Klamath Kinetic Challenge

OK, if the Kruise of Klamath, the Great Race and the Gambler 500 happening on the same weekend wasn’t enough for you, how about we throw the Klamath Kinetic Challenge in there too. What is the Klamath Kinetic Challenge you ask, well it is a combination of art, engineering and endurance come together in human powered vehicles able to traverse off-road, sand, mud and water courses, usually over a couple of days.

Donna and I went down to the start area in downtown to witness this spectacle. We at first were going to watch the “LeMans” style start, then drive to the finish in Moore Park, but then thought it would be more fun to skip the start and head out to the start of the gravel trail that will take them to the park, this way we could watch the participants struggle up the very, very steep road up to the trail and we would walk that same trail over to Moore Park to see the car show.

When we finally got home I re-traced all our walking. Between the downtown walk to breakfast, the walk to the Kinetic Race start, the walk back to our car, the walk halfway down the hill to see the race, the trail walk to the park, wandering the car show and the walk back across the trail I figured went eight miles!

Below are the photos, in no particular order, of all nine contestants in the 14th annual Klamath Kinetic Challenge. They all have names, but I really couldn’t tell you what they are…

Kruise of Klamath

We knew about the Kruise of Klamath, a several hundred classic car gathering in its 14th year, and planned our trip to be here just so we could see it. Today was the first big day of activities, through out today there were 4 mini Show & Shine events scattered around town that ran for 2 hours each. Tonight there is a Sock Hop at a downtown theater. We only visited the 8:00 to 10:00 one because we knew tomorrow we were going to the big one in a local park.

After the car thing we headed back into the hills south of downtown to do some more geocaching. We found five in a row, numbers 3 & 4 twice, and on the 6th were stymied. We walked a total of 4.2 miles in three separate loops, two of them overlapping.

On loop #1 we got to the first cache and realized we didn’t have a pen to write in the log book. Fortunately there was a pencil in the container. At cache #2 there also was a pencil. Number #3 had zero writing utensils. We headed over to cache #4 hoping it held something to write with, ideally it would have two, so we could take one with us. If it had just one we would borrow it, walk back to cache #3, sign that log and then return the writing thing back to #4. All that was for naught as the fourth container was too small to hold any kind of writing utensil. We contemplated just packing it in or driving the 3 miles one way back to the AirBnB. Then I remembered the Visit Klamath Info Center was right down the hill, 1/4 mile from the trail head, they’d have free pens.

As we pulled into the visitor center we saw a couple pop up tents right next door with a sign that said Gambler 500. After using the rest rooms and grabbing a few Visit Klamath pens we walked over to see what that was all about. Think 24 Hours of Lemons but off-road. You spend $500 on your race vehicle and get from Point A to Point B, 500 miles away, traveling on as few paved roads as possible. Looks like it is absolute insanity, so you know it is a blast. I didn’t think it would be wise to try and do it in the rental Chevy Malibu.

So we drove back up the hill to the trail head and went back to both cache 3 & 4 to sign the logs. From there we headed further into the park to look for more, but after one more cache and another quarter of a mile walk one-way, it was past noon and time for lunch. And we knew just where to get a free lunch. One of the Gambler 500 check points, Uglade Precision Driveshafts, was offering free hot dogs and hamburgers for participants and the public alike. We got to chat with company owners, several knuckleheads who were doing the Gambler and had lunch.

Being as it was still early afternoon and the sun was shining we decided to do a little more geocaching. This time we went to a different trail head for a couple of reasons, one was to find some caches and the second was because it would bring us near a cache we found on Tuesday that was a book cache. When we found it, Donna grabbed a book that she would read and then we could return it. Well, she read part of it, but couldn’t finish it so we wanted to put it back. After doing that we headed off to the next one, but after searching for about 10 minutes and having no luck we decided to go get some ice cream and call it a day.

Great Race

We were done house hunting and didn’t plan on geocaching today either, so we were trying to figure out what we wanted to do, when Donna saw in the local paper that something called the Great Race had a lunch stop planned at Crater Lake. The Great Race is a timed rally of vintage automobiles that started in 1983 for pre World War II (since changed to pre 1967) automobiles. The route varies each year and this year’s event started in Riverside, CA and after 9 days will finish in Tacoma, WA.

Their lunch stop was planned for noon and it was already 9:30 and we hadn’t really started moving yet. Crater Lake is about an hour and a quarter north of where were sitting, so we jumped into high gear, getting dressed and packing some snacks. When we arrived at the south entrance of the park at 11:30 there was a line to get in, that had traffic backed up to the main road so that people coming from both directions had to alternate getting off Oregon 62 into line. We sat there for a few minutes barely moving before changing our plans on the fly.

We knew that the cars were coming from Grants Pass so the only way the could get to the park is via OR62, so if the cars hadn’t made it into the park yet, we could catch them on their way up. We got out of line and headed west on 62. And if they were already in the park, we could loop around on OR230 to the north entrance of the park and catch them on the way out, when they started to their overnight spot in Bend, OR. About five miles later we passed by a large parking area for a sno-park and there was a small sign on the side of the road that read, Great Race, and sitting there was a minivan with its back hatch up. I pulled a U-turn and parked near the minivan.

