Day Twelve - The Dalles (OR) to Klamath Falls (OR)

Oregon is a big state. Well, most of the ones out West are fairly sizable. Mom and I spent most of the day yesterday driving in the state. All the driving we did was in OR, just the whole day wasn't spent driving...

Mom was so excited to be leaving the lovely Oregon Motor Motel that she was packed about two hours before we needed to hit the road! She really didn't like the place. I admit, it was not the best of the places we have stayed. I liked it because my bed was sort of around the corner from mom's. Other than that, I was with her. Just not a great place to stay. When we left for the wedding on Day 11, I put out the "Maid Service Please" door hanger thingie. When we got back, nothing had been done to the room. I saw one of the Motel Staff and asked them what was up. Apparently (one of my favorite words, if you hadn't noticed) the thingie had fallen off the door and they didn't know whether "Do Not Disturb" or "Maid Service Please" was what had been requested. Really? I mean, err on the side of doing something as opposed to doing nothing. You can always apologize and say - hey, sorry we made your beds, emptied your trash and vacuumed your floor. Mea Culpa! Glarg. They did zip in and do some stuff, but really...

We did eventually get out on the road. My GPS sent us down an inner route (197 to 97) rather than sending us to Route 5. Yay! This road was way more interesting. Very corkscrew-like in a couple of places, which is fine by me. I much prefer a road with some character and chance of death over the mind numbing boredom of a super highway. We drove through a couple of teeny OR cities and eventually made our way to Bend. My friend Shauna and her family live there - having moved from Redmond a while back. But sadly, she is traveling so we didn't get to meet up. Mom and I did go to the Deschutes Brewery Pub though. It had changed (expanded a lot) since I was last there a couple of years back. We had a nice server named Dylan (for those of you keeping track, I think this was our first male server on the trip). And Ariel was nice and told me about some beers that had been switched out from the printed list. I ordered a pizza for mom and me to eat - pear and gorgonzola flat bread actually. It was delicious! And I had a beer taster of 6 of the nine beers that Deschutes had available. Yay!

The GPS said we had a little over two hours to go to get to Klamath Falls. In the back of my head, I knew that there was an attraction near our route. Crater Lake! That's the one. I have heard about it for years and there is always a sign for it on Route 5 - but I am usually doing, er, the speed limit exactly while on Route 5 and in the "must get to destination" mode, so I haven't stopped. This time, we were toodling along Route 97 and the sign appeared! What the heck, my mind and mouth said, so we turned right.

I really ought to have taken a picture of that road. I swear it was 14 miles of dead straightness. Maybe more, but it climbed at the end, so it was hard to tell but goodness that was amazing! After all of the twisting we had done, to then have 14 miles, at least, of dead straight, razor, laser-like road was cool! Crater Lake is another national park - score another free entry thanks to mom being an octagon, um, octogenarian. At least she isn't square...moving on - the roads in and out of the park were not so straight, as we had to climb several thousand feet in a small distance. There was a lot of snow up there! And it was really windy at some of the vista points. Sadly, the day was mostly overcast on the mountain, but still, what an amazing sight! Very glad we made the side trip - and it didn't really feel like it added any time to the total.

Next stop, beautiful (erp) Klamath Falls. Ok, not so beautiful. And there are no falls. Oh well. We got here, and got a room at the Econo Lodge. Mom is happier here than at "the other place." Weird, though. They only provide coffee upon request. We eventually found PBS and the News Hour for mom - she is going through minor BBC news withdrawal. I puttered on my 'puter.

Dinner became a no-brainer (which is especially good for people whose brains have been eaten by zombies) when I discovered there was a brewpub in town. Klamath Basin Brewery at the Cremery was less than a mile from the hotel, but took us a longish while to drive to - weird up and down one way streets and such. We did eventually make it. I ordered a sampler - 9 varieties - but unfortunately they were out of Buttcrack Brown! Quelle Horror! I managed anyway. We had a server who was transplanted from Maine. I think she was the second Mainiac we have met recently. One of them told us that it had been a toss up for Portland OR to be named Portland or Boston after the Eastern cities. Interesting...Sue, our current server, told us about her life and family and spurred me to start a political post about the military. Maybe one day that will see the light of day. I ordered striped Bass for mom - which she enjoyed. And "The Logger" for myself, which was good but not great. I still have half of it in the fridge. We shall see if it makes it into the car for the trip South.

Mom, our pizza, and me

Crater Lake!

Lovely bedspreads at the Klamath Falls Econo-lodge

Mom's delicious dinner!

Some of you may have noticed that I am not putting a lot of pictures up here on the blog. I am still intending to create an album or two on FB at some point that will contain most of the pictures I have taken on the trip. Yippee?