Tour Day

Monday, August 17, 2015          trip odometer 3,980 miles          Still in Everett, WA

Today was the day I had signed up to tour Geocaching HQ! At least, I thought I’d signed up, but received no confirmation e-mail and arrived to find my name was not on their list. However, a cancellation left a spot open and I gladly took it.

In actual fact, except for a couple of tour people and one or two others, Groundspeak was closed today for a well-deserved comp day after their weekend labors. The ‘tour’ consisted of only the lobby, but glass walls allowed glimpses of practically the entire space and even out through the wide windows. It looks like a lovely work space, spacious and with only that lobby lacking a window.

There were some great displays including the actual travel bug that went to the ISS which I totally forgot to discover! A widescreen wall television displays, in real time, views of Google Earth showing random logs from caches around the world that are being found (or, for people like me, logged) at that moment. Most of the ones that came up were in Europe because it was after 6 p.m. there. This television is hypnotic. Much better than anything I’ve seen on cable in a long, long time. The lackeys present included Paulie their permanent tour guide. She explained what they do there, and mentioned that they are always hiring new website developers. Dream job! She very clearly explained how we can give feedback to Groundspeak and how important it is, gave a brief history of the company, then answered questions. We had plenty of time afterwards to look at all the displays and they even gave us a free giftie with the Groundspeak equivalent of a Pathtag. I bought several exclusive items from the HQ store including a coffee mug from their corporate lunchroom, the Signal Café, and the obligatory “Geocaching HQ. Been there. Logged that.” T-shirt.

After that, I set out on the HQ Geotour. Apparently Fremont has declared themselves an “Imagi-nation,” not a part of Seattle or any larger political entity. I’m sure this does not exempt them from paying taxes to said entities, but it is an acknowledgement that this is a laid-back, artsy community of the type I haven’t seen since the early 70’s. Street art, and I mean sculptures, plaques and rock patterns set in the sidewalks, architecture, and functional items made beautiful as well as useful, abound. Solstice Square had patterns set around a ‘sun garden’ that I bet align on the Solstices, and plaques depicting symbols associated with celestial phenomena from cultures around the world set into the concrete or the garden retaining wall. Walking around finding caches, I saw shops (including a folk music emporium I couldn’t resist), eateries, mini-parks, two nurseries, antique dealers, natural food stores… I could totally live here.

The Geotour was designed to introduce people to this area, and is themed on the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” as part of Fremont’s declaration is that this is the center of the Universe. (Not the dumbest thing politicians have ever declared, alas; and mostly harmless.)

My first find was one I must have walked past a half-dozen times during the event: A lovely fake rock in a planting circle just off the bike path behind where the food trucks were Saturday. The logs (two books) were very full despite having been replaced less than a week ago.

After that, I could not resist the Golgafrinchan Telephone Sanitizers’ puzzle cache. Thanks to NOT overthinking things, I opened it first try. The location was a sort of large porch or covered patio displaying items from history, including a pay phone. The adjacent café had placed tables as well, and I brazenly used the telephone five feet from a table full of muggles. How would they know I was not using it for its original purpose?

I figured I’d climb the two blocks to the Library but it was not yet open, so I continued climbing the additional three blocks to the Troll. This hill is so steep ridges cross the sidewalk, apparently for the purpose of slowing water when it rains and catching debris it carries.

I saw the Troll during the Lab Cache hunt. When the Aurora Street bridge was built, it appears a contractor with cement leftover and a sense of humor decided to sculpt a troll under the end of the bridge with the leftover concrete. Life-sized, assuming trolls are twenty feet tall when in “loaf position.” I was afraid I’d have to climb over, around and behind the critter like the dozen or so kids there were doing, but the cache description said trolls like to pile their droppings neatly and they look (understandably) like lumps of concrete. With these clues and a little observation I was able to casually grab this one and sign the log.

