Month: August 2025

Halfway?

This weekend I’m heading to Klamath Falls to get a Mixed Berry Smoothie Bowl from Brevada and visit with Miata #4, the CTBNL, and its owner David. Since April we have both taken a big road trip in our Miatas and we need to swap some stories of our adventures.

Instead of driving down on Sunday like last time I decided to hunt some post offices and stop “halfway” on Saturday. Tonight I’m in something called Spark by Hilton. I picked it because it was cheap comparatively to the hotels surrounding it, plus I’m a Hilton Honors member so I’ll also collect some points for future stays.

Google Maps will tell you that you can drive the 123 miles to Eugene in 2 hours and 1 minute. That route is all Interstate and we all know how I feel about that, I travelled under or over I-5, but never set rubber on it. The six post offices were on a loop east of Corvavlis that took me only close to the coast (I’m saving all the ones on US-101 for a three or four day trip in September.) My trip to Eugene was 250 miles and it took me 5 hours.

Google Maps will tell you that you can drive the 175 miles to Klamath Falls from Eugene in 2 hours and 58 minutes. Tune in tomorrow to see how far and it takes me to get there. I have one post office slightly south of Eugene and then 3 more out and back on OR-126 that heads east into the cascades, before I can start southeast to get to Klamath Falls.

Corrections

On Sunday’s post office adventure only one of them had me scratching my head trying to find it. Google maps directed my to an intersection where they thought it was, but all that was at the corner was a dilapidated looking house with a 6′ high chain link fence around. And the fence was a good thing too because not long after I stopped a big mean looking dog showed up and did a bit of growling.

I opened a browser on the phone, went to the USPS site and it had the same address, 320 E Main St., as I plugged into Google. I circled the block once hoping for something that might have changed. Nope. The guy in the neighboring house waved at me. I waved back and started rolling down the street. That’s when I noticed that I was in the 100 block of East Main Street. As I moved along I clocked that the numbers on my right side were even. Not much in the 200 block.

When I got to the 300 block the only thing on the correct side was a Sinclair gas station. As I cruised by I noticed a blue postal drop box outside. Bingo! Sure enough, inside was a small wall with Post Office Boxes and a small closed Dutch door. This is not the first time I’ve been misdirected by Google Maps while looking for post offices, so I shrugged it off and on to the next one.

While I was editing the photos to post them on this blog and Instagram I got to thinking, haven’t I seen something that says suggest an edit sometime when I look up an address? So I went back to Google Maps and there was a button for it. So I suggested an edit. Only took about an hour for them to make the change. 320 E Main now leads to the Sinclair gas station/post office, but for some reason there is still an icon saying that the post office is on that wrong corner.

Dahlia Day Out

Did a run with the Mt Hood Miata Club today. Our destination was the Annual Swan Island Dahlia Festival in Canby, Oregon. We met in the parking lot of a Fred Meyer in Wilsonville that was 3-1/2 miles from our destination as the crow flies or 10 miles as Google would have you go. But our run leader had mapped out a 35 mile loop through some very windy backcountry roads. And amazingly enough, our 17 car caravan didn’t really lose anyone.

We were allotted an hour to take in the beauty before we headed back into town for lunch. I walked all around both fields of flowers of many colors and shapes for about 30 minutes and then found some shade and a soft drink until it was time to go.

No fancy extra driving to get to Backstop Bar and Grill, just 2 quick miles and then a couple circles of the block to find a parking spot. The conversation was and the food was pretty good. I had noticed a sign for the Canby Ferry somewhere on the the drive and decided that I’d see if I could take that on the way home. It is a neat little 6-car affair that crosses the Willamette River. There were only 4 cars and me waiting to take it. Once loaded and moving they came around to collect the $5 fee. Turns out they don’t take plastic and all I had was three whole dollars in my wallet. So I ended up riding for free. But I felt bad and I think on my way down to Klamath Falls this weekend I’ll take the ferry and offer up a ten dollar bill to make up for it.

Canby Ferry

I’m In A Book Club

Not a sitting around in someone’s living room drinking coffee (or wine), but a virtual one, and one I’m not really planning on participating in. I’m just going to read the book.

The only news I read is the local stuff that Google feeds me. I don’t watch the nightly news, nor any of the 24-hour news channels, the only way I get my news is from our left-leaning late night talk shows. Colbert has the best slant on it for me, but he was off last week. Kimmel is a watch when he’s actually there, but I think he takes 2 months off for summer, so all I had was Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show.

All week he was on this we’re going to have a Tonight Show Book Club and narrowing it down as the days progressed. Friday he announced this year’s book, My Friends by Fredrick Backman. He then read the first paragraph of the book aloud:

Louisa is a teenager, the best kind of human. The evidence for this is very simple: little children think teenagers are the best humans, and teenagers think that teenagers are the best humans, the only people who don’t think that teenagers are the best humans are adults. Which is obviously because adults are the worst kind of humans.

Based on just that, I went directly to Amazon and bought the book.

Sunday Fun Day

Yesterday was a longer day, 300 miles and 8 post offices compared to today’s 240 miles and 6 post offices. But it sort of evened out because Saturday eastbound on I-84 was nicer than today’s westerly trip home. Although, if I could have swapped the order of I-84 and OR-74 which would have made the day finish up with some nearly zero traffic twisting and bobbing roads, today would have been a great drive.

This weekend’s haul took my post office tally to 252 out of the 390 total or about 65% done. There are around 90 or so left that are densely packed along the coast and the southern portion of I-5. The remaining 40-ish out east are widely scattered and will need several more long drives with more than just one overnight stay for each trip.

Been A While

It has been almost 4 weeks since I’ve gone post office hunting. I’m overnighting in Pendleton, OR and will head home tomorrow. Today I checked off 8 of them and have saved 5 for tomorrow’s drive home. Today’s list in order of capture went Hermiston, Stanfield, Echo, Milton-Freewater, Athena, Helix, Adams, and Weston. Almost missed Weston. Looking at the area map on the phone, the normal Google saved icon became dots, so I didn’t see it. I knew when I set out that today’s haul should have been eight, and when I had only seven photos, I zoomed in to make the icons larger and found my missing PO. Funny because I saw the town name when I passed the road to it on my way to the furthest one and wondered how come there wasn’t a post office there. Well, there was.

You didn’t think I forgot a Roadside America picture, did you? Turns out there is something called Cattle Drive, and it is less than a 1/2 mile from the hotel, so I walked over and took a few photos. While I was there I noticed lights on the ground, which possibly meant it would be illuminated at night. So, I went back after dark, and sure enough, it was lit up. The low-level lights made it difficult to capture a wide shot that wasn’t burnt out by light flare.

I Get Black Cars Now

All Lit Up

 
Historically I have disliked cars in black. I’ll admit that the color does look good on some vehicles, but on a Miata it kind of diminished its already small size and you lost a lot of the curves that made the car beautiful. I won the auction for Bucky because the year and its low miles not its color. I originally thought I might wrap it a bright color too, but living with the car I’ve come to appreciate it in black. And the truth of it is, a lot of my resistance to a black car was probably based on photographs of cars, so in real life I didn’t pay attention them. Turns out the car isn’t diminished and those curves still come to life.

Now, keeping one clean is a whole ‘nother ball of wax.