kevin_standlee (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kevin_standlee) wrote2016-07-05 11:59 pm
kevin_standlee) wrote2016-07-05 11:59 pm
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Tax-Free Tour of Oregon
Today's plan was to get away early and hit many places where we wanted to buy things tax free on our way home, then push on to Klamath Falls, Oregon where we had a hotel reservation at the Holiday Inn Express there.
We were behind schedule from the start, with my having mis-set the alarm. But we probably needed the sleep. Thanks to Lisa having thought to have us move a load of stuff to the minivan last night, though, we only needed one cart-load to finish moving out of the room this morning. We checked out, said goodbye to some of the other fans still in the lobby, and were on our way.
First stop was breakfast at Bob's Red Mill Store & Restaurant in Milwaukie (South Portland). They serve very good breakfasts made with their various grains. Lisa had a stack of buckwheat pancakes with maple syrup. In deference to my diabetes, I had a single buckwheat flapjack with sugar-free syrup with my eggs and sausage.
Across the street is the factory (and outlet) for Dave's Killer Bread. We walked over there after breakfast. There we learned that the reason we can't get Blues Buns from Winco in Reno/Sparks is that they stopped making them.
Next stop was the Fry's store in Wilsonville. There was unexpectedly heavy traffic on I-205, which was annoying. After picking up the computer accessories we wanted, we moved on to Salem, where we went first to Norvac Electronics, where they know Lisa by name from her days living here. She stocked up on stuff that's hard to find in Reno. Then we went to the Oregon Glove Company, where they do in fact make gloves and other leather goods in Oregon. We bought some soft goatskin driving gloves, and I bought a new belt, as I've lost enough weight that I had run out of holes on the old one. Our final Salem stop was the T-Shirt Outlet, where Lisa stocked up on the plain t-shirts she likes.
We could have gone south from here for our originally planned path on OR-58, but we also were looking for a part for Lisa's vehicles that she had found in the past at an independent auto parts store in Sublimity, Oregon, out toward Mehama, so we went that direction, stopping at the Stayton Roth's grocery store, which was our favorite grocery when Lisa lived there. We also found a part that may work on the pickup at the place in Sublimity.
Rather than back-track to I-5, we continued east on OR-22, making a very brief pass through Mehama, where Lisa's siblings have apparently done substantial work to restore the old house there. We did not stop and visit with them.
We did, however, stop at the North Santiam State Park, where I'd never been before, and had a relatively quick picnic lunch of sandwiches made from fixings we bought at Roth's in Stayton.
We continued up the Santiam canyon on OR-22.
Nearing Detroit Lake, I looked at the time and suggested to Lisa that making Klamath Falls tonight was too ambitious and that maybe we should cut back today's trip to Bend. She agreed and pulled over to try and make it easier for me to use my smartphone to make the change. There was just barely enough signal to eventually work out that I could book a room on points at the Holiday Inn Express Bend for 15K points and cancel the reservation at the HIX K-Falls, recovering the 20K points I'd spent on them. I just barely made it, too, making the cancellation at 5:45 PM, fifteen minutes before the reservation would have become non-refundable.
We stopped at Detroit Dam to use the restrooms. The nice restrooms at the dam visitor center were closed, as was the visitor center itself, for Security Reasons. This is the view downstream from the top of the dam.
And this is Detroit Lake itself.
At this point, Lisa was too tired to drive (she fell asleep while we were pulled over for me to change the hotel reservation), and thus I had to take over and I couldn't take photos as we drove along. However, a while later, after we joined US-20 and crested Santiam Pass, Lisa pepped up again and retook the wheel for the rest of the drive to Bend.
On the east side of the pass, we stopped for a minute so I could get a better shot of Mount Washington.
Although impressive looking from this angle, Washington is something of a minor peak in the Cascades.
We continued on through the town of Sisters (named for the trio of volcanoes to the south by the same name). Lisa had earlier suggested that we have dinner at the Black Bear Diner in Bend, as that's the only one in that area we hadn't yet collected.
This makes twenty Black Bear Diners at which we've eaten, and that completes Level 3 in their Passport program. When I get the chance, I'll enter the codes and we'll see what the prize for Level 3 is.
The Bend BBD is located across the parking lot from the former Red Lion Inn, and I think is the building that was the Red Lion's associated restaurant.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
travelswithkuma admired the fishing bears in front of the restaurant.
Although we ended up in Bend instead of Klamath Falls, this turned out to actually be a stroke of luck.
autopope and feorag traveled today as well, taking (at our suggestion) roughly the reverse of Lisa and my route to Madras and Bend a few days ago and visiting the aircraft museum. (They remembered Lisa and me at the museum. I wish I'd remembered to give Feorag the $5 we still owe the Museum for the dog cub tags we had struck for Kuma Bear but didn't pay for.) I'll leave it to Feorag to report on that, but she definitely was up in the air over it. She noticed that Lisa and I were also in Bend, and thanks to Twitter, we arranged to meet up at the Deschutes Brewery after our respective dinners. We spent a very pleasant couple of hours chatting (even though Lisa and I don't drink alcohol) before calling it a night. I'm grateful to both Charlie and Feorag for inviting us out and spending the time with us.
