Post Offices

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.

Hunting Post Offices

Taking Post Office pictures on our way to Washington state for the 4th of July.

1) Chemult – 97731 2) La Pine – 97739 3) Antelope – 97001
4) Shaniko – 97057 5) Kent – 97033 6) Grass Valley – 97029
7) Moro – 97039 8) Wasco – 97065 9) Rufus – 97050

Aaah…

…I had a few ideas for posts this last week but I never got around to actually writing them here.

Because I haven’t written anything and the Miata has been driven a few times this week I lumped them all together below. As you can see the CTBNL went significant miles for the first time since last year and over two thirds of that number happened yesterday.

Took a nice drive early, to beat the heat, and did a quick backroad loop to a couple of small Oregon towns to take pictures of their post offices, Sprague River and Beatty.

171.2 miles on 5 drives since last Monday.
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 52

Return Trip

After grabbing four Post Offices on the way up to Washington, on the way home we took photos of seven. This pretty much takes care of all of the possible post offices along US97 in the state. There are only two left, our hometown P.O. and one 70 miles north of us in Chemult. Klamath Falls we can do anytime and we would have done Chemult on the way home as well, but when Donna asked, I said we already had it. Ooops.

Small Road Trip

Off to the Great State of Washington. We are heading to the World Famous 4th of July Picnic of Les & Joanie Gilbert, something we haven’t been to for the past 5 years. Today’s leg was around 280 miles and for the first 100 and the last 80 of those miles it was smooth sailing, but the middle section from south of Bend to where US197 splits off was crowded, slow and quite a contrast to the end segments.

We did stop in downtown Bend for lunch and had a great meal at a place called The Point. We split an order of beer battered fish. But the real highlight was something that Donna saw on a chalk board inside, Fried Apples. It might have been advertised as a desert but we had it as an appetizer. The half dozen slices tasted like a sublime fried apple pie and were served with a caramel dipping sauce and some whipped cream.

For the fun of it and to break up the drive we snagged 3 Post Office photos. There were a couple more we were close to, but on a Friday their parking lots were too full to even find a spot to park in so that I could get car and Post Office in the same frame. We may try and stop at a couple few on the way home next Tuesday.

Here We Go Again

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.

10011100010000000 Miles

For our 101101th1 Anniversary we decided to throw caution to the wind and take a little 3-day mini trip to the Oregon Coast. We had a free night at a Holiday Inn so the first leg (80 miles) of the journey was just over the mountains to Medford where we spent Sunday Night. The second leg (215 miles) was to our next overnight stay in Gold Beach. The last leg (226 miles) was coming straight home. To make the drive a bit more interesting we opted to hunt out some Oregon Post Offices along the way.

Sunday instead of going straight to Medford we went an alternate route so we could start in Ashland and work our way north the short distance to Medford with stops in Talent, Phoenix, Jacksonville & Central Point.

Monday we headed north and west to get to the coast. The shortest way to our destination would have been to go south to Crescent City in California, but we were saving that for our return trip. I added all the Post Office addresses for the rest of our loop to the car GPS and because we abhor Interstate travel we selected “avoid highways” in the settings.

This worked out well for the first few Post Offices because they were close to OR99 which parallels I-5, but once we got to Merlin the GPS could not find a route to Wolf Creek, turns out from here the next 40 miles OR99 combines with I-5 because of the mountains. Donna looked at the map and realized there was a loop of 35 miles, instead of the direct 15 miles, that would get us to Wolf Creek with out using the Interstate.

Not being in a hurry, we headed west along a two lane road that ran along the Rogue River. It was very scenic and we passed several little county parks for the first 20 miles. Everything was fine until we crossed a bridge over the river to head east to our our next Post Office. The road got a little narrower, almost 1-1/2 lanes instead of two and clung to the side of a mountain on the left and a steep drop on the right with no guardrail. Our forward progress slowed considerably, hoping that some large truck wouldn’t be coming our way around the next corner.

A mile or so in, rounding a corner, we came upon another Miata coming our way. I don’t know who was more surprised, us or them, but we squeezed on by with a wave and kept on going.

A couple of miles later our 1-1/2 lanes dropped to a solid one lane. Now it was getting scary, but even when the road did widen back to a lane and a half there was still no way to turn around and go back. For the next 10 miles the width of the road varied back and forth and fortunately the only other car we came upon coming at us it was on one of those wider spots. What would taken maybe 20 minutes on I-5 turn into over an hour of white knuckle driving. After arriving in Wolf Creek we took off the “avoid highways” setting and we vowed to not do that again. We’d stay on back roads when they stayed close to civilization.

As we were getting closer to the coast and having already photographed 15 Post Offices, by mutual agreement, we opted to not do the last few on the way to the hotel and not any along the coast at all. This would be saved for a weeks vacation either next spring or fall where we’d get all the Post Offices along the entire Oregon coast.

Because I had the odometer to trip so I could see tenths of a mile as Donna called out mileage to my next turn, I didn’t notice that the CTBNL had gone past the 80,0002 mile mark.

About fifteen miles from the actual coast the cooler misty weather made us put the top back up and when we did get on US101 the fog/mist/clouds made actually seeing the beach impossible.

Tuesday morning in spite of the off and on light rain, we did walk down to the beach and take a fairly short out and back walk because, after all, we drove all this way to see the ocean.

On the trip home we did stop and get the remaining four Post Offices on US199 from the border back up to Grants pass. Bringing our total for the weekend of two dozen or about 6% of the total of around 375 Post Offices in the state of Oregon. All in all , even with the white knuckle side trip and cool misty weather, we had a pretty good time.