This was the closest I was going to get to the Post Office cache, and it was halfway down the hill, as closely as I could tell. This was a seven-block walk, and, to my puzzlement, there was no post office anywhere around. I leaned on a newspaper kiosk and pondered. Then I noticed two things: the newspaper box was locked with a combination lock (very rare) and was displaying an ancient copy of the “New York Times.” Moments later I had the cache open. The “post office” designation was because it was full of postcards neatly sorted by destination. They are meant to be carried to a cache closer to their destination and recipient, and I extracted one bound for Pennsylvania. I won’t it get all the way to Lansdowne, but I will get it 95% of the way and place it in a TB hotel or other often-visited cache to be carried the rest of the way.

After the long walk, I chose “Within Reach” as my next cache goal. As closely as I could tell, this was very near the Starbucks I’d seen Saturday. This was not the original Starbucks (1^st and Pike, another part of town) but it was in Seattle and was as close as I was going to get. I enjoyed an icy coffee delight, a scone and a banana. Lunch! Afterwards I went diagonally across the intersection to an amazing metal sculpture of a leaf curling a good ten feet above the rippling ‘stem’ that dove in and out of the concrete. It forms a totally whimsical bike rack. The cache was obvious at the bottom rear of the leaf part, but there was no convenient number sequence provided in the cache description. Instead, a series of stones set in the sidewalk below could be interpreted as the combination, which I did successfully.

Now it was back to the library, but there I was thwarted. The description said to go in and look for WP1. I strolled the entire library, from vestibule to computer carrels, and saw nothing. Only when I got to the children’s section did I spot a large cardboard W on top of a set of shelves. The books on top were all by authors starting with W, but it was unique in the library and might well be my clue. So, on the shelves below I searched for P, authors starting with P. The cubbyhole I found contained exclusively Beatrix Potter in the familiar 4 by 4 editions, and behind them was a box wrapped in Victorian paper. It was neither the cache nor a clue, just a spacer to keep the tiny books ‘faced.’ After hours of reflection I think I should have looked in her first book, “Peter Rabbit,” and the coordinates may have been written inside.

But I was tired, footsore, and my energy reserves are not what they once were. I decided the other three caches in the series were too far to walk, especially since I had one failure and would not complete the series anyway. I drove back to the hotel, making stops for gas and minor purchases, then immediately took an hour-and-a-half nap. This restored my fuzzy brain to its more normal operational levels.

Was It All Worth It?

 Saturday, August 15, 2015         Seattle, WA

            I popped out of bed early, showered off ground-in dust from two states, shoveled in breakfast and some horrible coffee, and allowed plenty of time to get to the Block Party by 11, party time! Of course, things went wrong right away. I had no street address for Geocaching Headquarters, and programmed the event coordinates into Minerva. Unfortunately, Minerva is set for degrees/minutes/seconds, not decimal degrees that geocachers use. After twenty miles, we were diverted onto a highway heading due east. That was obviously wrong. I canceled navigation and used the Garmin and its compass arrow to go the remaining ten miles. It’s not quite as bad in a city as it is in a rural setting, but I still ended up circling blocks and taking streets that suddenly veered the wrong way. When the distance readings showed about 300 yards I began to look for parking and found an indoor lot with an insert-quarters box, a typical arrangement in Seattle.

            For a seaport, the city is very hilly and I had to go several blocks, downhill all the way, until I spotted a street statue, a grouping of several people… most of them wearing Geocaching t-shirts. Heartened, I crossed there and spotted the crowd half-a-block down. I had arrived. Really arrived. In moments I was threading my way through throngs of folks wearing geocaching shirts, carrying backpacks with achievement patches and tracking numbers, and I spotted Signal the Frog looming over a clump of youngsters wearing crayon-colored Signal paper crowns. Long lines, separated alphabetically, stretched in front of the reservation pavilion. Music played, and I got out my blue notebook and began jotting tracker numbers. Some fellows from Germany had necklaces of jingling trackables, and handed me a computer-printed sheet of their numbers.

            At the head of the line I was handed a lanyard, with a combination name-badge and guidebook to the party; including a schedule of events and a map of Solstice Square, which runs diagonally through the entire block and down to the waterfront. I was also given a drawstring backpack containing my pre-ordered items, the event t-shirt and geocoin. Then I was on my own, with the day before me. First order of business, to sign the event log, which was a tall blow-up ground balloon shaped like the number 15 on a ‘log’ base. Two “lackeys,” the oddly proud title of Groundspeak employees, handed out sharpies and I signed and drew my signature rabbit. Then I joined the line for the HQ Geocache, the last of my goals of the most prestigious caches in the world. This moved slowly, but eventually I signed the log.

