Feb 2024 PNW road trip - Seattle and the return

 My overnight in Vancouver, WA and the drive up to Seattle were fairly mundane. And I'm not only saying that because I don't have any pictures from that section of the trip. Chicken and egg, I suppose - it was mundane, so I didn't take any pictures, and not taking any pictures made it mundane.

However, once I got to Seattle, a metaphorical time bomb I'd inadvertently planted finally went off.

Let me explain.
Shortly before my trip, I realized that my car's cruise control being broken was liable to make the trip rather more unpleasant than it needed to be. So I went to old reliable never-steer-you-wrong-in-self-diagnosis Google, where I learned that in my particular model of car, it's common for a few switches in the steering wheel to just...stop being happy. But by pulling the cover off, disconnecting these plugs, giving them a quick compressed air blast, and plugging them back in, most cruise control issues would be resolved.  So I dutifully followed the instructions I found: disconnect the battery, push in some lever-buttons in the steering column to release the face of the wheel, clean the plugs, reattach the battery, done.

My cruise control still didn't work. But I'd spotted someone talking in one thread about how they just turn on the system, press Cancel a few times, then feather the Set button and eventually bouncing between the two will work. So I tried that, and sure enough, it did the trick. It's obnoxious but It Works(tm).

Somehow, though, my failure to fully tighten the contact on the battery went totally unnoticed and without incident through what, five? Six? days until a parking lot in Seattle when it finally decided to just...nope off. Not knowing enough about cars, I called for a tow and started looking for places to take it. Nothing worked out nearby, and finally I talked to someone who suggested I just try jumping it and see if I could drive it in myself. It did, and I did. They did a quick battery test, tightened the contact, and sent me on my way without charge. I'd shout them out specifically but I don't want to build an expectation of free work - I was ready to pay them for it, and they waved me off.

The main event of my day in Seattle was meeting with an online friend, whom I know as Fox (linked: her twitch channel, check her out, she's lovely). Anyone who has made online friends through activities, forums, gaming, etc knows that you often get to know someone by their username, not their real name. Such is the case for Fox, whose real name I still don't know despite meeting in person (we actually talked at some point about names and I said I was content with Fox, and she said that was fine so was she, so it's just never changed). After I had dealt with my car fiasco, we met at the famous Pike's Place Market, an assortment of stalls and shops quite well-known for the fish market where they shout to each other and throw the fish that is purchased. This is also the home of the original Starbuck's Coffee. 

Pike's Place is slightly less famous for the gum wall, which I have yet to research and may never because honestly it's kind of gross. After grabbing a Russian savory pastry thing called a piroshky for lunch, we went over to one of the few planned activities I'd pinned down, the Seattle Underground tour. Rather than being some kind of band or organized crime thing, this tour actually explores one of the most unique and bizarre things about Seattle: a lot of the downtown is actually the second floor.

The story goes that after the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, a new approach had to be taken due to how several poor decisions in the initial build of the town had lead to an inevitable sinking problem. So the solution that was devised was to build the roads up a story, and have business owners and such make their buildings with the 'main' floor on the second floor. When the city inevitably sank enough, the road would be level with the second story of the buildings, and the former first level would just be covered over by new sidewalks. Much of these original tunnels still exist under the sidewalks of downtown Seattle, and while they look purely decorative, the purple glass panels in the sidewalks are actually skylights to the former walkways. The first floor (now basement) still belongs to the property owner, to do with as they see fit - as such, a lot are just storage spaces or empty. Some have been turned into bars, nightclubs, or comedy clubs/performance spaces. The tour took us through some of the more historic and maintained areas, with the occasional picture or plaque to provide more context, and some pictures and descriptive posters in the gift shop at the end. The entire thing was delivered with practiced comedic timing by our tour guide, Clay, and I can't recommend the tour strongly enough.

From that tour, Fox and I wandered through Ye Olde Curiosities Shop, which had a handful of interesting things alongside a lot of touristy kitsch, including a mummy named Sylvia. After that, we headed towards the International District to wander through an enormous Asian market, then back to Pike's Place to find dinner (which we never did due to time constraints - she went home and I went back for more piroshky). I left Seattle late in the evening, heading for Moses Lake, WA where I had a motel room. The idea was to reduce the next two days' drive and find a cheaper option than a hotel in Seattle (which was a low bar).  The drive was entirely at night, which lead to me being sorta jumpscared by a ski area about 50 miles East of Seattle that I didn't know would be there. Suddenly: lit ski slopes.

