Wednesday November 15th 2023 - Thanksgiving road trip to Oregon - Day 1 - A little walking, a lot of flying and driving

 All of this road trip is just me (Chris).

When my grandmother died at the end of 2021, it had been a long slow process that included her moving into assisted living care etc.  At the point she moved into assisted living, almost none of the things she had for years (except maybe some clothes) went with her.  Most of her furniture and other personal belongings didn’t make sense in her small apartment at ‘the home’ and for the family that was most involved in her finally years, dealing with all the practical and impractical aspects of her end of life stages had dulled much of what otherwise might have been sentimental about her belongings.  The bottom line is there wasn’t much saved and even if there was I’m not sure what I could have really made use of both because we don’t have a lot of space and also because I live 2700 miles away in NY state.

Thankfully, both my site-mother and my mother had held onto two small hope chests that were Grandma’s.  One was a gift to my mother and the other I think was one of the things that didn’t move into ‘the home’ with grandma.  At any rate, they are both available to me and I flew out today to start the long process of driving them across the country to NY.  That’s the reason for the trip but it’s also just a very ‘me’ thing to do one in a while.  I find long road trips to be therapeutic for me,  This trip will be basically 2 weeks.  I flew out to Boise ID today.  I spend 2 days with family in Redmond (Central OR) then 2 with Dad and step-mom in Eugene (Western OR) and then my dad and I head out for 5 full days of road tripping as far as Kansas City MO at which point Dad flies home and I continue onto NY alone.

My day started at 3 AM (that’s midnight Pacific) and my first flight departed at the obnoxious hour of 5:40 am.  It was not a very long flight (to Atlanta) and other than the repeated nasty farts somebody near me kept releasing, it was a fine start to the long day.  At the Atlanta airport I had breakfast during my layover then boarding my 2nd, nearly 4 hour long, flight to Boise Idaho.  Why Idaho?  Well, Oregon is big and the only place I can get with 2 flights is Portland (of if I flew United, maybe Eugene) and since I have a hope chest in Central Oregon and 1 in Eugene, it seemed reasonable to start in Boise, do my 2 stops heading West then start out again heading East.  This isn’t an entirely rational trip, a lot of it boils down to ‘because I want to’,  But driving from Portland to Redmond then to Eugene wouldn’t have made it any easier and I’d hate to pass through Portland and not see any of my friends or old haunts so flying into Boise also side-steps all those social land mines.

The crew at Enterprise rental car in Boise were above and beyond in terms of being helpful, making sure I got a vehicle that is wide enough for the hope chests and they even helped me extend my rental but get a better deal by using a weekly rate etc.  The Toyota Highlander I have for the next 2 weeks is in great shape.  It’s depressingly rare to get a rental car ‘these days’ that doesn’t smell like a bong or have 3 different brands of mis-matched tires or an alignment problem or any number of irritations so this 13K mile old SUV is literally and figuratively a breath of fresh air.  There are lots of weird little nuances I’ve already experienced that remind me why I’m not a Toyota person. 

It’s interesting how American and Japanese auto manufacturers (in the last 20 years or so) approach priorities.  Japanese makers are well known for their often superior reliability records but broadly speaking there are other differences between the big 3 US manufacturers and the big Japanese auto makers.

American auto makers tend to make higher end feature content available on lower tiers. For example, my mid-range 2019 Cruze Hatchback trim and my similarly mid-level Malibu from 2010 both have or had heated power seats, an upgraded stereo system, remote start, backup sensors with rear cross traffic detection and backup trajectory markers and blind spot monitoring to name some features that most entry and mid-level Toyota vehicles for example don’t have.  Also, wheel covers (non-alloy wheels)  are almost extinct from US automakers but Honda and Toyota still sell truck loads of Civics and Corolla’s with cheesy plastic wheel covers.

Japanese auto makers, most notably Toyota, have democratized safety equipment.  Almost every Toyota car and SUV comes standard with LED headlights, auto-high beams, adaptive cruise control and emergency collision braking.  None of these features are standard on any mainstream non-luxury US big 3 model that I can think of though GM puts most of them into ‘driver confidence’ packages which aren’t super expensive.

Even this basic Highlander has lane tracing/steering assist which surprisingly seemed to be a lot more steady ‘handed’ then our Subaru’s more primitive lane keeping system.  Unfortunately, the adaptive cruise control is pretty annoying overall. Every time I made even a very modest cornering input with the cruise engaged, the vehicles speed would drop a few MPH and kind of lurch a bit as it did.  It felt like I had an electronic nanny deciding that any curve of any sort clearly required a reduction in speed from what I had set but believe me, I wasn’t pushing any limits with these corners. If they were remotely sharp or I was unsure I cancelled the speed control well before them anyway.  And if I cancelled the cruise and accelerated manually, the weird lurching speed issues didn’t come up.  The basics of the Highlander LE are pretty impressive, particularly the engine, MPGs, transmission and very low noise/vibration/harshness of the drivetrain.  But they really leave a lot of features out and the radio in particular is pretty lame to remind you that you didn’t step up to a higher trim.

With that long rambling rental car review out of the way, the rest of my trip was just driving said rental car from Boise ID to John Day OR for my first night’s hotel.  I stopped at one odd historical site along the way and was able to walk alongside some Oregon Trail ruts that still scar the landscape from that great Western migration from the 1800’s.  I was very delighted to find out when I got here that this property has a hot tub.  It wasn’t very warm but I still enjoyed climbing my 19 hours awake body into it for a bit.  

My photos aren’t organized but hopefully not hard to understand,  A few random airport pictures, a few of the trail rut historic site and 2 from a DIFFERENT little road side attraction than the ‘real’ Oregon Trail ruts showing a recreated Oregon Trail wagon.  The photo of the traffic stopped is actually trying to show the HUNDREDS of sheep that were being herded down US-20 literally crossing from Idaho into Oregon.  It was a pretty strong reminder of how different the worlds of suburban Rochester and rural ranching town in Idaho and Eastern Oregon can be.  I waited probably about 10 minutes for the sheep to gradually ooze across the bridge into Oregon and then be herded off on one of the first side streets.  Tomorrow starts family time.