            I wandered down the line of Rubbermaid storage bins filled with trackables from all over the world, and paused at the Tapsnap tent for a free photo of me and Nermal. This may end up being the only picture with me in it from this whole trip. Then I went to the evil cache container display, and the Block Party activity tent next door.

            “Lab caches?” asked the pleasant lackey there, and I walked away with a sheet detailing eight lab caches I thought I’d never have time for. I consulted the map, and saw “Rest Rooms” clearly marked on one side. Yep. I trod down a series of steps (hilly, remember?) to the row of portapotties and made my mark.

            Ice cream was the closest of the food vendors, which were a long line of trailers lining a lot marked “Adobe Parking Only.” (Google HQ is the next building west. This is the neighborhood of Geektown.) And I shortly was strolling up the vendor street having a tactile experience with two scoops of rich chocolate ice cream. All the usual vendors were here, plus Podcacher and a number of local organizations for caching and related activities. Once the ice cream was gone, I found a hydration station and guzzled two cone cups of water. Then I bought a sports water bottle from GpProxy and didn’t have to worry about hydration again. Later I bought a few souvenirs from the Geocaching vendor booth and took more pictures in places where the crowds had thinned. During the vendor lane stroll I actually ran into Keith Petrus, editor of “FTF Geocacher Magazine,” because I could not resist signing a ukulele which was his souvenir item of the Block Party.

            Back up the stairs, taking in a few ‘cacher stories’ on the stage and sharing one of my own, then off to tour the museum tent. While there I spoke to a lackey about what they will do in the future instead of more Block Parties, and she mentioned the possibility of a permanent space in HQ for visitors, and a greater presence at mega-events around the world. She was also very, very helpful about tips for my HQ tour which I’d signed up for, set for Monday morning.

            But I noticed one fellow, scribbling on a familiar-looking sheet while staring at one display. Was it possible one of the lab caches was in here? That was it for my restraint. Moments later I was scanning my sheet of Lab Caches and was programming one into my Garmin. For the next few hours I tromped up and down those hills, crossing streets, following and sometimes temporarily teaming with other cachers. At one point we went into the parking garage under HQ, penetrating far into its dim depths, down in the private sub-level, to be given UV lights and led into a pitch-black subterranean forest, looking for our clue word. We found other clue words on lines of laundry, on the side of a building across the harbor looking through borrowed binoculars, on one of two dozen globes set up in a little park, on one of hundreds of plastic balls in a big treasure chest, and more. Yes, I persisted and found all eight. And, no, I forgot to claim my prize when I asked the event lackey the link for entering the clue words and making them official cache finds.

            A quick sandwich from the Chopstix vendor (what a fusion… pulled pork Oriental style) and the day was over. I am so, so glad I had the notion to come to this event, the last Block Party. Yes, it was inconvenient to make the time, and expensive during a year I really can’t afford much more expense. And the actual trip, eight days of pretty much hell with a few nuggets of wonder, ended with me here, in the place I wanted to be, at the time I wanted to be here. It was fun, and it was worth it.

The Drive Through Hell's Furnace Room

Friday, August 14, 2015             I MADE IT!        Everett, WA

            Talk on the porch at the rustic hotel was of additional road closings as the Oregon wildfires spread. Later I’d learn from Maggi that they had made the news and the smoke was visible on her national weather map. Last night I’d laboriously determined that Rt. 26 would actually take me closer to the Original Stash Tribute Plaque, my next must-have geocache, than I-84 would have. This morning the topic of conversation was Rt. 26 being closed somewhere west of the town of Prinesville, some fifty-plus miles away.

