Hello from the road!
The RV tour just left Washington state, and we’re now driving south on Interstate 5 on the way to sunny Orange County in California. We’ve had quite an experience on this trip out west, driving through places and areas of the country that none of us have ever seen before. We drove through Kansas, which was so flat and empty that we could literally see landmarks that were miles away; through the beautiful rocky mountains of Colorado and Utah, and into the deserts of Nevada. We then turned north, heading through Northern California and into Oregon, and then finally into Washington. These drives have been some of the most beautiful so far, and it will likely be a long time before we forget the beautiful landscapes we’ve seen while looking out our windows.
We’ve stopped at two universities so far on this leg of our tour: Linfield College in Oregon, and Washington State University in Vancouver. Both were interesting stops for us. At Linfield we presented to large audiences of male and female students, and had the opportunity to speak with an assembled group of staff and faculty who were actively working to make Linfield as safe a community as possible. They had taken some impressive strides in their work, and it was fascinating to hear what this small school had done - from having lengthy group discussions to intricately crafting their student code of conduct - to foster an environment of close community and get their students thinking about what it means to be part of a respectful community.
After we left Linfield we had a few days off, so we headed into Portland and checked it out. It was definitely one of the most interesting cities we’ve encountered so far on the tour: in particular, the “people watching” was fantastic. People in this area seem to do their own thing, without regard for what others think - and so walking through Portland we saw more widespread tattoos, piercings, dyed hair and eclectic fashion sense than pretty much anywhere else we’d been. We also had the opportunity to stop by Powell’s, a sprawling bookstore that takes up 3 city blocks and refers to itself as the “city of books” (this was a personal favorite of Dan’s, who loves bookstores and splurged more here than at any other place in the tour), and Voodoo Donuts, which offers some highly original donut offerings (anyone up for a maple sugar donut with real slices of bacon on top?).
We left Portland and headed to Washington State, were we presented to classes of students and community members. One of our Women’s Program presentations led into a fascinating dialogue centered around how we can work on a societal level to prevent sexual violence, and it was inspiring when our audience members openly shared their perspective on this. Our last presentation brought us another special treat: our contact person had ordered pizzas to entice students to come, and there were a few pizzas left over after the presentation that somebody had to eat. We were, of course, happy to help!
Stay tuned for our next post, in which we’ll write about our upcoming stops at Chapman University in Orange County, California, as well as our trip to California State University - Bakersfield!
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