The Day I Almost Forded the River

Ahhh, what a good rest I had that Saturday morning in Boise! I woke up around 10, and Grant had sent me the contact info for a potential host couple in Portland, Christian and Diane Madrid. Turns out the Madrids were a part of Antioch’s church plant in Portland, and had just moved from Norman, Oklahoma. Antioch was my first church in Waco when I went to Baylor, and yes they have plants up in the Northwest. I gave Christian a call, and we arranged for me to get to his apartment in Portland around 8 or 9 Pacific time.

Tim and Diane had some breakfast ready for my consumption, and then we shot the breeze for a little while longer. We even talked about dating stuff, as I was interested in someone at the time. They told me some of their story of how they met, and wished me luck with that endeavor. They also gave me an idea of how inexpensive housing in Boise is. Tim and Diane were going camping in the nearby park, as it was Labor Day weekend, so I had to leave around 1.

Diane had recommended that I try out Moxie Java, a local coffee joint, so that was the first place I drove to after packing up and saying goodbye to the Hennings. When I saw my car in their driveway, I realized there was no salt visible on the underside; apparently driving at 80ish in the rain on the interstate yesterday had been a great natural power wash! Now, I did stop by Moxie Java for an expensive Frappuccino-esque beverage, and while I was getting gas at the nearby Exxon, I played it safe and got a car wash there as well, just to be sure all the salt was gone.

It’s 425 miles from Boise to Portland, and most of those miles are yellow grass and bare hills:

Not the Portland side of Oregon, that’s for sure.

At Idaho speed limits, the drive could probably be done in under 6 hours with no stops, but, unfortunately, the speed limit dropped by 10 to 65 mph once I crossed the Oregon border. The upside is that I gained an hour going back from Mountain to Pacific time. I had quite a stretch where the scenery didn’t change much, maybe from Nampa (west of Boise) to Pendleton, Oregon 200 miles to the north.

This was when I busted out one of the best things I had prepared for a long road trip like this: Harry Potter book 6 on my ipod. I got it from the library on 17 separate CD’s, so that took a long time to upload to my computer and ipod, but it led to 20 hours of listening. The fact that it took so long to listen to was great, it kept me mentally engaged and alert for hours there in Oregon. It wasn’t all perfect though, because this audiobook was spoken by only one British man. This British man therefore had to do every single voice, and although some of his voices, like that of Harry, were pretty natural, his impressions of girls like Hermione were high-pitched in a bad way, and on a few of the more unusual characters, it was painful to listen to him make it through those lines, regardless of gender. He did speak nice and slow, so that let me absorb and imagine each scene over the span of a few minutes. After 3 hours on the road, the Moxie Javaccino had run its course and I had to make a pit stop in little Pendleton before continuing on I-84 toward the Columbia River.

I wasn’t quite hungry enough to eat in Pendleton, but about 45 minutes down the road I checked on Yelp to see where I could scrounge up some food nearby, and it directed me to a little road right along the highway called Boardman. Boardman is about the first place where I-84 meets the Columbia River:

There is also plenty of farmland approaching Boardman:

I stopped at a restaurant/gas station there in Boardman and got a nice greasy burger, fries and some type of cherry-flavored fizzy drink that turned out to be not as good as I’d hoped for. The place was called C&D Drive-In, and it had a nice mom-n-pop feel to it.

From Boardman, it was another 160 miles to Portland, which ate up the rest of the afternoon. It was lots of listening to Harry Potter and cruising at 70 right along mile after mile of the glassy smooth Columbia River:

I was tempted to ford the river, or try and float my wagon across it, like we used to do in one beloved ‘90s video game…but I remembered most of the travelers dying on Oregon Trail so I decided against playing with those odds.

Similar to West Texas, there are many windmills in the hills along the river:

If Clark had been with me, he would have steam coming out of his ears haha. This is a long shot, but could this have been Mount Hood way way off in the distance?

This almost looks like a wooden bridge:

As I passed the town of The Dallas and got closer to Portland, the pine trees began to congregate and form forests along the highway. I stopped at a rest stop an a couple hours west of Boardman and loved the smell of the pines and the cool air as I got out of and back into the car.

As night began to fall, I switched back to rock music and enjoyed the endless bends in the road that revealed more mountains and pines on the left and the broad river on the right:

If you must drive at night, these surrounding make it that much more rewarding. Looking back a year later, I'd gladly do that drive again just for fun, especially if I got to stop in Portland at the end of the day.

 

I got to Portland around 8, heading down Burnside briefly off of I-205 in the Northeastern quadrant of the city and after a few turns found the Madrids’ apartment complex, and parked on the street across from their building. It was by accident that I parked close to them, which was great for unloading all my stuff. I called Christian to let him know I’d arrived, and he came out and we did that peering look at each other in the darkness, as if either of us knew what the other looked like haha. We’d never met of course.

Christian helped me get my stuff up their really long staircase to the 2^nd floor, and welcomed me into his home, introduced me to Diane, and we sat down to watch the OU-UTEP game that was going on. I just looked it up, OU only won 24-7! When Christian first mentioned OU, since I was in Portland, I thought he was referring to Oregon University, and that’s when he had to explain that they’d just moved from Norman, OK three weeks earlier and were therefore Sooners in exile. I talked to him and Diane for a while too about how the road trip had gone so far and what I had in mind while I was in Oregon and the rest of the trip. That night I slept under a blanket on their cushy couch, but not before I looked through Christian’s extensive movie collection and selected The Breakfast Club as my very 80s way of closing out Day 13 of the road trip.