            I walked down to the town café and enjoyed a breakfast of two huge blueberry pancakes with bacon. Chatting with the locals, I was still wondering what to do. Back to Plan A, I decided. If Rt. 26 was still closed, Rt. 97 and Rt. 197 led north from Prinesville to I-84. Then I’d turn on the Garmin and let it guide me from there. Of course, Prinesville is about the southernmost Rt. 26 goes, and the distance to I-84 from there was as far as I’d already come on Rt. 26. But you can’t argue with closed roads.

            About an hour later I got to Prinesville, and, sure enough, Rt. 26 was closed west of there. Smoke was clearly visible, a low-lying haze everywhere, thickest to the west and south. I turned north, and veered left onto Rt. 197 in a few miles.

            This has got to be the worst, most white-knuckle stretch of narrow, switchbacked, terrifying pieces of rough roadway ever built. For someone with acrophobia, I can only say that I longed to give up, pull over. Two things stopped me: I was mostly on the outer edge of the road and pulling over was either not feasible (no shoulder) or, at the few emergency pull-outs, it would just take me closer to that breath-stopping drop. And, number two, I knew that I would either have to eventually move the car down the road, back up the road, or die there in the pull-off afraid to move. This was, apparently, the Deschutes Gorge. I’ve heard this river is great fishing, but I never want to go back there as long as I live. It was only marginally better climbing out than descending in. The drivers behind me were exceedingly frustrated by my cowardly 20 MPH all the way through that stretch. As one might guess, I sure didn’t make time getting to I-84 and the horrid town of The Dulles. Or something like that. There, when I stopped for gas, some kind soul pointed out I had a good reason for my handling problems on those switchbacks: my left rear tire was almost flat. I’d been watching that one for several days and just kept forgetting to top it off.

            My nerves were totally shot, I was weak and shaking, and no matter how many quarters I pumped into the air machine, I just could not hold the air nozzle firmly enough to the tire stem to get any air into that tire. The service station guys were singularly unhelpful. At last I admitted defeat and programmed Minerva to lead me to a AAA repair shop. Heartbreakingly, she led me back east to the very intersection of I-84 and Rt. 197. And the guy couldn’t do anything.

            Well, not exactly. He gave me very exact directions to a place called Shwab’s Tires and they were just as good as he’d promised. I waited less than half an hour, they did not find a puncture but replaced the valve stem (and cap, which I’d absent-mindedly stuck in a pocket) and had me on the road again before 4. (This is now Pacific time.) The highway now was running along the Columbia River, which is one of the most impressive waterways I’ve ever seen. The brisk wind which has been spreading the fires so rapidly was churning up whitecaps on water that was already wild, wide, and fast. Fish in THAT? No way. The Hood River came in after awhile which augmented the flow and calmed it, just a little. This was very beautiful, but I was in no mood to appreciate it. I had one more cache to find, and a film festival in Seattle this evening.

            I turned on the Garmin. 143 miles to the cache. Motor on! An hour later, we were very close to Portland and I checked again. Still 143 miles, and due north! How was that possible?? I pulled off and checked my settings. Somehow the Garmin had switched destinations to the Headquarters Cache in Seattle. Re-checking, I found the Original Stash Tribute Cache was twenty miles south.

            Now came the infuriating business of following the GPS compass needle many miles on unfamiliar roads. I found Rt. 26, but turned onto another freeway that seemed closer to the line, but actually veered east shortly. Then I zigzagged back through small towns and semi-rural neighborhoods, thwarted by roads that turned the wrong way or led down into some remote area and ended. At one point I glimpsed a river, and with the Garmin reading 3 ½ miles in that direction I knew the cache was across the water. I had to find a bridge. Then I had to find a road going roughly the right direction. I got within a tantalizing mile of the cache when the road turned west again. Expanding Minerva’s map showed an intersection and a parallel road. Finally the numbers were steadily counting down, switched to yards instead of miles. I confidently made a left turn onto a hairpin-switchbacked rural road. Yards turned to feet, and I spotted a pulloff ahead with three cars and just barely room for Bruce. This was it.