My motel room was simple and quaint, though it stood out due to having a divider between the two beds forming kind of a two-bedroom space. I found this interesting sculpture in the morning near the truck stop where I filled up before setting off. The route that day took me through Spokane on the way through the remaining part of Washington, a sliver of Idaho, and a blob of Montana before concluding back in Idaho. Along this route, a friend had advised me of the Blackboard Cafe (this sign being at their entrance) and the Center of the Universe intersection. There's a longer, more amusing story to it, but the simple version is that back in 2004, the mayor of Wallace, ID declared the small mining town the Center of the Universe...because he could. So now there are signs indicating this, and it's a quirky little detour. 

My final AirBnB of the trip was a charming full unit in a former motel near Idaho Falls, ID, well-restored and having a lot of character (not to mention a miniature library surrounding the bed).

As usual, the scenery through the mountain states is really something. My route on the last day of the trip took me from Idaho Falls, through Wyoming and back to Colorado. I took fewer pictures on the return trip, as I was fairly tired and was putting more of my attention into the music and podcasts helping me pass the time. Still, there were some lovely sights, particularly with a blanket of snow over the entire area. I couldn't have asked for a better drive, as a snow-loving northlander, to conclude the trip.

And then...I was home.

Feb 2024 PNW road trip - Oregon

 Continuing from where the last post ended.

Departing from Boise, it was only an hour or two to the Oregon border. I missed getting a picture of that sign, so the earliest picture I have of Oregon is this one. The interstate largely goes alongside rivers in Oregon, even before the Columbia Gorge. I was surprised by how mountainous Southeastern Oregon is, which is mostly just me not knowing my geography. It's a lovely drive, though, rolling foothills and the kinds of flora I'm accustomed to in Northern Colorado. Visibility gradually decreased in one section, making for the illusion that I was driving through a cloud. A fun experience, if slightly anxious should you not control your speed accordingly.  At a truck stop just past the cloud, there was a whole corner with knives, swords, and other fantasy-oriented wares, including an inexplicable dragon skull.

This drive was a wonderful, fascinating one, with interesting geology and views. The closer you get to the Columbia Gorge, the more dramatic it gets, and the Gorge itself is an absolute sight. At the Western end of the Gorge is Multnomah Falls, with Horseshoe Falls being along the same side highway. I don't have any pictures of the side highway itself because it's a narrow, twisty one and I don't have a photographer. Accepting applications.

Multnomah Falls itself deserves its high visitor count. There are a few tiers to it, with this clip being taken from the bridge. In early February, the hike was...an interesting adventure, with snowdrifts covering entire sections of the trail. Alongside the fall spray, it began drizzling (rainfall? In the PNW in February? Perish the thought!), so I was glad for my hat but vaguely uncertain of my choice to not wear a coat. There were some signs that...may not have been entirely necessary. But the foliage and views were phenomenal. Series of pictures: 1 2 3 4

Meeting I-5 in Portland and skirting down towards Eugene, I found a section of the state that reminded me strongly of I-25 in Colorado - plains on one side, mountains on the other. Eugene itself is built around a few hills that provide a lovely view of the town, along with some interesting basalt formations. There's also a park with a scale model of the solar system; only the terrestrial planets are within the park itself, due to the sheer distances between planets. A few interesting sculptures also stand in the park - Lukavian for scale. I'd also never seen a fishing line recycling drop point, so I was intrigued by that.

Eugene has a nerd bar as well, Old Nick's, with a fun burger-building option that leaves things to chance. Also a barcade. My friend and I played a solid hour of air hockey, with one game lasting so long that the table shut down.

Portland itself was a daunting planning venture - what did I want, how would I get it, and where would I go?  Eventually I settled on the 4T trail: Trail, Tram, Trolley, Train, a route that takes one around a decent portion of Portland with public transit and hiking. I began with Trail, finding after some research that it was the only starting point likely to have free parking. The trail was absolutely stunning, leading deep enough into the mountain that the sounds of the city were often lost entirely. I'm familiar with the somewhat desolate hiking of Colorado, mostly bare rocks and low grass tundra. So the vibrancy and variety of plant life of this hike was a pleasant experience. Nature had some much more aggressive presence here than I'm used to. I was also surprised by how many fallen trees there were along the route, and while I didn't get a picture of it, there was one section where a trunk had been cut with a chainsaw to open the path. I did see an arborist crew pruning trees. There were still low bridge branches that I had to duck under.

