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.
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).
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
Dave Saari 