Geocaching’s History page describes it thus: “On May 2, 2000, at approximately midnight, eastern savings time, the great blue switch controlling selective availability was pressed. Twenty-four satellites around the globe processed their new orders, and instantly the accuracy of GPS technology improved tenfold. Tens of thousands of GPS receivers around the world had an instant upgrade. For GPS enthusiasts, this was definitely a cause for celebration. Internet newsgroups suddenly teemed with ideas about how the technology could be used.

“On May 3, one such enthusiast, Dave Ulmer, a computer consultant, wanted to test the accuracy by hiding a navigational target in the woods. He called the idea the "Great American GPS Stash Hunt" and posted it in an internet GPS users' group. The idea was simple: Hide a container out in the woods and note the coordinates with a GPS unit. The finder would then have to locate the container with only the use of his or her GPS receiver. The rules for the finder were simple: "Take some stuff, leave some stuff."

On May 3rd he placed his own container, a black bucket, in the woods near Beavercreek, Oregon, near Portland. Along with a logbook and pencil, he left various prize items (including the notorious Original Can of Beans). He shared the waypoint of his "stash" with the online community on sci.geo.satellite-nav: N 45° 17.460 W 122° 24.800

“Within three days, two different readers read about his stash on the Internet, used their own GPS receivers to find the container, and shared their experiences online. Throughout the next week, others excited by the prospect of hiding and finding stashes began hiding their own containers and posting coordinates. Like many new and innovative ideas on the Internet, the concept spread quickly - but this one required leaving your computer to participate.

“Within the first month, Mike Teague, the first person to find Ulmer's stash, began gathering the online posts of coordinates around the world and documenting them on his personal home page. The "GPS Stash Hunt" mailing list was created to discuss the emerging activity. Names were even tossed about to replace the name "stash" due to the negative connotations of that name. One such name was "geocaching."

“Geocaching, first coined by Matt Stum on the "GPS Stash Hunt" mailing list on May 30, 2000, was the joining of two familiar words. The prefix geo, for Earth, was used to describe the global nature of the activity, but also for its use in familiar topics in gps such as geography. Caching, from the word cache, has two different meanings, which makes it very appropriate for the activity. A French word invented in 1797, the original definition referred to a hiding place someone would use to temporarily store items. The word cache stirs up visions of pioneers, gold miners, and even pirates. Today the word is still even used in the news to describe hidden weapons locations.

The second use of cache has more recently been used in technology. Memory cache is computer storage that is used to quickly retrieve frequently used information. Your web browser, for example, stores images on disk so you don't have to retrieve the same image every time you visit similar pages.

The combination of Earth, hiding, and technology made geocaching an excellent term for the activity. However the "GPS Stash Hunt" was the original and most widely used term until Mike Teague passed the torch to Jeremy Irish in September 2000.”

            Yes, this activity went from zero to global in four months. And in the very spot I was parked, that first “stash” was hidden, starting the game, over fifteen years ago. Unfortunately, the original container is long gone, but cachers who care about their own history got permission to place a tribute plaque on the site, and hide a commemorative geocache within fifty feet so cachers can log that they were here and paid tribute. The plaque itself already has a mythos, supposed to enhance the performance of any handheld GPS placed on it, and may even improve the owner’s geosenses. Naturally Nermal got into the picture I took of my Garmin resting on the plaque. I could already feel the surging tingle of my geosenses as we headed for the actual geocache.

            Or maybe that was my danger-sense. This involved a steep climb up a beaten-dust trail, 45 degrees in the easy spots, through the woods. I crawled most of the way, signed the log, took another picture with Nermal, took a picture for two guys that were there (the place was swarming with cachers come to pay homage), and dropped my ASPGBX coin. Then amused everyone by butt-skidding the whole way down, adding Oregon dust to the Utah dust in my poor camo pants, and completing the ruin of my former dress Crocs.

