Friday September 12th, 2025 - Fall trip to oregon - Day 1, travel - 2.5 miles walking in a park

We headed out from the apartment about 9 am after loading the car up and saying goodbye to the cat.  Our first flight doesn't leave (from Buffalo) until almost 4 pm so we had a lot of time to kill.  Breakfast was a bagel at Bruegger's and then we headed west on US-20.  As planned, we stopped at Como Lake Park, an enormous Erie county park that we visited once before.  It was nice getting a good leg stretcher in with warm dry weather.  We are both wearing jeans today so we're thankful it was just in the 70's when we walked.

From Como Lake Park to the airport was only a 20 minute trip and we were picked up by the parking shuttle driver immediately so didn't have any hanging out time.  I forgot to grab my normal driving glasses but my prescription hiking sunglasses should work for driving and I do have my reading glasses with me also.   Getting through check-in, baggage and security was all very fast with no line to speak of.  We ate in the airport's food court 'BurgerFi' location which is run by Delaware North.  Those concession companies (Delaware North, Aramark etc) always seem like weird operations.  Delaware North operates lodges in National Parks, food and retail concessions and a number of casinos. By finishing their little survey about our BurgerFi experience we are entered into a drawing to travel to one of 6 different Delaware North properties.  The range of prizes was fun to dream about.  Yellowstone, Yosemite, a casino in Arkansas or even a casino in Australia.  I would love the chance to visit Australia but an all economy flight to Australia for just 4 nights of visiting sounds a little rough.  Luckily we have plenty of time to evaluate our choices since the drawing isn't until September 1 2026! :)

 Feels like everything related to our trip is off to a good start.  I got things lined up at work so people can cover the functions people sometimes rely on me for.  We have our finances all very well planned and so far the weather is great.   

Here is the basic layout of our trip:

Flying from Buffalo NY to Portland OR (via Detroit MI)

3 nights in Portland

2 in Eugene

2 in Central OR

An overnight train  trip to Williston ND with 1 overnight in Williston.  

3 nights in the Black Hills of SD. 
1 night in very rural Eastern SD.
1 night in Prairie du Chien WI
1 in Madison WI
A ferry ride across Lake Michigan
1 night in Sarnia Ontario Canada
and home via Buffalo airport (to drop rental car and pick up our car).

It will be interesting to see how many of these elements go off on-time and without incident and how many are more adventure than we planned for.

Pictures from our pre-airport walk:









 

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