 

On that note, I drifted off to sleep after midnight, thankful for another comfortable place to sleep and another set of friendly hosts in an unfamiliar place. Good night!

Inferno and Potatoes

On the 12^th day of Christmas…oh wait this was August 31^st. I started out late as usual, packing up my mobile life into my car, firing up the Top Gun Anthem, and driving back into downtown Salt Lake, to a shopping area called Gateway, seen here:

 

Yes, my destination of Starbucks can be seen in the second to last picture. It was a cool, large Starbucks, and I actually remembered to fork over an extra dollar to buy the local newspaper, which I didn’t always do a good job of in every new city I visited. After I was done with that errand, I got the car out of the parking garage and drove south on State Street looking for an auto repair shop. Since I’d already racked up over 3,000 miles on the journey, I needed an oil change, and I noticed to my concern that there was still some salt caked on the bottom of the car. On the way there, I did like I did in Vegas and had the camera out and shooting as I slowly crawled around downtown. There’s some of the Mormon tabernacles unique to this area, and other nice modern buildings:

You can see some light railway in some of the pictures in the middle of South Temple St. The oil change went as planned at the shop, but the salt problem was even worse than I’d realized. The mechanics lifted up the car to change the oil, so while it was up on the lift I could clearly see that the whole underside was still covered in salt, despite the powerwashing from yesterday. The mechanic even asked, “did you try to clean the salt off?” And I was like, “Yes! You tell your manager I power-washed the salty areas for 15 solid minutes and for whatever reason there’s still a lot left!” I left the shop wondering if it was ok to drive to Boise with all that salt eating away at my car.

I’d gotten a call from Tim Henning, the uncle of my friend Brian in Dallas. He was calling from his home in Boise, asking when I’d be arriving. I told him that I was waiting on an oil change and would then head out after that. He said that was fine, if I got to Boise too late for dinner then he and his wife would bring home some barbeque from a cookout they were planning on going to that evening. I said that sounded good, and I’d keep him posted on my progress. I pulled onto I-80 briefly to get over to I-15 driving north toward Brigham City, and snapped some pictures of downtown along the way:

With some mild traffic, it took about an hour for me to reach Brigham City, which is right off of I-15. I hadn’t had lunch yet, and this meant it was the perfect time to load up on another double-patty burger and tots from Sonic! You don’t eat healthy on vacation right?

I was still a little concerned about the salt, but I got back on the highway for the rest of the 340 mile drive from Salt Lake to Boise. It was a quick drive, the speed limits in both states were 75. Music to my speedometer. North of Brigham City, Interstate 84 breaks off from I-15 and goes northwest toward Boise. The terrain away from the Wasatch Range was mostly yellow plains, not too much to see. I called my friend Justin some time after I crossed the Idaho border, and was catching him up on the trip so far, when I saw…an inferno:

The cabin of my car smelled like smoke after that, go figure. I got to Twin Falls, Idaho about 3 hours after leaving Salt Lake, 210 miles in all. I had just wanted to stop for a latte at Starbucks, and I could still see the smoke from miles away:

The final price of the latte helped me figure out that Idaho’s sales tax is 6%. I hadn’t planned on seeing this, but these pictures show why this place is called Twin Falls, or at least that there’s a deep valley and river running right beside the town:

You gotta love the full mustache on the man in the last picture. That big arch bridge was the one I’d crossed over to get to the town. Pretty neat natural feature to stumble upon in the midst of the plains of Idaho. After Twin Falls, I kept zooming toward Boise at 80, and it began to rain as I drove on I-84:

This turned into an unexpected power wash for the underside of my car. It was around 8 when I reached the outskirts of Boise, and by now you know how I like sunsets:

Charlie Roch had advised me to underexpose clouds to see the details better, and the results were better than I expected:

I’d been texting Tim Henning to let him know I was running a little behind, and exited the highway at Eagle Road, to drive a few more miles toward the house. Boise is one big grid like Phoenix and Las Vegas, so it was more than 3 miles north of the highway to the house. In the meantime, I caught a few more shots of the pink and orange glow on the horizon, and the rising moon:

Boise’s wide open views of the horizon and flat terrain (within the city) reminded me of Midland’s open skies to a certain degree. They’re both dry places as well.

I pulled up to the Hennings’ house and got to meet them at last, and they were very nice, they gave me a generous helping of leftovers from the Labor Day barbeque they’d just gotten back from. I spent a little while just eating my fill and getting to know my hosts. Tim asked me if I'd seen the grass fire earlier, and I said yes, it was fierce, I could see it for miles away! Their little daughter was sick so she wasn’t around much. I told them I would just be staying one night, and heading to Portland the next day. I didn’t have a host for Portland, but my friend Grant Sheehan was working on that. The Hennings had prepared a room and bed for me, which was oh so comfortable after the long drive. I turned on the ipod, put the headphones, and drifted into sleep…