My first camping trip in Oregon

Amber Taniuchi
4 min readAug 20, 2018

tl;dr: I went on my first camping trip in Oregon with friends and here are the photos. Lately I have been feeling that Instagram and Twitter are not enough to express my experiences (and existence) in its entirety. In Instagram the photos are too small and barely able to see the details. Twitter…sometimes I can say things short, and other times I can’t. So here is the long version of my weekend.

Margaret (with Bunny the Dog), Joel, Hau and Sam
Our camp setup 👍
Whalen Island County Park. This was the view from our camp.

Joel and I last-minute bought a cast-iron skillet from Fred Meyers. It is a Lodge brand skillet and I don’t think I’ve ever spent a better $17.

Tofurkey veggie dogs +
zucchini.

Tomatoes and cucumbers from our garden. The potato salad is from some local company called Reser’s. It was delicious!

Some good fire/log action of Sam.

OMG ADOREABLE

Right before I went to bed, I thought to myself…what do I really not want stolen off the picnic table…? So I grabbed my bottle of Irish whiskey and put it at the foot of my sleeping bag 😉

I think this photo perfectly captures how Bunny feels about Margaret. It’s like the most heart-twisting love story ever told.

I asked Hau to smile, but I had poor timing with my photo-shoot skills (sorry!) lol

Breakfast 👏

Then I asked Joel to take a picture of us around the campfire:

As you can see, the tent takes up most of the photo 😑

So Hau offered to re-take the photo:

Much much better angles, thanks!!! 😆

This is kind of important. We made eggs and RICE over the campfire 🎉 🎉 🎉

Growing up in Japan I recall making rice (and Japanese curry) while camping so I thought I’d give it a try. It took maybe 30 min or so but the rice turned out puuurrrrrfffeect yaaaaaassss!!!

We went for a walk on Whalen Island
It’s kind of this peninsula off the coast of Oregon
Muddy sand
But absolutely stunning 😍
📷photo cred: Hau
We rarely ever have anyone take photos this awesome of the two of us (background scenery + no body parts cut off!!) so thank you Hau!!! ❤️
Awkward yet natural
😆 😆 😆

We could see grass and crabs in the water. It was really serene.

Joel recreating high school photo

High school photo 😆

Then we drove down to Pacific City, OR to see the Haystack Rock.

Cute!!
Also cute! 📷Hau
Pacific City + Haystack Rock is pretty amazing 😍
I found this photo in my phone lol I guess I accidentally took a genuine reaction to a moment in Pacific City!
This is Sam, Hau and Joel celebrating their left-handedness. They sat on the same side lol @ Pelican Brewery, Pacific City.

Last but not least, Bunny bundled up in a blanket on a camping chair.

Also shout out to our friends Stuart and Shannon, who originally came up with the idea of camping with this group of friends, but had to cancel last minute because Shannon got sick :( We hope you’re feeling better Shannon!! We thought of you both the whole time! We missed you, hope we get to camp with you next time!!

Cheers to a wonderful weekend!!!

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Amber Taniuchi

An American Japanese lady with many, many hobbies. Full of unpopular opinions. :) Also software engineer at NYT. Thoughts expressed here are my own.