There was a couple of folks sitting behind it, facing the road, with a small table set up, they we official timers for a running check point. We asked if all the cars had been through already. They said that none had been there yet and as a matter of fact, the first car, if it was running on time, would be here in 10 minutes. It was our lucky day. We peppered them with questions for awhile and then left them be to carry out their duties as the cars came by. One hundred and six cars, out of 150 starters in Riverside, started that morning at one minute intervals and they started coming by at pretty close to that pace.

We hung around and watched a couple dozen cars before continuing west passing more race cars as they headed towards their lunch stop in the national park. We stopped a couple more times along the side of the road to watch a few cars go by before turning back east to Klamath Falls.

I took about 15 or so photos using the cell phone camera, but because of shutter lag and my ineptitude maybe 5 had the whole car in them. The best one is probably the one above which was the first or second photo I took. But do your self a favor and click on this link – Great Race – and check out the professional photographers pictures from this leg.

House Hunters III

As I mentioned the other day how different a house and its street could look in 3D real life, as opposed to the satellite and street views Google provides. Figuring that same effect would apply to the interiors of houses and the photos on Zillow we decided to call a realtor and try to get them to show us a few homes.

We narrowed our list down to 4 houses. We picked the one that was the early favorite and called the realtor to she if she would show us that listing and if she had the time could she show us these other three. We agreed to meet at 10:30 on Wednesday. We were up front about our intentions, that we were just looking and and not actual buyers, for now. But we were seriously considering moving into town in the future and when and if we did, they would be our first call.

The first house we went into was practically around the corner from where we are staying. From there we headed into a nearby neighborhood that was close to the Oregon Tech. Then we headed off to get a look into a house we poked around outside of the 2 days ago. We even chatted with the neighbors. We finished off with the house that was the listing of our realtor. It was very interesting to see inside compared to the pictures online. At the end of the tour we thanked them kindly and went our separate ways.

If this were an episode of House Hunters and we had to choose from just the houses we saw today, we both agreed that the first house we saw would have been the winner. Not long after we got home, the realtor texted me to say that when she got back to the office she noticed that someone made an offer on that very house, earlier in the morning.

This afternoon we did a little more geocaching. Very little more, looked for 5 and found 3. Today’s walk was a touch over 1-3/4 miles. This “park” is on the other side of the Link River from yesterday and the word park is in quotes because it is basically a developer’s failed dream. There was a small loop of paved road with street lights and the utility boxes on home sites that covered a hill between the Upper Klamath Lake and Lake Ewauna, but no homes had ever been built. The land is city owned and open for walkers. Today’s photo is a field of wildflowers that had taken over one side of a large hill between caches numbers three and four.

House Hunters II

This morning we did a little more lookee-looing at houses around Klamath Falls. The one new house on Zillow that we added yesterday, its the one furthest east on yesterday’s map, we had high hopes for because it checked all the boxes and had a killer view. We drove up and down the street in front of it once and then parked at one end. We walked back up the block to see if we could get a good look at that view, we could and it was as advertised. As we started to walk away, the front door opened and a gentleman walked out to say hi. He told us that house was listed on Friday and the very next day they got a full price offer. Ouch for us, good for them.

We then checked out the community pool and YMCA pools for Donna’s swimming addiction. The community pool was way too busy and it was outdoors. The water is heated to 83-85 degrees, but still, with daytime highs in January of 40, that has got to be cold. The Y’s pool would work though. Its indoors and the cost would be not too much more than Golds is costing now.

We found a nice park with a ton of trails near our AirBnB, so this afternoon we did a little geocaching. Very little, looked for 3 and found 2. We walked only a total of about 2-3/4 miles, but both of us noticed the diminished oxygen at our current 4,200 foot elevation on the 120 foot climb up to the cache locations. The picture above is looking out over a piece of Upper Klamath and was taken from around the spot where cache #2 was.

House Hunters

We have made no secret about our reason for staying a week in Klamath Falls, Oregon, we think we might like to move there. To that end we have been perusing Zillow for a while looking for possible homes that we might like. We narrowed it down to a price range we think should be attainable if we sold the Bogardus Estate in Aiken. It has been fun “window shopping”, but now it is time narrow down the list of twenty odd homes that Mr. Zillow provided us with.

We spent pretty much the whole of Monday morning and then a little of the afternoon just driving by about 8 houses. We dismissed about half of them after seeing them in their natural habitat because we didn’t like the neighborhood. Amazing how different a house and its street looks in 3D real life as opposed to the satellite and street views Google provides.

But we discovered almost that many to add to the list because we happened to drive by them as we drove through neighborhoods between the ones on our list. And we found one that was almost perfect, except it is about $20k above what we want to spend and it is at the top of a steep hill.1

This evening we did a little more Zillow searching and found a couple new listings to drive by and look at in the morning. And then to balance it out we dropped two that were on the bubble. The blue pins with the white squares on the above map represent what our current possibles are.

Three Sisters

3 Sisters

Today we packed up the car and drove to Henry Higgins Boiled Bagels in Southeast Portland for breakfast. Then continued generally southeast, leaving the city and following some scenic byway roads Donna found in an Oregon Guide Book. Lunch in Sisters, Oregon which is named for the nearby Three Sisters Mountains and is a busy little mountain town on a summer Sunday afternoon2.

From Sisters it was a simple matter of driving right through Bend and then barreling south on US97 for a hundred miles to reach our home base for the next week, Klamath Falls, Oregon’s City of Sunshine.