only REI between Portland and Boise doesn’t make you unique.”
The Wagon twisted through one loop-de-loop after another in neighborhoods where the houses looked as identical as trees in a forest. Each loop wound Mom even tighter. "Why don’t they just have four-way stops like a normal town?” she gave a nasty look toward the houses. “God forbid the HOA let the peasants’ traffic lights shine in their windows.”
“Good luck finding a Denny’s all the way out here!” I said to be supportive. “These yokels don’t know anything about culture.”
The trailhead car kennel was the kind with one long row of cars side-by-side like a piano. The Wagon had to drive two extra spaces to get away from a group of ladies trying to put together their bikes where Mom wanted to park.
Something like jealousy flashed in Mom’s eyes as she ordered the Wagon to keep going. She aimed a dirty look at their shiny, spandexed backsides as we rolled past.
Mom pulled the all done lever and the Wagon went silent. As she gathered our hiking supplies, I stared at the ladies, trying to figure out why she was so mad at them without even meeting them.
Was it their fancy bikes? Mom had bikes, but she stopped riding them when she met me. I was way better company than a bike anyway.
Was it their tight, shiny butts. But my butt was even tighter and shapelier, and had an irresistible waggling tail in the middle. There was no better butt than mine to stare at at as the trail went by in the background.
Was it that they had friends? But there was no better friend than me.
Of course! That was it! It was because they were dumber than Mom. “Silly ladies,” I said to be helpful. “Everyone knows that girls can’t use tools.”
“If this trail is crawling with bikes, you’ll have to stay on leash and I’ll be looking over my shoulder the whole time,” Mom grumbled. “Have I told you how much I hate Oregon?”
She reached for the space between the door and the driving chair, where her running shoes lived. She froze. “Oh dog doo!” she hissed with a kind of mominous anger I’d never heard from her before, even in Oregon.