On The Oregon Trail – Day #9

Carson City, NV to Klamath Falls, OR. Carson City was on our short list of new home towns, it was a bit on the large side population wise and a little more expensive than we wanted, but the real negatives were the existence of legal brothels and casinos on most any street corner. Not that either of one of us would remotely consider patronizing either one of those types of establishments, but the possible criminal elements they could attract were not welcome.

The one thing that Carson City had going for it, which we discovered this morning, was a place called the The Cracker Box Diner. This is the kind of place that Guy Fieri should cover, but probably won’t, because nothing here is over the top enough. What you get here is plain great diner food. The eggs at breakfast tasted like they were pried from the fingers of chickens in the back room. Their take on homes fries was thin sliced potatoes with fresh chopped tomatoes and chives. Both Donna’s sourdough and my rye toast came from the Truckee Sourdough Company and was delicious. The coffee tasted even better than what I had yesterday at a place called The Coffee Cup in Boulder City. The pièce de résistance was the orange juice…it was fresh squeezed right there in house. Not only was this the best breakfast of the trip, it was the best meal period.

We are here now in our new hometown and looking forward to finding a new home in it. Maybe Tuesday we’ll start looking at some of the houses we have zeroed in on as possibles. But first, tomorrow is find a bank, get a post office box and finish some more grocery shopping.

On The Oregon Trail – Day #8

Boulder City, NV to Carson City, NV. Started in the very southeastern Nevada and end in the middle western Nevada. And it was a whole lot, about 450 miles, of barren desert landscape interupted by small dinky towns and even smaller clusters of abandoned buildings the state map named, but called ‘(sites)’.

The Lady Bug flew through the 37,000 mile mark on I-515 in Sin City, AKA, Vegas Baby!

On The Oregon Trail – Day #7

Gallup, NM to Boulder City, NV. Started in western New Mexico and ended in very eastern Nevada with 359 miles of Arizona in the middle. And it was a whole lot of barren desert landscape. The only bright spot was the town of Flagstaff. It had a young, hip, vibrant, outdoorsy feel that made us start looking for houses we could afford. In the end it was a little too expensive, a little too wintry and a little too large a town for us to seriously consider stopping and staying there.

Breakfast in Gallup at Earl’s Family Restaurant was a whole lot better than the fare we had in Amarillo. Lunch was a bagel in Flagstaff and dinner was a treat in Boulder City at the Little City Grille.

On The Oregon Trail – Day #6

Amarillo, TX to Gallup, NM. Pretty much all Interstate travel today, but we did travel a few sections of Old Rte. 66. One 9-mile stretch of very primitive roadway between exits when we got off to get gas and really didn’t like the looks of the station and its antiquated pumps. And another nice little section through the town of Grants, NM just to get this photo.

Because we are not really doing much walking during the travel days we decided to walk 3/4 of mile to get breakfast this morning. It was full dark still both there and back as we walked along the shoulder (no sidewalks) along Business 40 to a place called Hud’s. This was not a real good idea on two counts. First the food was sub par and second we almost got run over by a car turning into a parking lot.

On The Oregon Trail – Day #5

Paris, TX to Amarillo, TX. Pretty much traffic and Interstate free day. It took us a while to get out of Paris, but then it was US-82 to US-287 to about 30 miles of I-40. Amazing how fast you can travel 400 miles when you get to go 80 MPH. We had time to do a little Roadside America sight-seeing: Lady Bug VWs in St. Jo, World’s Smallest Skyscraper in Wichita Falls and the Slug Bug Ranch in Conway. A Holiday Inn Express breakfast in Paris where the highlight was the cinnamon bun, and that wasn’t very good. Lunch was terrific at Gidgets Sandwich Shack in Wichita Falls near the skyscraper. We finished the day with a “gourmet” dinner at the Food Court at the Westgate Mall.

Somewhere just before rolling in to the Slug Bug Ranch the Mini rolled past 36,000 miles.

On The Oregon Trail – Day #4

Hammond, LA to Paris, TX. We started on I-12 heading west, but before we even got to Baton Rouge traffic came to a stand still. We crept along for a couple miles until the next exit and got on some surface streets and it went pretty quickly. We dodged around the east and north of town on US-190 until we got to I-49 North. Did I mention Interstates suck? How about the Louisiana’s suck worse than most? The surfaces were awful, but we didn’t really hit any more traffic on I-49 even through Alexandria or Shreveport.

Once we got on the Texas back roads it was pretty much smooth sailing until we hit our overnight spot. And fast sailing too. Two-lane state highways you can go 70 MPH and the four-lane roads are 75 MPH which is 15-20 miles an hour faster than any state we’ve driven through so far.

Dinner was at Burgerland which was, truth be known, the only reason we routed our trip west this particular way. This was our third time dining here and for the first time, we came away mildly disappointed. We both thought the burger left something to be desired. Don’t get me wrong it was still miles above a Whopper or a 1/4 Pounder, but, we really couldn’t put our finger on it, it just fell short of previous experiences. The fries were still top notch and a small order feeds a family of four.