            I could not linger. For one thing, the pull-off had overflowed and people were parked as far away as the turn-off and were walking up that steep road. For another, Seattle was an estimated 163 miles away. Since I had no idea where I was (except in the purely micro sense of knowing what cache I was at) I programmed Minerva with the street address of my hotel in Washington. I immediately knew I was in trouble. Seven hours? To drive (roughly) 163 miles as the crow flies? Ridiculous! She even gave me two options, claiming the direct route she’d normally use had the reputation of high traffic volume. Okay, I clicked on the “avoid traffic” route. Which turned out to be not so low-traffic around Portland, and once I got to Washington State, took me on a rural-road detour similar to Oregon Rt. 197 through Mt. St. Helens and Rainier State Parks. Of course, it started to rain the minute I got off the high-speed road, and the sun set around the time I stopped for gas and a mediocre pre-made sandwich (my first food since those humongous pancakes) and re-set the routing mode on Minerva to “most use of freeways.” I was guided to Tacoma, adjacent to Seattle, and back onto I-5. There I began to have the horrible notion that something had gone wrong with my hotel booking. We sped past the airport, which I knew from maps was considerably north of Geocaching Headquarters. On, and on, to finally be directed to exit in Everett, which indeed proved to be over 30 miles from HQ, not the quarter-mile the AAA agent had said. It was a little after 10 p.m., I’d been on the road 14 hours, and the hotel had given away my room despite my call from Wyoming. I was furious, and I think the desk clerk sensed it despite my self control. She ‘found’ a room in the supposedly-booked hotel, and I dragged my luggage up the elevator and here I am! As close as I’ll get until tomorrow. The only bright spot, if it can be called one, is that the film festival had been cancelled because the venue was in a park and it was both raining and windy.

The Drive Through Hell

Thursday, August 13, 2015         Trip odometer 3,300 miles Mitchell, Oregon

            What a day! I drove into Utah with high hopes, as the two pre-downloaded Utah caches were within a quarter-mile of each other off the same exit, close to the Wyoming border. This was an over-a-cattle-guard-on-the-off-ramp onto a dirt road exit. A dusty climb for Bruce up that dirt road, and I parked looking at the steepness of the terrain with some chagrin. Once more I was wearing my once-good dressy Crocs. Not even thinking about rattlesnakes, I leapt out of the car and searched for a route to the likeliest spot for a cache. The name was “Corner Post,” there was only one of those corners so typical of Western barbed wire fences in sight, reinforced with boards with nice sturdy wooden posts, and the Garmin pointed right to it.

            One route looked doable, a short slope down to a wandering path that slowly descended from the road then up to the fence corner. It wasn’t until I’d started beating brush on the ascending part that I thought of snakes. By then, I was committed. I made my way up to the post and started looking for a “quart-jar sized container” as described. Nothing, and very little cover for it. I even felt the tops of the posts in case they were hollow. Since this fence apparently forms the boundary between a public hunting area and a very insistently private ranch, and the barbed wire was fresh, aggressively barbed, and the strands no more than 8” apart, I confined my search to the near side. Expanding to search through the adjacent withered clump of stunted trees, still no luck. Calling up the most recent logs on my Garmin, I was angry to discover a series of DNFs. Why hadn’t I checked the logs before downloading the cache, as I normally do?

            Well, I had one more chance at my Utah state souvenir, and it was just back at the intersection with the off-ramp. When I got there, I was frankly discouraged to find that the Western notion of a “terrain two” cache is not what I expected. A steep slope of bare, extremely loose, soil had to be scaled to get to the top, where the “small” cache was hidden in a sage bush. There was no finding an easy route here, so I finally just crawled up as best I could. I went through every sage bush, searching among the branches and on the ground under the sprawling roots, for a good half hour; only refusing to probe too deeply into gopher holes. Well, that and search the sides of bushes hanging over the drop-off for the slope. My acrophobia kicked in big-time. No lock-and-locks, no dangling bison tubes, even camouflaged, no pill bottles or khaki-painted Altoids tins. This was my last chance at the state souvenir, so I was thorough.

            Finally I said to myself, “Find someplace off an exit likely to have Wifi and search for some local skirt-lifter. This is futile.” So I butt-slid down the slope, grinding a great deal of Utah into my clean pants (and those shoes), my sinuses clogged and my chest heaving from my (still active) sagebrush allergy. The minute I got in the car one of my severe foot cramps hit, and would not go away. Luckily it was not my accelerator-foot, and I just gritted my teeth and concentrated on driving and looking for Wifi.

