Instead of just sitting around doing nothing on Labor Day, I planned to labor hard behind the wheel of a Miata. I’m in the same hotel in the same town I was in just 2 weeks ago, Pendleton, Oregon. Unlike last time, when I had mapped out 8 post offices and almost missed one, this drive east I mapped out 8 post offices and did miss one. Damn, Dale.
Again, Google’s fault: the post office has an address of 48388 US-395, and when I got there, not only wasn’t there a post office, there wasn’t anything there. I had buzzed right through a wide spot in the road with 4 or 5 buildings several miles back, but I didn’t see anything that might have been a government building. Turns out, using street view of Dale in the hotel, there certainly is a post office there.
So instead of a quick 3-hour trip on I-84 back home, it will now turn into a 6-hour drive. So I can go 60 miles south back to Dale, which has a Ukiah address, and come back up to I-84, or option 2, come back only 40 miles and angle over to I-84 in Arlington using OR-74. I’m leaning towards this one, as I remember OR-74 as being a genuine blast of a Miata road. Option 3 is a long shot. I get to the Dale post office and keep going south for 120 miles, taking me all the way down to US-26, and take that back home. The positive to this is I get 3 more post offices along that way, but the negative is it’ll take probably 8 hours to get home. Option 4 is probably the best one; just go home. I’ll be out here in the east for many other post offices, and I can get it then.
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- Condon This was my first post office for the day, and now 9 hours later I don’t remember anything about the town. (9/1/25)
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- Fossil The Fossil post office was established on February 28, 1876, on Thomas Benton Hoover’s ranch along Hoover Creek. He named the place Fossil after finding fossils in a clay-like rock formation on his ranch. (9/1/25)
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- Spray I think I need to take a few weeks off on this post office journey, all these towns are starting to run together… (9/1/25)
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- Kimberly This building looks like it belongs in the Wild West. The town itself is just this spot, the corner of No and Where. (9/1/25)
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- Monument The largest building in this town of 120 people is the Monument School which around 1999 had nearly that many students. (9/1/25)
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- Long Creek The city is named after John Long, a prominent miner who came to Grant County in 1862 during the Canyon City gold rush of that same year. (9/1/25)
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- Ukiah The Camas Land Company platted Ukiah in August 1890. E. B. Gambee, who moved from Ukiah, California, to Oregon in 1881, suggested the name. (9/1/25)