However. Word to the wise - when you're planning a route that doesn't require or allow access to a car, make sure you know the route from start to finish. While I'd known that the Trail section was a few miles of hike, I *didn't* know that getting from Train back to Trail would be another 4. By the time I reached the Trolley section, I was already a bit tired and starting to grow anxious about the 2-hour maximum advertised at the parking lot where I'd started. A ticket would be more expensive than a parking lot option, so I cut my journey there and returned to my car. I went for Indian food, followed by ice cream, and decided to just head to my AirBnB and relax for the rest of the day.

https://imgur.com/eM7wMjN https://imgur.com/eM7wMjN

https://imgur.com/eM7wMjN

Feb 2024 PNW road trip - approach and departure

[note: words underlined in blue are imgur links of the pictures/videos I took]

Boondock Saints 2 begins with a narration monologue about how, one day, the air changed. He could sense that the boys had switched from content to discontent, that it was time for them to go back to who they were, who they'd defined themselves to be.

It was a similar shift that I felt in late January, early February of 2024. I'd had a brief online interaction with someone that showed some potential for being a long-term partner, but it fell through. Something in me just kinda...flipped after that. My self-definition as a childfree nomad means that finding a long-term partner is particularly difficult, and I was reminded not only of that, but of how I'm so far from living that identity.

I needed to get out. I hadn't left a fairly narrow portion of my state since returning from teaching English in China almost five years prior, and for someone who identifies as a nomad, that's a little suffocating.

So I evaluated my finances, asked for the week off, and began planning.

Planning

 I knew only two things when I began planning in earnest: I wanted to get to Oregon and Washington State, and I didn't have much time.  I started by looking at the general distances and routes, google mapping the route from my home to a friend's place in Oregon, mapping the route from there to Seattle where I had another friend, and then back home. Already, I could see a potential problem: I'm not as young as I once was, and I didn't expect that the 20 hour road trip one-shots I could once do would be possible. And it was almost 20 hours to Oregon and back. So the trip would be at least four days - two days' drive out, two days' drive back. I had been granted the full week off, but I had my TTRPG session on Sundays; this meant I'd have Monday - Saturday to make the trip. Monday/Tuesday driving, Friday/Saturday driving, meant Wednesday/Thursday on location.

My friend in Seattle said to me, "That's a lot of time spent driving. Round-trip flights to Seattle aren't that expensive, you know."

"Sure," I replied. "But the drive is also the point."  There's a freedom and a comfort, to me, on the open road. I'm not sitting in one place (well, relativistically I am), and I'm not tied to the scheduled stops or limitations of being somewhere without a vehicle. A road trip isn't just the drive, it's the ability to pull over at an interesting historical site or viewpoint, it's the choice of when and how to eat, it's watching the scenery on ground level.

A 9-10 hour driving day doesn't leave a ton of flexibility for those stops, so I did far less than I liked on the trip. I discovered Twin Falls, ID and the really cool canyon there. I briefly stopped at Multnomah Falls in Oregon, climbing only about halfway to the top (and skipping the hike up nearby Horseshoe Falls entirely). I missed Craters of the Moon National Monument entirely, despite a large atypical rock field being totally my jam.  There were several things I'd liked to have seen and done, several side roads and smaller highways I sighed as I passed, driven to reach my AirBnB at a reasonable time and not burn myself out too much with packed days.

But the drive was still the point. If I'd had only three days off, I'd have simply changed my destination to something attainable. It became a road trip to PNW because I had the time. But it was always going to be a road trip.

Sometime late in my planning, it was announced that due to the Superb Owl, that really important episode of sportsball, the Sunday TTRPG session would be cancelled. Suddenly I had another day for my trip. So I moved some things around, rerouted my return to see more of the country, changed my overall expectations for the final days. It reminded me of dispatching work I'd done for an airport shuttle many years before - I had these changes to make, and these resources available. How can I puzzle them around to make them all fit?

Departure

I spent the night at a friend's place in Fort Collins on Sunday 4th, and left around 7:30am Monday morning. My route took me North on US 287 between Fort Collins and Laramie, WY, where I'd hop onto I-80 westbound. This theoretically cut around 30 minutes off the alternative route taking I-25 north to Cheyenne, WY and meeting I-80 there.

However, US 287 is poorly maintained and stretches through one of the less hospitable parts of the state line area, and just past the Wyoming state line, the road coated over with ice about half an inch thick, despite the past several days being sunny and clear.  It only took one mild squiggle on an icy curve for me to drop my speed drastically, grateful for the studded snow tires I'd invested in near the beginning of winter. My car, whom I name Derek for no particular reason, is absolutely terrible on snow and ice on his own, which is a really bad trait for living in the mountains of Northern Colorado.

