I've been taking a vacation...From My PROBLEMS!-This was the theme quote of my road trip with my brother Wayne, from the movie, 'What About Bob'. Every time one of us would say, the phrase 'on vacation' in any context, he would finish it with those three words. So fun! But really, I have been taking a vacation for two weeks and will continue for two weeks to take a vacation from my exercise goals while I get everything from my vacation activities put away and work for three days next week and 5 days the week after. Even with vacation eating I haven't gained any weight, maybe partly to the amount of hiking we did last week on our road trip.
This was a version of the trip we've been planning for several years, although we didn't get to Yosemite this time. Wayne planned to come out for two weeks and spend the first week travelling with me to Oregon and California and the second week visiting with our mom and our brother Mark who planned to come and work on projects around mom's, particularly putting some siding on the shed and painting it.
Wayne did the planning, basically a loose itinerary of places he wanted to visit and a route with a roughed in schedule, but no reservations to stay anywhere. Harry and I travel like that a lot, so I was comfortable with the uncertainty. I like knowing that to some degree we can take all the time we want some places and skip through others as we feel like it.
My job was to get the camping equipment ready, get us some maps, and rent a car. I ended up finding the best price at Enterprise in Federal Way, a compact hatchback 'or similar' for $147 for 8 days. I wanted a hatchback because I knew it would hold the camping gear and be handy for camping. We carried camping gear and a piece of furniture in the exact car depicted last year. When I got there to pick it up, the 'or similar' wasn't another kind of hatchback, it was a sedan with way too small a trunk for camping. I was dismayed until I was offered a KIA Sedona Minivan for the same price. I was worried about the gas cost, but he assured me it would get good mileage. (Which it did-ave 36 MPG!) It certainly would make our trip so much easier. Wayne was all 'Woo HOO!' when we picked him up at the airport later that day when I told him what we'd ended up with.
As always, the time leading up to the trip was tiring and way too filled with things to do for the time I had. I wanted to load in the camping gear before getting Wayne at the airport on Friday night, but ended up loading up just before we left on Saturday in the late morning. We had hoped that we'd get away earlier, but there were so many details to pay attention to in packing at home that it took me longer than I hoped. I was so glad that I have all my camping equipment organized and accessible at mom's. It made it easier once I got there. I worked to make sure everything was organized in a logical way so we could easily access what we needed. The back two of the four back seats were folded down flush to create cargo space. We could have pushed the front two upright behind the driver and passenger seats, but I decided it would be better to leave them set up as seats so we could put our personal belongings, pillows, camera case, and that type of thing handy to take into a hotel and also a bulkhead was created behind the seats to pile camping gear against so we didn't have things shifting and falling onto our personal stuff.
I loaded the bins of pans, food, dish washing stuff and charcoal grill behind the seats and topped them with chairs, cots, sleeping bags, pads, rug runners, tent and tarps on top of the bins, then close to the back hatch where we could reach it easily we loaded the cooler, the grub box, the tool bag, a bin of games and an insulated bag with bottled water.
After saying goodbye to mom, we went and filled the tank with gas at Costco and stopped at Albertson's to get some groceries. I had brought some things from home with some possible meals in mind-organic grass fed ground beef, Aidell's pineapple and bacon brats, cereal, plus any fruit and vegetables that I thought we could use that would have gone bad if left at home, and so on. We got milk, more cereal, lunch meat, bread, mayo, Fritos, cookies and some chocolate. We both wanted to avoid fast food as much as possible, not just to save money, but to be healthier. Normally when I travel with Harry we eat a LOT of fast food, so I was happy to have a chance to try travelling with healthier eating. Not that every choice we made was a healthy one...cookies, chocolate, Frito's...but as Wayne said, 'We're on vacation...From Our PROBLEMS!' and it was still better than hamburgers and fries.
Then we headed south, our first goal the Columbia Gorge to see Vista House and travel the old scenic highway and stop and see a series of waterfalls. Wayne had hoped to have lunch at the lodge by Multnoma falls and get farther toward Crater Lake, but it was obvious that we would have to change that timeline because of our late start. We decided we would have to see how late it was when we were ready to leave the gorge before we planned where to stay for the night. We did think we would most likely stay at a hotel for the night, just not which town.
Next post, Columbia Gorge....
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