            Mile after mile of Interstates rolled past with no services at exits. I turned north, gassed up at a Wifi-less truck stop. Finally, approaching Provo, some eating places began to appear on the services boards and I saw a Starbucks symbol. Off the next exit I went, into a huge mall district with no Starbucks in sight. A Target sign on the right made me think the Starbucks might be there, as they often are in Pennsylvania. No such luck, it was a Pizza Hut. But my bladder was yelling to be emptied, and I went in anyway. Only to find that, YES, there was Wifi! A quick search with my iPod app showed just what I was looking for, a cache in the next parking lot over.

            I entered the coordinates manually in the Garmin as a waypoint, my usual way of spontaneous caching, and drove over to a wonderfully deserted lot, where I was guided to a light post: I’d found my skirt-lifter, and gotten my Utah souvenir. The short walk had even soothed my foot cramp away.

            It was terribly hot, I was thinking, as I turned my car AC to maximum cold, highest fan speed. Northwards we went into Idaho, where I had not pre-loaded caches due to planning to return home through the northern part at a more leisurely pace. I stopped at a Carl’s Jr., a western hamburger chain I’m quite fond of, to find my luck had turned again. A massive power failure had just ended, and the grilles were the lowest priority for bringing back up. I gulped a couple hot dogs from the adjoining convenience store then sped on my way.

            The thermometers mounted on buildings as I drove through Boise averaged 103. I don’t care how low the humidity is, that’s HOT.

            I couldn’t decide whether the immense columns of smoke I was seeing were some huge Boise factory complex or one of the wildfires signs had been warning of all through Utah and parts of Wyoming. It turned out they were fires, but I didn’t learn the full extent of the disaster until much later. The moment I crossed the border to Oregon a big sign said FREEWAY CLOSED. Another said ALL TRAFFIC MUST EXIT NOW. It should have been followed by one that said “…and may god have mercy on your souls,” because there was no detour signs. I followed traffic a little way, then pulled over and got out my map. I had no idea how far the closure extended, or why it was closed. What other road from here would take me west? I rapidly decided Oregon Rt. 26 would do, although it made a deep southward curve before heading northwest again at the other end of the state.

            Rt. 26 was a 2-lane rural highway, running between irrigated fields and pastures of cattle. Once every 50 miles or so there was a small town, often just a cluster of buildings or a sign pointing off down some potholed country road. Gas became an issue, and I gladly stopped at a little rural two-pump general store. There the attendant (Oregon being one of two states I know of that don’t trust customers to pump their own gas) told me there were at least three big wildfires around. “The town is jumpin’,” she claimed. Town? With one store and less than a dozen houses, it was about the size of Oleona, PA. “What with the firefighters comin’ through, and all the detours. We even have our own fire.” She waved unconcernedly at a column of smoke directly upwind. On my way out of town, I saw some enterprising citizen had a table in his driveway with a hand-lettered sign: “Fire T-shirts, $15.”

            It turned out that Rt. 26 follows the original Oregon Trail. Somewhere on one of those low-gear, lengthy uphill runs, my great-grandfather’s covered wagon had a back wheel jam. Tragically, he was too furious to remember to set the brake when he jumped off the driver’s seat and walked back to check the wheel. His widow promptly turned the wagon around and returned to Wyoming. This was very much on my mind as I drove. And drove. And drove. Incredible canyon country; miles of forest featuring yellow birch, several kinds of pine and spruce, and the occasional redwood; camping spots and recreational areas; but no gas stations. And, as time went by, I began to wonder if I’d be forced to stop for the night in a campground with my exceedingly-minimal camping gear.

            The last chance, at nearly sundown, was a dinky town called Mitchell. The motel along the highway said “No Vacancy.” I turned down the potholed road into the town proper, to find, next to the Stage Stop (yes, really) a hotel that had to date back to the turn of the century, and I don’t mean the one we just had. But it was rustically charming and had a vacancy. The bathroom (meaning sink and toilet) was across the lobby and there was no way I would ever climb those breakneck wooden stairs to the shower. But there was a comfy bed, a place to pee, and (oddly) Wifi. Good enough.