Day 55 - Portland to Trinidad, CA

Rockies 2008 – Day 55 – 08.15.08
Portland to Trinidad, CA - 412 miles total and 26.0 mpg. Totals for the trip, 8695 miles, 27.3* mpg. Those are the stats.


The morning started with a wonderful breakfast with Bill and Donna. Donna put out a spread of fruit that was excellent (S-H: Bill had gone to a farmer’s market to chose it), plus English Muffins and jam ( w/ chipotle!). We ate on the front porch. What a great ‘venue’! The temperature had come down overnight, and it was just perfect. A nice, clear, sunny day. Heat will probably come later, but right now it is perfect. The stay here has been too short – we will ‘fix’ that next time!

We’re off around 10am. There is a dog park very close to Bill and Donnas’, so you know what is first on our agenda. It’s a pretty cool/different dog park, and very busy. It has many trees, and is mostly shaded! No grass, dirt/dust, but that works fine.

After the dog park, we stop at Burgerworld for their famous Blackberry Shakes. Bill let this secret out this morning in conversation, and gave us directions – it is on our way, we don’t have to go out of the way at all. We both got Blackberry Shakes, and they were great!

We started out in heavy traffic, and it stayed that way for quite a while. There is not much you can say about I-5 – after leaving Portland we could have been just about anywhere. Flat countryside, farms as far as the eye can see. Gone are the mountains we’ve enjoyed on most of the trip. There are some hills/mountains in the distance, but where we are it is mostly flat.

This is not a grouse, but an observation. We have encountered a great deal of road construction on this trip just about everywhere. But Oregon must have a huge highway budget. We travelled more miles in ‘fines doubled in work zone’ zones than in construction free zones I am sure. I sure hope they get it right this time – it seemed like a lot of the construction was renovation. No biggie, but Oregon is interesting with all of it’s ‘different’ rules. Like gas stations must provide full service – you cannot pump your own gas. And CostCo can sell wine, but not liquor (in Canada they can’t sell either).

This is a grouse. Signage. It’s lousy here too. It must be me/us. Really. I almost wish I could try to do something about it, but that would require work, and more than likely be fruitless, so no, I won’t. I’ll just grouse here. And that’s it – end of grouse. (S-H: I am quite sure that someone visiting Scottsdale would have trouble too, any first timer.)


As we got close to Grants Pass, where we would leave I-5 and head over to 101, we encountered very heavy smoke. Don’t know for sure where the fire(s) was/were, but the smoke was fairly dense, and covered a lot of area. In Grants Pass, which is a surprisingly large place you probably never heard of, we found a nice deli and got a sandwich, and I went to an audio/video store Sally-Heath spotted to get a mini stereo cable for the mp3 player – the one I had was bad. These guys found one cable, and it was marked at $15 (it’s really a $5 cable as far as I’m concerned). I groused, and they sold it to me for $10. And now I have both the left and right channel!

The road from Grants Pass to Crescent City goes through mountains and through a lot of Redwood forest. Even if you’ve seen the Giant Sequoias, I think you forget how absolutely huge they are. These are not the giants, these are Coastal Sequoias, but they are huge. Trying to compare them to other huge trees we have seen, in New Zealand and Australia and other places, these must be the largest. They are beautiful. The winding road, US191, is nice too, with lots of twists and turns.


Once in Crescent City we found a fishermans café to have a clam chowder. It was good, not special, but it will hold us until morning. We’re on the ocean now, and there is a heavy fog just south of us – looks like we will be travelling in fog down the coast on 101. But no, after just a little bit 101 turns upward and inward a bit – never far from the ocean, but the fog is right at the beach, so when we go up and inland just a bit we’re back in sunlight. It’s a very interesting transition, going from fog to sunny several times.


Mr. Sun is getting low on the horizon, and we’re getting close to our room. It is still light, barely, when we get here. We have a cabin at the Bishop Pine Lodge. It turns out to be easy to find, and for the first time in several days we empty the car into our room. We really need to reorganize and become compact again. The cabin is nice – no internet – but phone and tv. We won’t use the tv, and probably not the phone. It is cool here. 56 degrees F when we got here – some change from 102 in Portland, and 105 in Grants Pass! Feels great.

We’ve settled in, played some Cribbage, and now I’m finishing the blog for the day. Goodnight!