July 2024 – Dave Saari

My most recent blog post described our multi-modal travel to Oregon and back – by airplane, automobile, and train – during June of 2024. That post focused primarily on the modes of travel involved, but I pledged to add another post describing the beautiful places we visited during the automobile portion of the trip. True to my word, here it is.

The map below shows the main places we visited in Oregon and northernmost California. Brief descriptions of these points of interest are provided below.

Crater Lake National Park, OR: On our second day in Oregon, in-laws Andy and Barb drove us to visit Crater Lake and served as our tour guides, since they had been there several times before. It was my first visit and Pat’s second, becoming the 39^th National Park that we have visited together. I had seen pictures of the lake, but that had not prepared me for the beauty of the place. I’ve included some photos I took myself, but they also fail to do justice to this magnificent national treasure.

Crater Lake was formed when a massive eruption 7,700 years ago decimated a mountain peak and created in its place a deep basin. Centuries of rain and snow filled the basin, creating the deepest lake in the United States (1,943 feet at its deepest point) with water of stunning color and clarity. The lake is 6 miles across at its widest point and 4.5 miles across at its narrowest and contains 4.9 trillion gallons of water. The lake level is maintained by precipitation, with rain and melted snow averaging 5.5 ft annually. The National Park is open year-round, but the rim road is typically closed from mid-October to late June, with annual snowfall accumulations ranging from 25 to 50 feet over the past five years. The road was still closed during our visit, so we were unable to drive all the way around it, but we did walk along the rim trail near the Visitor Center to experience a multitude of amazing views. Since a picture is said to be worth 10,000 words, here are 60,000 eliminated words for your viewing enjoyment.

View from the Rim Trail, Crater Lake National Park

View from the Rim Road at the last open overlook, Crater Lake National Park

Relaxing along the Rim Trail, Crater Lake National Park

Visitor’s Lodge, Crater Lake National Park

Boy Scout Tree Trail, Crescent City, CA: After two days staying in Medford, OR, including our visit to Crater Lake, we drove along an amazing road, US Highway 199, that wound its way steeply up and down and around a multitude of sharp curves as it traversed the mountains toward Crescent City, CA. As we neared Crescent City, we got off the main highway to take small, forest roads into the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park. The most amazing of these was called Howland Hill Road, a mere dirt path that wound its way through giant redwood trees. We stopped at the Boy Scout Tree Trailhead and walked about a mile and a half into the forest to admire magnificent trees and beautiful wildflowers. Again, the pictures can not truly capture the immensity of these ancient trees, but I’ll once again dispense with 60,000 words.

Howland Hill Road, near Crescent City, CA

The Boy Scout Tree Trail, Jedediah Smith State Forest, CA

Interesting Redwoods with Burls along the Boy Scout Tree Trail

Tree Blossom along the Boy Scout Tree Trail

My Attempt to Illustrate the Immensity of the Redwoods

Feeling Puny along the Boy Scout Tree Trail

Crescent City Breakwater: After our walk in the woods, feeling quite puny and insignificant compared to the massive trees, we again drove along Howland Hill Road until it emerged from the forest and morphed into a city street. Once in Crescent City itself, we had a nice lunch at SeaQuake Brewing (I had clam chowder and a hearty stout) before taking a short walk to the nearby breakwater. This structure is known for its unusual design, employing concrete structures called tetrapods, designed by the US Army Corps of Engineers in the 1950s to serve as protection against the heavy ocean waves that frequently impinge on the pier. I found these tetrapods fascinating, given my nerdy engineer curiosity, so I’m calling this a point of interest even though others may not be overly impressed.

Crescent City Lighthouse viewed from Breakwater

Port Orford Heads State Park, Port Orford, OR: As I explained in Part 1, visiting this location was the underlying purpose of the whole Oregon excursion – to visit the site where our nephew, Steve, and his wife, Kelci, were married in a quiet ceremony last year, so we could celebrate the event with them post facto. The assembled relatives all trooped along a lovely walking path to the overlook where the nuptials took place and gave the newlyweds our collective congratulations. As we stood looking out at the surroundings, I couldn’t resist the urge to say a few words of purported wisdom to the happy couple. Here’s what I came up with:

“I’m very happy that you chose such a beautiful place to say your wedding vows, because it can serve as a symbol of your future life together. I say this because there is nothing in the world more beautiful than the love shared between life partners.”

Okay, maybe a bit sappy, but there you have it. Now for some more word-saving photos.

Port Orford Head State Park, Port Orford, OR

Foliage Along Walking Path at Port Orford Head State Park

Wildflower Along Walking Path at Port Orford Head State Park

Battle Rock Wayside, Port Orford, OR: After our visit to the State Park, we drove to the nearby town of Port Orford for a great lunch at a place called The Crazy Norwegian’s Fish and Chips and then walked to a nice little beachside park called the Battle Rock Wayside. While the name comes from one of the many unfortunate moments in American history (a battle between white settlers and indigenous people who were being unceremoniously expelled from their supposed treaty lands), it was actually a very beautiful place, and we spent some time roaming the beach and enjoying the scenic overlooks.

