Vacation

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.

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 afternoon1.

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.

Do You Ever Feel Like You Are Swimming Upstream?

The first day of vacation was spent flying and losing 3 hours to time zone hopping leaving no time to blog. So I wrote about the first day on the second day. Now it is the third day and I need to write about the second day. It will be kind of like these fish swimming up the ladder at the Boneville Dam on the Columbia River. Tomorrow I’ll still be behind a day.I guess I’ll have to post about both days today by short changing the content of them.

Saturday we walked the mile and a half back to the airport to pick up our rental car. The Emerald Aisle was nearly bare. We had a choice of 2 Toyota Carollas, a Chevrolet Malibu and a couple Toyota Crew Cab Tundras.  We took the Chevy. Drove a loop east along the Columbia River, to Cascade Locks, OR, then across the Bridge of the Gods and back to the hotel via the Washington state side. Lunch. Afternoon nap. Walk to dinner. Took an evening ride into downtown Portland on the light rail line and back.

First Class Ride

For only the second time ever, we have flown somewhere 1st Class. The first was 40 years ago and the only reason we had the privilege then was because we were flying from Guam to Connecticut because my Mom was very sick and that was the first flight out. This time it was intentional.

And for the first time in a long time we opted to fly out of Augusta instead of Atlanta or Charlotte. This was intentional too, as the additional cost of the extra hop was a lot cheaper than the cost of gas for the drive, the 2 weeks of parking and the hotel stay near the airport at the bigger city.

The experience didn’t start out too first class though. When we scanned Donna’s boarding pass for seat 2D, the gate agent said hold on, we have to move you, that seat is broken. So we stood around for about 15 minutes while most of the rest of the passengers loaded. Finally, her seat was changed to 3C which was right behind my 2C. When we boarded, she said, “You take 3 and I’ll sit in 2.” I guess she figured, that way she wouldn’t have to sit next to some stranger. Turns out, she needn’t have worried, seat 3D was broken too. While not ideal, we both did get a little extra room to stretch out on the 1-1/2 hour flight. The 1st class pluses were both the seats and snacks were a lot nicer than coach, also your drink came in an actual glass instead of plastic. No real minuses except for the broken seat snafu.

On the Dallas to Portland leg there were no seat issues, so we did get to sit next to each other this time. Because of the longer trip and larger cities served the plane was substantially larger, so the seats were larger and nicer. Our included meal service was served in real dishes with real metal utensils. While the food wasn’t restaurant quality it was pretty good. The pre-meal snack was a serving of mixed-nuts, but not just a little foil packet of them, it was a small ceramic dish of heated ones.

The nicest thing about 1st Class experience is the boarding. It is great that you get on first, but the only having to wait for like maybe 6 other people to move before you are on the jet way heading into the terminal is the bomb.

So, all in all, was spending 1.7 times the cost of a coach ticket to get nicer boarding, snacks and seats worth it …. maybe.

Penultimate Day Drive

Day 30 of our 2018 Jumbo Road Trip.

Hammond, LA to Montgomery, AL. No geocaching or sightseeing today because of the weather and probably none for tomorrow either as we will be anxious to just get back home.

When we got up in Hammond in the morning I checked the radar and I could see the rain bands still circling around the center of Alberto with the bottom of them around Montgomery. The sky was threatening all day, but it hardly sprinkled on the drive here and it is yet to rain, but from the looks of the sky as we walked back to the hotel after dinner it might pour at any minute.

It finally did rain and rain hard for about 2 hours just around sunset. Thunder and lightning included, but I think Alberto is too far north to mess with us anymore. If we run into any precipitation on the way home tomorrow it will be of the usual heat and humidity fueled summer afternoon variety.

Mandeville Morning

Day 29 of our 2018 Jumbo Road Trip.

Hammond, LA. We are staying at a Holiday Inn here, not an Express, so no free breakfast, but when we checked in they gave us a voucher worth $20 towards breakfast at the in-house restaurant. Due to past experiences at Holiday Inn hotel restaurants we didn’t take advantage of it on the first morning, but for some reason we thought it might be worth a try today. If it wasn’t that good there was nothing ventured as it would be free. There was a buffet, but we thought we should order off the menu to make sure we got something fresh. Donna ordered her go to, Eggs Benedict, I just ordered scrambled eggs, hash browns and sausage. We should have known better.

It seemed to take an awful long time for the food to arrive. When it did arrive and the waitress put the plates down in front of us, mine looked fine, but Donna’s looked weird. The hollandaise sauce was a dark orange color and the ham slices were a 1/2″ thick. She took one taste of the sauce and it was awful. I dipped my fork in it and confirmed her opinion. It was inedible. She called the waitress back and told her that the food was disgusting. Waitress apologized, the manager visited and he apologized and Donna ended up just eating from the buffet. My scrambled eggs were fine and the sausage was half decent, but my hash browns looked exactly like hers (that came off the buffet) and my toast was at best, warm. We can now guarantee that this was the absolute last time we will ever eat at a Holiday Inn restaurant ever.

After eating we took another early morning drive over to Mandeville. Not for beignets this time, but for a nice walk along the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. The temperature was in the 70’s, there was a slight breeze off the lake, hardly a cloud in the sky and you could see the causeway stretching to the horizon. On the way back to Hammond we did get a good breakfast. Donna got a chocolate covered chocolate cake doughnut and I had glazed cinnamon twist from Dat’s Us Deaux-Nuts in Ponchatoula.