We made it!!! I had a good feeling that we would make it when we woke up in Battle Mountain to see about a 12 hour duration for our drive home. Of course, we are in an RV, so you spend about 25% more time than the map would tell you. Depending on road and wind conditions, I was most comfortable pushing Harvee at about 65 miles per hour, no more.
The Interstate Highway System is an amazing thing! Of course, it takes a 9 hour drive on a road other than the Interstate to really drive that fact home.
Today we gave in and pulled up stakes, one day early, and started the 23+ hour trip home. We have allotted three days (well, two and a half) to get home, but we’ll see. The trip today started going back where we came from on Highway 199, with all the tight turns and incline changes that it entails.
We had a reservation for a tour today and had to be there by 9:30. It was south back to Klamath, CA, so we had to negotiate a couple of road closures and the windy roads, so we left pretty early, around 8:15. After filling up the Jeep with fuel (gah, California gas prices!!!) and getting some much needed caffeinne, we headed back south along much the same route we had traveled the day prior.
The day started out with a smash, literally. Jenny was making breakfast on the stove, but didn’t quite prop the stove up correctly. After setting off the smoke alarm a couple of times (a feature), she turned the stove off and moved the pan to a different burner to cool - that’s when the tempered glass that covers the stove when it’s not in use shattered. In her brain fog, Jenny forgot to put it up, and in my early morning fog, I failed to notice.
We are definitely starting to show some signs of either home sickness or road weariness, but we have one more stop on our journey, so we are determined to finish it off. We started the day off with a bit of logistical fun! Our camp was south of Portland about 30 miles, but we had to return the car to Portland. I didn’t want to drive the RV back into Portland and have to backtrack to get back south, so we had to figure something out.
Wow, 14 days of vacation! It definitely shows up in some ways. The little things that start to annoy you about the people you are sharing 150 square feet with, like how they chew, or how they are looking with their eyes. We will need a bigger space soon, but for now we are OK.
We started LATE today! Leaving the waking to chance, nobody stirred until after 8:00. In my defense I stayed up slightly after midnight last night reading by the fire.
We decided to take it easy for a day! Our initial plan was to head out to Mt. Hood today, but we decided that we’d been going HARD for like 2 weeks straight, so we opted to stay around camp and do camping things today instead! That said, Jenny and I decided to do a 3 mile trail run this morning to stave off all of the calories we’ve been eating on vacation!
OK, first an answer to yesterday’s mystery. I’m sure if you are my “audience” (hi dad), you were saying something like, “well duh, it’s the airport code for Portland.” Yes, of course it is that. But why PDX?? I think I have half an answer. Airport codes were first used in the 1930s when airliners started assigning two letter codes to all airports. By the 1940s, however there were too many airports for the codes, so they had to switch to three letter codes.
I have no idea why Portland is abbreviated as PDX. I will make it my mission before the trip is through to try to understand that.
Today was a driving day, but we only had about a 2 hour drive in front of us, so it was a little different than other driving days. Jenny and I got up early to try to finish off the laundry from the night before, but sadly the laundry facilities were closed.
Well, we’re about half way through. RVing is becoming a bit challenging. Between losing the water for a full day and being in the Northwest where nothing ever gets dry, people are starting to show some chinks in the armor. One of the men’s toilets today was overflowing onto the floor, and it wasn’t nice, fresh water flowing out… We move on tomorrow.
Today we visited Olympic National Park, our third National Park on this trip!