Overlook at Battle Rock Wayside, Port Orford, OR

A new Driver? On the Beach at Battle Rock Wayside

Prehistoric Gardens, Gold Beach, OR: Calling this one a point of interest is a bit of a stretch. It’s a tourist attraction featuring 23 life-sized sculptures of dinosaurs set among the lush foliage of the area’s temperate rainforest. The gardens are the work of an amateur paleontologist in the 1950s, but I presume it’s mainly the sort of place people stop to entertain their kids. Unfortunately for our little tour group, it did include one big kid – me. So, we had to make a quick stop on the way back from Port Orford so I could pose with the big T-Rex that’s visible from the highway. We didn’t actually go into the gardens, though, so I can’t really give an opinion on whether or not it’s a worthwhile stop.

Ophir Beach Wayside, Gold Beach, OR: On our last day before heading off to catch the train in Portland, we visited one of the many nice waysides along US Highway 101. Ophir Beach is a long, sandy beach divided by a small creek that emerges from the hillside area east of the highway. We enjoyed beautiful views of the ocean and the sandy hills as well as interesting driftwood and other objects strewn along the sand.

View from Ophir Beach Wayside, near Gold Beach, OR

Miscellaneous: Finally, to round out this narrative, I have a couple more photos I want to share from other places we passed by during the trip.

Rogue River seen from Jot’s Resort, Gold Beach, OR

Sunset along Oregon Coast near Gold Beach, OR

OK, that’s it for this installment of my travel blog. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for our next adventure, coming in October of 2024.

I recently reported on a trip we took with our new Tesla to the Great Smoky Mountains in April of 2024. The electronic ink is barely dry on that one, and here I am writing another post about our most recent travels. This time, we were inspired to head to the west coast to visit our nephew, Steve, and his new bride, Kelsi, in Medford, OR. The happy couple married last year in a small, intimate ceremony by the sea, depriving the lad’s mother of the opportunity to attend another wedding. To rectify this situation, the newlyweds agreed to a visit from a few family members, during which we would go to the site of their wedding vows and wish them well in their new life together.

The simplest way to make this trip would have been to fly to their Oregon hometown and impose on them to pick us up, put us up at their house, ferry us around for a day or two, and then drop us back at the airport. However, this did not seem like a good way to celebrate the big event, much less to be seen as thoughtful aunt- and uncle-in-law, so we thought better of suggesting that. Instead, we came up with a more adventurous plan – I have to credit Pat for thinking of it – involving the abovementioned planes, trains, and automobiles.

NOTE: Those readers who aren’t as advanced in years may not catch the reference: it comes from the classic 1987 comedy starring John Candy and Steve Martin. To be more chronologically and syntactically precise, I should call it planes, automobiles, and train, but that doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

At any rate, in this first episode, I’ll mostly focus on the multimodal travel involved, saving more details about the beautiful places we visited during the automobiles portion for a future Part 2. So, here we go.

Wednesday, June 19, 2024: We rolled out of bed in our Minneapolis condo at 4:15 AM, performing the necessary toiletries before sleepily rolling our luggage down to the lobby and exiting the building precisely as Mustaf, our friendly Lyft driver, pulled to the curb at 5:00. We were at MSP airport by 5:23, well in advance of our flight departure. (We were thankful that Lyft is still serving Minneapolis despite the threat of abandoning the city over a proposed ordinance mandating driver pay increases, which was subsequently made moot by a state law negotiated between Lyft, Uber, and Governor Tim Walz, among others. I have been very pleased with the service provided by Lyft in the past, and I hope they continue to be successful under the new law.)

The first leg of the flight did not get off to the best start, as high, shifting winds led to a change in runways and a long line of planes waiting to take off, but we eventually did get airborne some 45 minutes late and arrived in Seattle with enough time to catch the next hop to Medford. Along the way, I enjoyed gazing out the airplane window, as the sky was very clear, and soon realized that I could use the Google Maps app on my phone to track along the terrain we were flying above and identify the various rivers, mountains, highways, and towns as we passed by. (Just the sort of nerdy thing you might expect from me, eh?) I tried to get some photos, but most didn’t turn out. Here’s one that wasn’t too bad, followed by a map of the Planes portion of the journey.

View from the Airplane with Mount Adams, WA, (I think) in the distance

We arrived at the somewhat ostentatiously named Rogue Valley International Airport in Medford shortly after noon Pacific time. We had reserved a rental car from Enterprise, so I proceeded to the minuscule rental desk, staffed by two young women, while Pat collected our luggage. Despite the fact that I was the only customer, it took about a half-hour before I had actually succeeded in renting the car. The first young woman’s iPad crashed after I had checked all the appropriate boxes and signed with my fingertip, and the second young woman spent an inordinate amount of time answering questions from someone who wasn’t even renting a car before finally starting over with me on her iPad. Meanwhile, the status of the Rogue Valley International Airport continued to diminish in my mind as I waited impatiently.

