Year: 2019

On The Oregon Trail – Day #4

Hammond, LA to Paris, TX. We started on I-12 heading west, but before we even got to Baton Rouge traffic came to a stand still. We crept along for a couple miles until the next exit and got on some surface streets and it went pretty quickly. We dodged around the east and north of town on US-190 until we got to I-49 North. Did I mention Interstates suck? How about the Louisiana’s suck worse than most? The surfaces were awful, but we didn’t really hit any more traffic on I-49 even through Alexandria or Shreveport.

Once we got on the Texas back roads it was pretty much smooth sailing until we hit our overnight spot. And fast sailing too. Two-lane state highways you can go 70 MPH and the four-lane roads are 75 MPH which is 15-20 miles an hour faster than any state we’ve driven through so far.

Dinner was at Burgerland which was, truth be known, the only reason we routed our trip west this particular way. This was our third time dining here and for the first time, we came away mildly disappointed. We both thought the burger left something to be desired. Don’t get me wrong it was still miles above a Whopper or a 1/4 Pounder, but, we really couldn’t put our finger on it, it just fell short of previous experiences. The fries were still top notch and a small order feeds a family of four.

On The Oregon Trail – Day #3

We circled the wagons in Hammond. This was a planned 2-day stay to visit with friends from our New Orleans past. As it turned out, Donna did the visiting thing and I did the lay in bed in the hotel thing. I have been batting a cold/flu since last Monday and with the whirlwind last week in Aiken I never had a real chunk of time to rest and recover. Hopefully this day did the job because the next 6 days we are covering 2400 miles to get to Klamath Falls.

On The Oregon Trail – Day #2

Started in one state (Alabama), crossed a whole second state (Mississippi) and ended in the third state (Louisiana.) Today’s drive was entirely Interstate free, we did cross over or under a couple though. Through out Alabama and Mississippi the state and county roads were mostly nicely maintained and smooth. As soon as we got to Louisiana we were greeted by the thud, thud, thud, of roads made from concrete segments. This annoying, constant, repetitive bumping is especially prevalent here because the soft underground allows the 100′ x 12′ segments to slowly over time shift up and down in comparison to it’s neighbors. So while Interstates in general suck, those in the Pelican State suck more.

On The Oregon Trail – Day #1

I set my phone’s alarm for 5:00 AM, to get an early start. I woke up at 4:45 on my own, so we just got going. All the stuff we are carrying seemed like an awful lot while it was sitting on the floor inside the AirBnB. It seemed like a lot when making 5 trips from room to car too. But with the back seats folded down flat the Mini swallowed it right up.

I don’t know it was just one of those days or was it because the both of us are so frazzled from the whirlwind last two weeks, but we had a very eventful day. Here are the Top Five:

  1. On one of the trips back into the AirBnB from the car I walked into the glass of the sliding door. Fortunately I was moving slow enough that no damage was done to me or it.
  2. During final cargo arrangement inside the car I accidentally bumped the horn button with my butt. Fortunately it was a short duration contact so that it didn’t disturb the pre-dawn neighborhood quiet.
  3. We were too early getting to the south side Dunkin’ Donuts, they don’t open until 6:00 on Saturday’s. There is another Dunkin’ on the other side of town, basically on the way, so that became our next stop. We were still too early. But only by a few minutes, so we waited.
  4. We were meeting a friend at the Cracker Barrel in Augusta for breakfast on our way west. We didn’t see her car and we didn’t see her in the dining room when we got there, so we sat on a couple of rocking chairs to wait. After a few minutes we realized that she is not a late arrival person, Donna was about to text her to see where she was when her phone buzzed with a text from Carol, “I’m inside.” We forgot to check the store part…
  5. Spurred by a conversation at a farewell gathering about road trips, I thought it would be cool to take a photo of the “Welcome To” sign of each state we pass through, naturally I remembered well after we were already deep into Georgia to get one. I rationalized that crossing the Georgia border didn’t really count as it no major milestone because it is only 15 miles into the journey. We managed to traverse nearly all of the Peach State on two lane back roads before having to get on the dreaded Interstate. This worked out perfectly for me to get the Alabama sign in the Welcome Center. I cruised slowly through looking, but unfortunately there wasn’t one. Dang it, the only opportunity was a mile or so back on the side of the Interstate.

To the best of my guessing ability, either late today or maybe early tomorrow the Mini reached the 35,000 mile plateau.

38,000 Homeless People in Portland

When we visited the Pacific Northwest this year we flew into Portland instead of our usual Seattle because we wanted to check out our possible (now imminent) new city of residence in Oregon. What we did see of Portland did nothing to dissuade its quirky reputation.

We spent a couple of days in the City of Roses exploring. We were staying near the airport and one evening we took the light rail train into downtown. What amazed us were the number of homeless people that were encamped along the right of way of the tracks. Also, any highway overpass the train went under, you could see a dozen tents, or shirts stretched across the bushes. We thought there were a lot, but didn’t think it was as many as, a Portland State University report says there are, 38,000 of them. That is roughly equivalent to the entire population of our soon to ex-city of residence, Aiken!

This morning when I dropped off the CTBNL with my Fairy Godbrother1 David who is going to park it in his garage until we get an address in K-Falls to have it shipped to. When I was there he said, “You haven’t had a chance to to drive the addition to my stable, the 944 Turbo.” “Got time to go for a drive?” I said said, “Sure.” I probably would have said the same thing even if I didn’t have the time…we promptly spent the next hour or so bombing around the back roads of Aiken County. Going to miss these random drives. Somewhere towards the end of our trip I put the thirty-eighth thousandth mile on this thirty-ish year-old German engineered marvel.