Mini Mileage

44,000 Menu Choices

Last Monday the Mini rolled past the Forty-four thousand mile mark on the way to get lunch at the food truck village one town over. As is usual at this time of year it was raining. Raining pretty good too, so much that I just knew the title of the post referencing this mileage event would be 44,000 Raindrops.

When I went to post I couldn’t remember exactly what the thousand digit was, 3 or 4, so I looked at the tag listing for “Mini Mileage” and saw that 43,000 was the last used, so it needed to be 44. Unfortunately the forty-three thousand mile post was already entitled 43,000 Raindrops, so I had to punt and raindrops was replaced with menu choices.

43,000 Raindrops

We are right now in the middle of a five day atmosphere river here and it has been raining fairly steady. It varies in intensity from a light mist to pouring with brief interludes of no rain. No sun, just a gray sky hanging overhead.

Yesterday on a quick trip to the local Fred Meyers the Mini passed the 43,000 mile mark.

42,000 Dust Bunnies*

*This post has been sitting in the drafts folder for a bit over three weeks now for one reason or another. It has been so long long that we are more than half way towards the forty-three thousand mile mark…

In preparation for our big move we have been packing up little used stuff and cleaning every nook and cranny of 4 years of accumulated dirt and dust that we don’t really need to take with us. We are both fairly neat people and we have now pets, so it is amazing how much dust could be found in the house. I’m blaming it on the dry high-desert climate.

While running errands around Klamath Falls, the Mini rolled over the 42,000 mile barrier.

41,000km2 of Oregon’s Outback

This is a post about a road, OR31, something the Oregon Department of Transportation and its counterpart the Department of Tourism have designated as a scenic byway. This 150 mile stretch of road runs between La Pine and Lakeview and travels through some very rugged and beautiful high desert.

We really weren’t drawn to this road because of its destination, but because we could take a 350 mile 2-day road trip and take photos of 8 more Oregon Post offices. Sunday we headed east towards our first stop, Bly and then through Lakeview, the biggest town we’d see all trip, with about 2,500 people and onto the town of Adel whose population is defined as sparse. Then back to Lakeview where we had some lunch at Burger Queen, so named because, I guess, Burger King was already taken. Three post offices down we finally got on OR31 and headed north and west. The fourth and last post office of the day was in the town of Paisley home of the annual Mosquito Festival that raises funds for vector control.

Our stopover for the night was the Lodge at Summer Lake in the “town” of the aptly name of Summer Lake, population 80. The lake itself is nothing but a wildlife refuge with some sporadic marshy areas. I think the small pond behind the Lodge has more water in it than what’s in the refuge. Because it too has a post office we were going to get a photo, but the light was wrong, so we aimed to get it in the morning on our way north.

Monday, after a very good breakfast at the Lodge, we snapped that Summer Lake post office before heading to Christmas Valley. Christmas Valley is the largest town in this part of Oregon and was named after another dried up lake. The biggest attraction in Christmas Valley are their sand dunes east of town. We were going to drive over and look at them, but following our Delorme atlas, the road that was supposed to be paved turned out to be not, so we turned around we headed for our next post office in Fort Rock. After quickly visiting the state park day use area, by looking at what is left of a extinct volcano that was in a prehistoric lake which is no longer there. Our last post office of the trip was off OR31 in the town of Silver Lake that is once again named for a lake that no longer exists. Done with the photo taking we headed home from there on a meandering 50-mile road over to US97 where we turned south to get to Klamath Falls.

Somewhere in the town of Lakeview while driving around pondering our dining options, Mini #2 surpassed the 41,000 mile mark.

40,000 AQI

We had a very smoky drive home from Portland on Sunday. We drove within a couple of miles of Mt. Hood but couldn’t even see it at all for the smoke in the air. I’m not sure exactly what the Air Quality Index was but it had to be pretty dang high. By the time we got as far south as Bend, the smoke wasn’t as bad, visibility was up to around a whole mile.

Right around the same time the Mini’s mileage turned past the forty thousand mile mark.

When we got home the car had it numerous squashed insects and road grime washed away down our driveway.

39,000 Little Dead Bugs

Since we returned from the Washington state trip a little over a week ago I have been meaning to wash the thousands of dead bugs off the front of the Mini. But because we have been pretty busy I’ve never gotten around to it. Add to that it has been, like most of the country, pretty dang hot and the only reasonable time to wash it is pretty early in the morning.

I am promising to get to it this weekend though. Either on Saturday if we get back from the downtown farmers market early enough, which is unlikely. Or Sunday after breakfast and the morning show, but then again Sunday is bike riding day and the best time to ride is also early in the morning…

Sometime yesterday, or maybe the day before, while running errands or shopping the Mini rolled through the thirty-nine thousand mile mark.

38,000 Little YellowCones

Made it to Monroe early this afternoon, but it was too early to check-in to the AirBNB in Monroe, so we drove right through and headed one town further north, Granite Falls, to meet with the Family. We chilled with them at the town’s Sunday Farmers Market until we could check-in. Back down to Monroe for an hour or so before we headed back north about halfway to Lake Stevens to watch the two nieces and their dad in their Sunday evening tradition, play some Ultimate.

They play on a middle school’s Astroturf football field, but instead of lengthwise they set up three separate fields crosswise marked off by 38,000 little yellow cones. Depending on the amount of participants they will use all three, but today only about 20 showed up so they used just two fields and played several games with 5 on a side.

The Mini ticked past the 38,000 mile mark just before we crossed the Columbia River into Washington.