Ay any rate, we finally managed to get a car, a nice Toyota Corolla – at least nice enough for an ICE car. It took me a while to get used to driving it, especially the part about having to step on the brakes to make it stop. I’ve become so used to the regenerative braking in our EVs that it seemed odd – I must have used the brakes more during our six days in Oregon than I have in the past three years with our Teslas. The car handled and performed very well, though, and got an impressive 44.36 mpg. Gasoline cost us an average of $4.28, so it still cost about $0.10 per mile for fuel. I hope to go back to Oregon sometime with our newer Tesla so I can find out what it would cost to drive an EV there.

After renting the car, we headed off to a nice place called Noho’s Hawaiian Café where I had a delicious but huge lunch of barbecued pulled pork (which I finally finished two days later). The rest of the day was taken up by a brief hike at a nearby park called the Jacksonville Forest Trails, checking into our hotel (Medford Hampton Inn), and dinner at a lovely restaurant called The Point Pub and Grill in neighboring Central Point, OR, with the newlyweds and our nephew’s parents (who traveled separately by car to meet us out there).

Pat on our Hike at Jackson Forest Trails

Interesting Tree at Jackson Hiking Trails

Thursday, June 20 – Monday, June 24, 2024: During this period, we rode in a total of three automobiles: our rental Toyota, brother-in-law Andy and sister-in-law Barb’s Honda CR-V, and nephew Steve’s Honda Pilot. On Thursday, Andy drove Pat, Barb, and me to visit Crater Lake. On Friday, Pat and I drove the rental car out to the Pacific Coast, where we stayed for three nights at Jot’s Resort in Gold Beach, OR, and visited with the assembled rellies (Steve, Kelsi, Andy, Barb, and Steve’s cousin Grace Ann) at an Airbnb they had rented, located about eight miles north along the coast. On Saturday, Steve drove us all from the Airbnb to the Port Orford Heads State Park, the site of last year’s wedding, and to the town of Port Orford. On Sunday, Steve again drove us from the Airbnb to a lovely spot called Ophir Beach. On Monday, Pat and I drove to Portland to catch the train. I’ll report in detail on all this in Part 2, but here are a map of the Automobiles portion of the trip and a few teaser photos:

Dwarfed by Redwoods along Boy Scout Tree Trail near Crescent City, CA

Andy, Steve, Kelsi, Barb, Pat, and Grace Ann at Port Orford, OR

Monday, June 24 – Wednesday, June 26, 2024: As mentioned above, we drove to Portland on Monday, with a brief stop to visit longtime friend Lynn in her assisted living facility before returning the rental car, thus completing the Automobiles segment of the trip. After a brief walk to Portland’s Union Station, we relaxed in the customer lounge before boarding the Amtrak Empire Builder train for our trip to St. Paul, MN.

Customer Lounge at Portland Union Station

The train trip took a total of 36 hours, roughly twelve times as long as a non-stop flight, but we wanted to experience a long train trip just for the fun of it. Here’s a map of the route:

We had booked what Amtrak calls a bedroom suite, which turned out to be a whopping 7 ft x 6.5 ft space with a lounge chair and a couch that turned into a lower bunk. The upper bunk folded down from above and was accessible by a portable ladder. The room had a restroom with a shower, but neither of us dared to try the shower as it was nothing more than a spray handle within the tiny restroom, with no separate enclosure. I would not call the accommodations deluxe, but they were certainly better than the ordinary seats in which we had travelled from St. Paul to Chicago a couple of times in years past. Pat used the upper bunk, being a bit nimbler than I, and I had a terrible time sleeping with the constant jostling of the train.

Bedroom Suite on the Amtrak Empire Builder

Despite the somewhat uncomfortable accommodations, we enjoyed the trip. We lurched through the constantly swaying train cars toward the back of the train many times, for meals in the dining car (which were quite nice) and to visit the observation car which provided beautiful views of the passing scenery, especially on Tuesday morning as we passed south of Glacier National Park.

Observation Car on the Amtrak Empire Builder

Columbia River from Amtrak Empire Builder

Middle Fork of Flathead River from Amtrak Empire Builder

We arrived in St. Paul at 9:13 AM, feeling slightly disheveled but overall, no worse for the wear. We exited St. Paul’s Union Station, summoned a Lyft, and were driven home by Marco, another friendly and efficient driver, arriving at the condo at 9:48 AM.

All in all, I would describe the Train portion of the trip as a worthwhile and enjoyable experience, although one we probably won’t be too eager to do again.

OK, that’s it for Part 1. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for some lovely photos of giant redwoods and the Pacific Coast, coming in Part 2.

Month: July 2024

Pat and Dave’s West Coast Wayfaring – PART 2: Points of Interest

Pat and Dave’s West Coast Wayfaring – PART 1: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles