Trip home from Baker City
Jen suggested a couple different routes we could take coming home from Baker City; one of these included traveling down the Columbia River Gorge, which sounded interesting to me. That route is an extra 110 miles, but we had Luigi (my 1986 Alfa Romeo Spider) and I thought it'd be fun to give him a nice run (Luigi came with his name, I didn't name him. I think that's important to note).
Interesting thing about the Columbia River Gorge, at least the portion of it that we hit - there's VERY little foliage next to the river - mostly just the normal Oregon desert landscape. This surprised my east-coast sensibilities -- rivers are supposed to have TREES beside them. Trees that make the air cooler and provide shade. Let me reiterate - there are NO SUCH TREES by the section of the damn Columbia River that we drove. And the air was hot. Want to duplicate the effect? It's easy - get someone to point 18 or so blow dryers at you, all cranked up to their highest settings. For hours. I know, I know, it's a dry heat. WHATEVER. Hot is hot, and I was fucking hot. So hot that my sweat evaporated almost instantly. Hot sucks.
The good news is that we made it home safely. The bad news is that we left a little after 10 AM and didn't get home until 8 at night. Whichever online map Jen used said the trip would take 6 hours. Hah. Had I known how long it would REALLY take, and how fucking miserably hot it was going to be, I would have chosen the shortest route home. Really, it was so hot that Jen and I barely talked, because it was, for once in our lives, hard.
We did do an extended stop in Pendleton - we checked out the shop at the wool mill there and had a great lunch at the Rainbow Cafe, which has been in continuous operation in the same location since 1893. The Rainbow is really a cross between a diner and a bar; we ordered simple things - a club sandwich for Jen, a BLT for me, both with french fries. They hit the spot perfectly, and the service was great - just a good ol' diner. Warning - they do allow smoking inside, which doesn't bother me, but might bother some. The laws about smoking indoors in Oregon change in January 2009, though, so if smoke bothers you, you can just put off the visit until after the change occurs. The air conditioning worked great inside the cafe, thank heaven, as we'd been riding with the top down and were fairly baked (and no, Luigi does not have air conditioning).
Luigi had a great run. Kinda. I didn't warn him that we'd be spending the day in 100+ degree heat (hell, I'd have warned him had I known!). He was a pretty good sport about things - except when he briefly decided he didn't want to start again after we'd stopped in Biggs to grab cold drinks; even though he was off, he kept the radiator fan going for a good 45 minutes or so - I'm not sure how long it actually was, because we stayed inside in the air conditioning for the bulk of the time.
It turned out to be a Very Good Thing that Luigi had decided he didn't want to go right away - once he didn't happily start right up, Jen and I decided to wait a little while and give him a break -- and when we went back inside the building, Jen ran into a friend who had been coming north up 97 who mentioned to her that there was an accident several miles south of Biggs. We decided to wait a little longer to let it clear out, which turned out to be a good idea, as the accident had just cleared out and traffic was still under the control of a flagger - luckily, we didn't have to wait very long to get through the line, because I'm pretty sure Luigi would have HATED idling for that long.
Once we got going down 97 on our way south to Bend, an actual cloud or two appeared in the sky, and the air got cooler. not much cooler, but cool enough that I didn't want to kill myself. It must have gone down to 92 or so. Whee! You know it's hot when you're happy that half of the blow dryers are on medium instead of hot. Once we got into Madras, we stopped for gas (at the Safeway - I've been accruing gas credits shopping at the Safeway in Bend - for every $100 you spend, you can get 10 cents off a gallon of gas - I never get to take advantage of this, though, as it's just silly to drive 45 minutes to save a little on gas. I ended up getting $1.00 off each gallon, which was nice - and I'm guessing that $1/gallon off is a limit or something, as I know I've spent more than a grand at Safeway).
Because Madras is pretty green, and actual people live there, the air was cooler. I'd also like to thank every single farmer on our route who happened to be watering their crops as we drove by, as the air was cooler when the water was flowing. The trip from Madras to Redmond, where I dropped off Jen (her hubby was in Redmond after playing golf), and then down to Bend, was much better. Heck, I even got rained on a tiny bit just south of Redmond.
It was so good to make it home. I ate, took a COLD shower, and got comfy on the floor of the bonus room, snuggling with Zippy to watch the Olympics. Then I fell asleep, I think within about 15 minutes of lying down. ZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Interesting thing about the Columbia River Gorge, at least the portion of it that we hit - there's VERY little foliage next to the river - mostly just the normal Oregon desert landscape. This surprised my east-coast sensibilities -- rivers are supposed to have TREES beside them. Trees that make the air cooler and provide shade. Let me reiterate - there are NO SUCH TREES by the section of the damn Columbia River that we drove. And the air was hot. Want to duplicate the effect? It's easy - get someone to point 18 or so blow dryers at you, all cranked up to their highest settings. For hours. I know, I know, it's a dry heat. WHATEVER. Hot is hot, and I was fucking hot. So hot that my sweat evaporated almost instantly. Hot sucks.
The good news is that we made it home safely. The bad news is that we left a little after 10 AM and didn't get home until 8 at night. Whichever online map Jen used said the trip would take 6 hours. Hah. Had I known how long it would REALLY take, and how fucking miserably hot it was going to be, I would have chosen the shortest route home. Really, it was so hot that Jen and I barely talked, because it was, for once in our lives, hard.
We did do an extended stop in Pendleton - we checked out the shop at the wool mill there and had a great lunch at the Rainbow Cafe, which has been in continuous operation in the same location since 1893. The Rainbow is really a cross between a diner and a bar; we ordered simple things - a club sandwich for Jen, a BLT for me, both with french fries. They hit the spot perfectly, and the service was great - just a good ol' diner. Warning - they do allow smoking inside, which doesn't bother me, but might bother some. The laws about smoking indoors in Oregon change in January 2009, though, so if smoke bothers you, you can just put off the visit until after the change occurs. The air conditioning worked great inside the cafe, thank heaven, as we'd been riding with the top down and were fairly baked (and no, Luigi does not have air conditioning).
Luigi had a great run. Kinda. I didn't warn him that we'd be spending the day in 100+ degree heat (hell, I'd have warned him had I known!). He was a pretty good sport about things - except when he briefly decided he didn't want to start again after we'd stopped in Biggs to grab cold drinks; even though he was off, he kept the radiator fan going for a good 45 minutes or so - I'm not sure how long it actually was, because we stayed inside in the air conditioning for the bulk of the time.
It turned out to be a Very Good Thing that Luigi had decided he didn't want to go right away - once he didn't happily start right up, Jen and I decided to wait a little while and give him a break -- and when we went back inside the building, Jen ran into a friend who had been coming north up 97 who mentioned to her that there was an accident several miles south of Biggs. We decided to wait a little longer to let it clear out, which turned out to be a good idea, as the accident had just cleared out and traffic was still under the control of a flagger - luckily, we didn't have to wait very long to get through the line, because I'm pretty sure Luigi would have HATED idling for that long.
Once we got going down 97 on our way south to Bend, an actual cloud or two appeared in the sky, and the air got cooler. not much cooler, but cool enough that I didn't want to kill myself. It must have gone down to 92 or so. Whee! You know it's hot when you're happy that half of the blow dryers are on medium instead of hot. Once we got into Madras, we stopped for gas (at the Safeway - I've been accruing gas credits shopping at the Safeway in Bend - for every $100 you spend, you can get 10 cents off a gallon of gas - I never get to take advantage of this, though, as it's just silly to drive 45 minutes to save a little on gas. I ended up getting $1.00 off each gallon, which was nice - and I'm guessing that $1/gallon off is a limit or something, as I know I've spent more than a grand at Safeway).
Because Madras is pretty green, and actual people live there, the air was cooler. I'd also like to thank every single farmer on our route who happened to be watering their crops as we drove by, as the air was cooler when the water was flowing. The trip from Madras to Redmond, where I dropped off Jen (her hubby was in Redmond after playing golf), and then down to Bend, was much better. Heck, I even got rained on a tiny bit just south of Redmond.
It was so good to make it home. I ate, took a COLD shower, and got comfy on the floor of the bonus room, snuggling with Zippy to watch the Olympics. Then I fell asleep, I think within about 15 minutes of lying down. ZZZZZZZZZZZZ
posted by Little Things at
2:59 PM
0 Comments
Links to this post