We've vowed to sleep in a little bit tomorrow morning even if we miss the included HIX breakfast, because we still have more than 400 miles to go to get home, and I have to work on Thursday, so we both have to get some rest. Ideally, we would have taken two nights to go home just like we did to go out, but I couldn't take any more days off at this point and thus we have to make the best of it. Still, we only have one more stop on the Tax Free Tour of Oregon left, and we'll do that in Klamath Falls tomorrow.
We were behind schedule from the start, with my having mis-set the alarm. But we probably needed the sleep. Thanks to Lisa having thought to have us move a load of stuff to the minivan last night, though, we only needed one cart-load to finish moving out of the room this morning. We checked out, said goodbye to some of the other fans still in the lobby, and were on our way.
First stop was breakfast at Bob's Red Mill Store & Restaurant in Milwaukie (South Portland). They serve very good breakfasts made with their various grains. Lisa had a stack of buckwheat pancakes with maple syrup. In deference to my diabetes, I had a single buckwheat flapjack with sugar-free syrup with my eggs and sausage.
Across the street is the factory (and outlet) for Dave's Killer Bread. We walked over there after breakfast. There we learned that the reason we can't get Blues Buns from Winco in Reno/Sparks is that they stopped making them.
Next stop was the Fry's store in Wilsonville. There was unexpectedly heavy traffic on I-205, which was annoying. After picking up the computer accessories we wanted, we moved on to Salem, where we went first to Norvac Electronics, where they know Lisa by name from her days living here. She stocked up on stuff that's hard to find in Reno. Then we went to the Oregon Glove Company, where they do in fact make gloves and other leather goods in Oregon. We bought some soft goatskin driving gloves, and I bought a new belt, as I've lost enough weight that I had run out of holes on the old one. Our final Salem stop was the T-Shirt Outlet, where Lisa stocked up on the plain t-shirts she likes.
We could have gone south from here for our originally planned path on OR-58, but we also were looking for a part for Lisa's vehicles that she had found in the past at an independent auto parts store in Sublimity, Oregon, out toward Mehama, so we went that direction, stopping at the Stayton Roth's grocery store, which was our favorite grocery when Lisa lived there. We also found a part that may work on the pickup at the place in Sublimity.
Rather than back-track to I-5, we continued east on OR-22, making a very brief pass through Mehama, where Lisa's siblings have apparently done substantial work to restore the old house there. We did not stop and visit with them.
We did, however, stop at the North Santiam State Park, where I'd never been before, and had a relatively quick picnic lunch of sandwiches made from fixings we bought at Roth's in Stayton.
We continued up the Santiam canyon on OR-22.
Nearing Detroit Lake, I looked at the time and suggested to Lisa that making Klamath Falls tonight was too ambitious and that maybe we should cut back today's trip to Bend. She agreed and pulled over to try and make it easier for me to use my smartphone to make the change. There was just barely enough signal to eventually work out that I could book a room on points at the Holiday Inn Express Bend for 15K points and cancel the reservation at the HIX K-Falls, recovering the 20K points I'd spent on them. I just barely made it, too, making the cancellation at 5:45 PM, fifteen minutes before the reservation would have become non-refundable.
We stopped at Detroit Dam to use the restrooms. The nice restrooms at the dam visitor center were closed, as was the visitor center itself, for Security Reasons. This is the view downstream from the top of the dam.
And this is Detroit Lake itself.
At this point, Lisa was too tired to drive (she fell asleep while we were pulled over for me to change the hotel reservation), and thus I had to take over and I couldn't take photos as we drove along. However, a while later, after we joined US-20 and crested Santiam Pass, Lisa pepped up again and retook the wheel for the rest of the drive to Bend.
On the east side of the pass, we stopped for a minute so I could get a better shot of Mount Washington.
Although impressive looking from this angle, Washington is something of a minor peak in the Cascades.
We continued on through the town of Sisters (named for the trio of volcanoes to the south by the same name). Lisa had earlier suggested that we have dinner at the Black Bear Diner in Bend, as that's the only one in that area we hadn't yet collected.
This makes twenty Black Bear Diners at which we've eaten, and that completes Level 3 in their Passport program. When I get the chance, I'll enter the codes and we'll see what the prize for Level 3 is.
The Bend BBD is located across the parking lot from the former Red Lion Inn, and I think is the building that was the Red Lion's associated restaurant.
travelswithkuma admired the fishing bears in front of the restaurant.Although we ended up in Bend instead of Klamath Falls, this turned out to actually be a stroke of luck.
autopope and feorag traveled today as well, taking (at our suggestion) roughly the reverse of Lisa and my route to Madras and Bend a few days ago and visiting the aircraft museum. (They remembered Lisa and me at the museum. I wish I'd remembered to give Feorag the $5 we still owe the Museum for the We've vowed to sleep in a little bit tomorrow morning even if we miss the included HIX breakfast, because we still have more than 400 miles to go to get home, and I have to work on Thursday, so we both have to get some rest. Ideally, we would have taken two nights to go home just like we did to go out, but I couldn't take any more days off at this point and thus we have to make the best of it. Still, we only have one more stop on the Tax Free Tour of Oregon left, and we'll do that in Klamath Falls tomorrow.
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