Blogs from Oregon, United States, North America - page 121

Well I thought I should write and tell everyone about my exciting last couple of weeks. First of is I found a job... that means I'm about to enter the world of responsibility... how scary. Now the good news, my first assignment is to take summer vacation. My job doesn't start until September. I am going to be a full time instructor at Portland Community College. I am going to be teaching about the equivalent freshman and sophomore circuits and EE classes. Should bring back good memories. (Pogue I think there is a joke here for you to write) So now I have summer vacation to deal with. I guess now I'm bragging because I have a month long road trip planned and then 2+ weeks kayaking the Grand Canyon. I guess it is good to ... read more

Editor's note This is just a text-only update -- for now. We will "quiet publish" -- that is, update without pestering you with another email -- this entry by adding pictures later tonight or tomorrow...whenever we get wherever it is we may end up going today. Writing this on Wednesday the 21st, Judy has offered to help the others catch up on their last few days and has plopped herself down on the sofa next to Bob Hawkins. "You expect me to talk?" he asks. So of course, he does. "So far, the trip has been educational and fun, comments Bob. The turbulence, I think, has strained all of us and the weather is certainly a challenge. Allocating three weeks was certainly not enough. it takes four weeks to do this. The new airports and new ... read more

It turned out that the Ravenwood Motel at Klamath, which looked so ordinary from the highway, was a little gem - and the price was not expensive either which was an added bonus. One of our hosts, who greeted us when we arrived last night, was on Opera fan - not really sure how we got into that subject so early in our short relationship but there you go! Breakfast was included in the tariff and luckily it also included fruit as well as all those sickly sweet pastries Americans eat in the morning. We would both recommend the Ravenwood Motel should anyone be traveling in that part of California - indeed we were rather sorry to leave but as we had another days travel ahead we took off. Since we'd missed out on Muir Woods, ... read more

Sunday, we breakfasted at the hotel and began our trip's two-week anniversary with the news that Alex had decided to return home commercial from Seattle, and Gashaw had decided not to come west after all. Extensive route planning followed, as whatever plans we THOUGHT we'd laid for our final northbound leg had been totally scrapped by this point. After much peering at the sectional charts, we plotted a northbound route to Portland through some significant mountain passes in the Trinity Mountains of northern California. The weather, fortunately, wasn't a factor this far inland --unlike the coast, which remained socked in. ... read more

This was a squeeze to see how much of the Western United States we could visit in two weeks. Ben thought we could make it all the way to Mexico, but the more realistic route took us down the Pacific Northwest Coast, and across as far as Las Vegas before heading back north via Death Valley. Working our way around the Olympic peninsula, we encountered our first cultural highlight of the trip. Wandering into a hardware store in deepest Washington, we stumbled across the gun aisle and were horrified to see rather large assault rifles lined up against the wall, with no one apparently guarding them or the ammo that was stacked neatly nearby. Ben asked the checkout clerk whether those were actual machine guns. She raised an eyebrow and said, “Yeah, although people are more ... read more