Road Trip

Quick Sat/Sun Recap

  1. We spent some of Saturday morning standing around in the chilly Washington rain watching the nieces play around in a skate park.
  2. We spent most of Saturday afternoon standing around in the chilly Washington rain watching the nephew and the nieces burn American flags.
  3. We spent a bit of Saturday night eating generic pizza with the whole fam damily while one niece had a football party and the nephew and Troop 28 celebrated the flag retirement ceremony.
  4. We spent most of today driving home from Granite Falls, Washington.
  5. We spent almost all of the afternoon and most of the evening watching the NFL on TV
For items 1 & 2 see my Instagram feed @mistermiata. Re: #4, we did what we used to do when coming back from Florida, about the same distance, leave at 5:00 AM on a Sunday, making the trip bearable.
 

16,000 Gallons of Water Spray

This morning we got up early in Longview, WA to finish our run to Granite Falls to visit family. It was dark and raining which in itself doesn’t make for a fun drive, but add in a very busy highway with trucks on I-5 and it was miserable. The spray coming off all the 18-wheelers felt like about 16,000 gallons.

An hour or so into the drive, even though it was getting light, we decided to get off the interstate and loop around Olympia, Tacoma and Seattle on two-lane roads even if it meant it took us a couple hours longer.

Just outside Yelm, Washington the Note passed through the 16,000 mile mark.

On That Note

Our rental vehicle for the week is a 2019 Nissan Versa Note. It has a little over a hundred horsepower and it is mated to a CVT which makes it seem even slower than that. Yikes. The interior is noisy and, at least on this particular car, there is some real prevalent wind noise and air intrusion on the drivers side. They claim it has great gas mileage, but I’ll let you know.

There is a lot of space in this thing, compared to the Mini, it has a ton of rear leg room and two more doors to get you into the back seats. I suppose that if you wanted an inexpensive, yet new, car this would fit the bill. I just hope you don’t want the hatchback version, because for 2020 they have stopped making them.

I Got Your Windy Road Right Here

On yesterday’s day trip to Ashland, we went west on a couple county roads, Clover Creek Road and Dead Indian Memorial Road instead of the slightly shorter, but longer time way of OR-66 because both Google and the Garmin recommended it. To get to Ashland you have to go up and over the Cascades. Klamath Falls sits at 4100′ above sea level and on the way over we hit altitudes of around 5,500 feet. The Clover Creek Road section out of Klamath Falls climbs easily and steadily to the plateau section that hovers at about a mile high. After about 33 miles you turn left on Dead Indian Memorial Road and in short order you cross the Pacific Crest Trail. The road settles into a smooth run through ranches and by small lakes until you hit the last 20 miles where you drop down a couple thousand feet of elevation. But unlike in the east, the open land allows a more shallow drop per mile traveled, most of the way down is in 4th gear with occasional foray into 3rd gear.

On the way home, we opted to try OR-66 because I kind of wanted to avoid the same road when going back. So the road profile is similar, just backwards, the 2,000′ climb is at the start, then plateau, then a shallower 1,300′ descent at the end. The Google map image above shows the approximate ascent. It is no Deals Gap, for one it is not really flat, it is a hill climb. And I didn’t count the turns, but there were probably about half the number as on the Tail of the Dragon, but I drove this road a lot slower than I do the dragon for a couple of reasons. The first is familiarity, we started going to drive the Gap in 1997, and in those intervening 22 years I’ve probably traveled that road a hundred times in one direction. The other is, on about 60% of the climb up on OR-66 there is no guardrail. And on the way up you are on the outside lane of the mountain! I don’t know about you, but I am not really afraid of heights, I am just not comfortable at all while at the edge of those heights. My testicles were residing somewhere up in my abdomen for a lot of the drive up.

If you look at the Google map again it says that stretch of road is 9.3 miles and it should take you 17 minutes. That averages out to be just under 34 MPH, I bet my average was more like 30 MPH. Now we were in the Mini, so when I get to drive the Miata and I’ve done it a few times that average speed will be reduced a bit. But I probably won’t get it below the Google estimate until I’m in the Miata and I’m going down on in the other where I’ll be up against the mountain not the edge…

Its a Small World After All

On our last day of driving we went 283 miles from Carson City to Klamath Falls, 211 of those miles were in California and for the most part were on very rural forested roads. The biggest town we passed through was Susanville with a population of around 18,000. The rest were small little places, I hesitate to call them actual towns they were so small, named Hackamore, Newell, Ambrose and Buntingville.

Just outside one of these kinds of places, Adin, population 272, we stopped at a little gas station called Juniper Junction for a nature break. There was one other vehicle there too, getting gas, but we didn’t really pay attention to it. We both went inside and Donna asked the clerk if they have a restroom and was given the key, attached to a small plunger so it wouldn’t wonder off in a pocket, and pointed around outside to the other end of the building. As we were leaving the store we could hear another individual ask about a restroom as well, so I turned and said, “Follow us.”

As we walked by the car gassing up I noticed a familiar looking license plate. Donna went into the bathroom leaving me and the guy outside, where upon I asked him, “Is that SUV yours?” He replied, “Yes.” So I pointed at the back end of our Mini and said, “Small world.”

I launched into our story of selling our house and moving to Klamath Falls and that it has been a long and scenic trip, but were happy to be near the end. He told me that it sure is a pretty drive, but all his family and friends said he was crazy to drive all this way instead of flying. He lives in Duncan, South Carolina and was returning there from Klamath Falls. He was in K Falls because he had just attended the funeral of his father, who was a lifelong resident there.

I apologize for the earworm, if in fact the title of this post effected you like it did me.

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!