Miata Photos

After today I am 1/4 of the way through getting pictures of every Post Office in the state of Oregon. Of the 22 post offices labeled Portland I only have 5 left. Trouble is, of those five there are 3 that I tried to get already, but for some reason couldn’t find them. I’ll try to find those at least one more time. The first picture in the top row was taken yesterday when I took a drive to way southeast Portland to CravenSpeed to buy their Clear Acrylic Wind Deflector. The other five were taken this morning.

I set out with a planned route that would net 7 more Portland Post Offices. It didn’t take long for the plan to fall apart.

My first stop was at the Portland Airport. I had tried for this post office once before by following signs that said post office with an arrow and it put me somewhere where I had to back out. This time I used Google Maps in satellite mode and saw where I went astray the last time, then dropped the little man to make sure that image matched what was on the map page. And when I got to where the post office was, that is exactly what it was, was. The building is still there and you can see the address numbers up on the wall. And just to the right of that is the ghost outline of the official Postal Service metal signage.

I plugged in the address of my next target and headed off. Not long after driving along the route I spotted a nice big piece of granite with the words “United States Postal Service” engraved on it, so I pulled in. The parking lot out front was huge, but the only way in said “Employees Only.” I turned around and started driving to the other side, but was not an entrance there either. The building was twice the size of the parking lot. This must be the sorting facility for all the mail that gets flown in, not where I could go and buy a stamp.

The next two post offices were right where Google Maps said they would be. My loop was now taking me back into the heart of the big city. Turns out my next stop was smack in the middle of a very young hip happening place. I had to loop the block 3 times before I just gave up und headed for the next Post Office on the list. Back home I figured out what happened here, when you type in the address, Google shows you the map and on the left there is a static street view shot of that address. It showed the building I was looking at, but that building is not there anymore. That street view image is from 2019 and if you drop the little man and you will see what he and I saw, a new building where that PO was.

The next Post Office was the main post office for the big city and big it was. The photo I took of it shows a little more than half the building size. Then I missed the next two post offices altogether. I circled the block twice in each instance, but what I was seeing was not what I was expecting to see. I wonder those are the other place and those buildings have changed. I’ll give it one more try before I just shrug and move on.

Like our trip all over the state of South Carolina to capture an image of every Post Office in the state, we’ve decided to do the same thing in our new home state of Oregon.

The one for Oregon will differ in a few ways. 1) We are thinking that we aren’t going to chase every single one in the bigger towns, like for instance, Portland’s 2 dozen. 2) Every single one of them may not have the same automobile in the photos, the Miata might just be a Mini Cooper or maybe even a Jeep Wrangler. And 3) I’ve taken a state map and highlighted all the places there are Post Offices where we’ll put a pin in each spot we take a picture.

By my count there are 364 actual Post Offices in Oregon or around 90 fewer than in South Carolina, but that doesn’t make it any easier than the 454 in South Carolina because Oregon has 98,466 square miles, or roughly 3 times the area to SC’s 32,020. In South Carolina we could reach any corner of the state on a weekend jaunt. The furthest Post Office from Aiken was a mere 216 miles away from home, the furthest away here, Imnaha, is 300 miles more than that.

Also adding to the challenge here in Oregon is that dirty 6 letter word, Winter. Back in South Carolina we could drive practically year round, here there are going to be about 4 months where the weather will keep us home. On the flip side of that is in SC we were still working, so most of our trip were confined to weekends, but now we are retired, so if we wanted to we could take a month and just get a big bunch of the Post Offices. And if this COVID thing clears up we just might do several couple week trips next spring and summer.

Either way, we figure it is going to take us at least the next 4 years to finish the project. And because we actually started with some local P.O.’s last June it will take us 5 years total which is the same amount of time it took to finish South Carolina. You can keep abreast of our progress by checking in here on the blog and all the photos will be in the Oregon Post Office gallery.