I made it through to I-80 and began driving west, trekking into space I hadn't been since my time as a trucker in 2008. My job with the airport shuttle frequently brought me to Laramie as a driver, but never any further (which, given the lack of civilization for quite some distance beyond, makes total sense). So the road here was mostly unfamiliar territory. It continued to be unfamiliar through the pass and into Utah, where I switched to I-84 just outside Ogden, and began the last leg of my trip towards Boise, ID. It was a rather pleasant drive overall, including a cloud I found particularly interesting.

The Idaho state line begins a long stretch of beautiful but desolate land. Between Snowville, UT near the Idaho border, and Burley, ID where I can find a hospital on Google Maps is a full hour (75 miles), along which there is one rest stop and seven exits total. It's an interesting, and slightly anxious drive, as you realize that if you did get in some kind of accident, it'd be upwards of an hour and a half, two hours at best before you'd get to a hospital or repair shop.

Somewhere along I-84 through Idaho, I decided I would stop for something resembling actual food - my consumables up to that point were mostly carrots, chips, soda, grapes, and a small salami and muenster sandwich. I saw a billboard for Chick Fil A, which remains my most preferred fast food place despite the problematic politics surrounding them. It was this stop that lead me to Twin Falls, which I wouldn't have otherwise seen or known existed beyond being a name on a billboard. I'm glad for it - the views of the canyon are stunning, especially near sunset when I was there.

Finally, I stopped in Boise at my AirBnB, a cute little house with a spare room and the friendliest floofiest cat I've met in quite a while. The owners were friendly and welcoming, but as I got in fairly late and left early, I didn't get much chance to chat with them.

Thus concluded day one of my journey.

Feb 2024 PNW road trip - by the numbers

Distance

My trip began in Fort Collins, CO, where I'd stayed with a friend on Sunday night. My first stop was in Boise, ID at an AirBnB. This was about 700 miles, and the whole travel day took about 12 hours. I'm honestly not sure why, in retrospect - Google Maps estimates the time at 9:41, and the other two legs of the journey that were estimated in that range were both finished in ~10. So I added two hours somewhere and I don't know where or why XD

The second leg, Tuesday, was another 760 miles, going from Boise to Eugene, OR; I went a long route on this to make the drive along the Columbia Gorge, I-84 across Oregon and through/past Portland. Google Maps estimates this at 11 hours, and I think that was about right.

I spent Wednesday in Eugene recovering from that mini marathon of a drive.  On Thursday, I went up to Portland, starting at Marquam Nature Park - about 115 miles.  I toodled around Portland a bit before heading to my AirBnB in Vancouver, WA.

Friday, I drove up to Seattle to meet an online friend. For estimation purposes, I dragged the pin for this trip a ways north of where I actually ended up because, as a future post will detail, I had some car problems that took me a ways north of downtown Seattle. So, we'll call it 176 miles. That evening, I drove to a motel in Moses Lake, WA to reduce the next two days' drive. That was another 177 miles.

Saturday took me from Moses Lake through northern Idaho, a bit of Montana, and back into Idaho, ending at an AirBnB in Shelley (near Idaho Falls). 623 miles on the board.

Finally, Sunday coursed through Idaho, back to Wyoming, and finally returning to Estes Park, CO, where I lived at the time of the trip.  Just under 600 miles.

Plugging the whole trip into Google, using some rough place markers and some exact, is a total of about 3,000 miles.

Finances

I spent three nights in AirBnBs and one night in a motel. Total ~227.
My car got surprisingly good gas mileage, better than expected, putting me at a total of ~285 in gas.
Pretty much everything else is just getting slushed together, because breaking food away from fun is difficult in most areas (with a few exceptions). And I might be including one or two non-trip-related grocery stops in this. But the rough total on that is 307. Breaking that across the 6 days (Monday to Sunday) is only ~$51/day. Obviously, road days were much less overall, as most of my food on those days was efficient road snacks and picnic-esque meals, all grocery store and much of it planned for low cost. Hell, my Seattle day was $24 parking, $22 tour I did, and $33 dining, so that kinda warps the average a bit.

Putting the total cost of the trip at $819.

Some cocktail napkin math: my car has about an 18 gallon tank. At an average gallon price of 3.09 (higher in OR/WA, lower in ID/WY, seems like a decent average), it costs about $56 to fill it. With $285 spent on gas, that means I went through about 5 tanks of gas, covering 3,000 miles. 600 per tank, about 33mpg.

So. Yeah. Those are the numbers.