Travel

Cannon Beach

Cannon Beach Sunset

We spent last night in Medford, Oregon and tonight we are in our favorite town in the whole state, Cannon Beach. Along the way we saw some elk, a lighthouse and some California gray whales.

I was driving along towards the Oregon coast when I noticed a sign that said elk viewing area, so I pulled in. It was a big old open marshy area and we got lucky, there actually were some elk to view. There were four of them and they were a long way off, so much so that you can barely tell what they were. Trust me, they’re elk. We stopped at an overlook on US101 and there was a lighthouse on a point across the way, Heceta Head Lighthouse. I actually took a picture of the same lighthouse from the same place in 2011. We walked up to the lighthouse and there was a crowd along the fence looking down at the ocean. There was a small pod of whales swimming around feeding just off the point. It was 200 feet down, so it is kind of hard to tell exactly what they are, but trust me, they’re California gray whales.

Good Thing We’ve Been Here Before

Deception Pass

Day trippin, yeah!

Donna’s older brother Steve, has been out this way in the past for business, but never really got to see much of the northwest’s beauty, so we took him on our favorite day trip. North to Mount Vernon (bypassing the tulip routes), then over Deception Pass to Whidbey Island, down the length of the island to the Clinton to Mukilteo ferry, before zipping back east to Granite Falls. This always includes stops at our two favorite obsolete military spots, Fort Ebby & Fort Casey.

The reason I have linked to Google Images of the two Forts above and don’t have any of my own, is right after I took the Deception Pass bridge photo, the camera battery died. Good thing we have been here before…

Hunting Eggs

Easter Egg Hunt

Yesterday Donna went to Easter service with Scott and family while I hung out at the cabin. After the service there was an Easter egg hunt, making that 3 egg hunts in 24 hours for the kids. On Saturday to go along with the one Donna’s brother’s family puts on for a few of the neighborhood kids, there was the one held at the local IGA.

That’s right, the only grocery store in the town of Granite Falls, hides hundred of plastic eggs filled with candy on the floor and in the bottom couple of shelves, then turns lose about 75 scrambling kids from 2 to 12 years old looking for them. Each kid is also given a special egg with a number in it so at the end they each get a separate special prize ranging from bubbles to plastic toys to chocolate bunnies.

Because the event starts at 10:00 AM on a Saturday there are invariably 1 or 2 people who end up doing their weekly grocery shopping during this small riot of kids & parents and just shrug it off. Ahh, small town life.

Today was a rainy and cool day, so we hung around the cabin while the Morrisons did their own thing. We did go over for supper where we made plans to go tulip hunting tomorrow.

Lost Without GPS

Lake Bosworth

This is the view off the back deck of our home for the next week, Lake Bosworth with Mt. Pilachuck in the background.

Well, it wouldn’t be a complete trip for us unless we left something behind. Something somewhat essential, but realizing its absence at a point to far away from home to warrant turning around for. Partway to Atlanta we realized that the car GPS was not in the car we were in. It was home in the trunk of the Miata.

This way wasn’t too a big problem, we had a paper map of the state, plus the DeLorme map book and we could find our way to Scott’s in Granite Falls, but finding our cabin on the lake might be an issue. We did have the hand held GPS which we brought along in case we go hiking where there might be geocaches. I could plug the coords into that and use its turn by turn feature, but the screen is postage stamp sized compared to the car GPS.

We decided that if we could get an add-on GPS for the rental car for about $5 a day we would do it. We are members of the Emerald Club at National, so normally we just grab a car and go, but this time we stopped at the counter. I asked the lady how much and her answer was $16.95 a day! Yikes, you could buy a new one for that after 6 days. Donna asked if there was a weekly rate. That was sixty bucks, which was almost tempting. Then the counter agent remembered our Emerald Club membership and commenced to clicking to see what the Emerson discount might be. For us it would be $50 or a bit over seven dollars a day for rental period, so we took it.

Good thing too, because the hand held GPS wouldn’t have been any help, turns out all I loaded was the southeast US topo maps not the whole USA like I thought. Which is sort of almost like what I did our last trip out here.

Full Moon Flush

Full Moon Flight

Shortly after takeoff from Atlanta, Donna noticed the full moon out her window hovering just off the wing tip, so I thought I’d get a picture. About the time I got the camera out from under seat in front of me and leaned over her to take some pictures the plane started its turn to the west. Just managed to get one with the wing and moon1 in the same frame.

About 30 minutes into the flight the Captain made an announcement from the cockpit they were having toilet troubles, seems like only a couple of them would actually flush. He literally told us to hold for a bit while they tried a couple things to fix it. If those failed we were going have to land shy of our destination to get another plane. A few minutes later he came back on and apologized for the inconvenience, but good news, they all seemed to be working now.

The rest of the flight was uneventful and we finally arrived at our hotel near the airport at about 11:30 PM Seattle time, but for our bodies it was really 2:30 AM Saturday. We got checked into a room and before we even got settled in we had go back down to the lobby to get a different room, the reason – the toilet wouldn’t flush…

1I wonder if the Man in the Moon knows he’ll be passing through the earth’s shadow tomorrow morning? We won’t notice, it’ll be too cloudy here to see it.

44,444

44444

We pulled off I-95 at Exit 278 in Florida just so I could drive one mile east, then turn around to go back towards I-95 South and on the way, take this picture.

Sometime in the last week while searching Mr. Miata Dot Net for something or other I came across the post about hitting this little landmark while in the Emperor. Because I’d taken a photo then and I knew we were approaching it in the Purple Whale, I had the camera at hand.

Stay tuned for a picture of the Emperor’s odometer soon, as I think it is getting close to the 144,000 mark which means that 144,444 can’t be too far behind.

Where The Heck Are We?

When we got in the rental car to drive from SeaTac to Granite Falls we plugged in our GPS, and while we waited for it to realize we were on the other side of the continent, we used the old style analog version of in-car navigation, a paper map. We started out heading north on I-5, but got on I-405 hoping for lighter traffic. I don’t know if this was the absolute wrong choice, because we never found out if the regular I-5 came to a grinding halt after a couple miles like the 405 did, but it was definitely a wrong choice.

As traffic slowed Donna called out to get off the next exit, using the map she could see where we could head east and slightly south on WA-169. From there we could take various state roads heading north paralleling I-405 about 5-10 miles to the east of it. This worked pretty well until we got to Monroe where the road heading north towards Granite Falls was just a black line with no number attached. Here we would need the GPS’s help.

And here is where it failed us. While traveling state roads it was fine, but as soon as we got on a county level road all that was displayed was the car icon on a field of green with a somewhat helpful directional heading.
We knew our destination was north of us, so whenever we came to an intersection we would take the road that would be going north or northeast or minimally one that would head northwest. After 6 or 8 turns we could see a state road on the GPS’s upper horizon with a dot and the words Granite Falls, so we knew we were making progress. After another half dozen seemingly random turns we drove into town on the very street that Donna’s family live on.

Before we left to go Washington I had updated the maps on the Garmin Nuvi in preparation, so what could be wrong. So on Sunday there during a bit of down time I tried to figure out why the GPS was telling us we weren’t driving on a road. I could see city level streets in South Carolina and Texas, but not in Washington or Neveda. After some head scratching, internet searching and reloading of the maps I figured out the problem. Not enough onboard memory in the GPS to store the entire country.

Why during the initial loading, or the subsequent reloading, didn’t the GPS tell me that the entire City Navigator North America NT 2015.1 wouldn’t fit in the internal memory and wasn’t installed?

Started up,went down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1389