The Loneliest Road

Route 50 through Nevada has been dubbed "The Loneliest Road in America" by travel writers, and now even by the Nevada department of tourism.  You can even get a Loneliest Road passport.  This involves collecting passport stamps at the towns along 50, then sending in your proof of travel for an "I survived The Loneliest Road" certificate.  We in the motorcade travelled 50 on a Sunday, and did not get a blank passport until Ely--pretty much the last stop until the Utah border.

So, though we may not qualify for an official certificate, One Van Motorcade did indeed travel the Loneliest Road, and we have a blog to prove it.

Being good Hobbit-types, we first stopped for second breakfast at Mel's in Jackson, CA.  This is on Historic California Route 49.  It was a big day for historic roads.

Silver Springs, NV.
We don't know if these horses are wild, or just free range, but it was a pretty impressive sight, nonetheless.

Sidewalk chalk is an excellent car trip activity.  Unfortunately, this day we had to drive 345 miles before we found a stretch of sidewalk.  Austin, Nevada provided a canvas and we HAD to immediately pull over and DO. CHALK. NOW.

Austin, Nevada

Rush hour on The Loneliest Road.

California and Nevada down; only 8 or so states to go!

Tragedy strikes!

Okay, this is a modern-day-type of tragedy, we confess.

The primary photo and communication device for the One Van Motorcade has taken a bath.  While the Motorcade passengers desperately NEED to bathe more regularly than they do on the road, the same does not hold true for Apple devices.

So, while we work around photo sharing issues, and while the device rests in a container of rice, please be patient.  More pics to come very soon...

Columbia

Today's Guest Blogger: Jason

Jason's in 'da house! I'm going tell all you readers about a place called Columbia State Park, CA. It's awesome and there's a lot to do! I think that my favorite thing is the stage coach ride. It goes for about half a mile until it gets back to the main part  of town. After about three quarters of the way, there's a bandit attack! These people will jump out of the trees with "guns" (they're just fancy candle lighters) and hold up the wagon! They'll ask the driver what's in the wagon and ask you what's in your pocket before letting you on your way (you usually get more attention from them if you're on the driver's seat or roof). Then you can go back to town and get off.

Another one of my favorite things is Nelson's Candy Kitchen. They have a wide variety of delicious chocolates and sweets made in the store.

You can also play bowling there! Technically it's nine pins, but I'm calling it bowling anyway. So it's basically a cracked wooden track of course, with nine pins at on end. You role about a five lb. ball down the wooden track and see who can knock over the most pins.

At Columbia there's a ton of rocks for you to climb. Everyone loves  climbing on the rocks.

 

Oregon Coast

In Oregon, the place where mountains and ocean collide is The Coast.  Calling it the beach or the shore will mark you as an "other" just as surely as mis-pronouncing the state name.  (It's Orygun, by the way).

Looking south from Cape Meares

Anyway, at the coast there are surfers, and large sandy stretches, and even children with shovels and toys.  The thing is, the surfers wear wet suits--always!--and the kids with the shovels are just as likely to be digging for clams as they are to be building sandcastles.  And more than likely, the surfers and the kids go hang out at a driftwood fire to warm up as needed. Most of the Oregon Coast is pretty chilly most of the time, especially in summer.

The Motorcade hit most of the coast from north to south and has the sand in the trunk to prove it. A glimpse of the view along the way:

The Octopus Tree at Cape Meares is a Sitka Spruce that is over 250 years old.
 

The Peter Iredale ran aground here in 1906, and no one seemed to have the heart to get rid of it.

Now it's a cool hangout for beachcombers and barnacles.

See? There's lots of beach.  Looks toasty, huh?

Thousands of people make their home on the coast.  They are probably vastly outnumbered by the other residents: anemones, urchins, sea stars, mussels, and sea lions.

Cape Perpetua is down there somewhere. Gulp.

The Oregon Dunes have to be experienced to be believed. 

Cape Blanco lighthouse.  One of a dozen along the coast.

Cape Blanco is the westernmost point in Oregon.  It's a bit windy.

Things do warm up as you head south.  Just past Gold Beach,  the Pacific Ocean finally got some play time.

The Oregon coast is what the motorcade is all about...it's not the destination, it's the journey.

The Parkers Rock Sidewalk Chalk

In addition to being kind, brilliant, generous, and hilarious, our Oregon hosts, the Parker family, are awesome chalk artists!

Forest Grove hosts a sidewalk chalk festival every fall to raise money for a local art gallery.  It's such an institution that the sidewalk squares downtown all have brass number plates embedded in them, for identification purposes for the festival each year.  As they become available. we'll post some pictures of previous masterpieces.














Groovy Aunt Claire broke out her HUGE stash of sidewalk chalk one afternoon, and opened sidewalk to the young 'uns.  Much creativity ensued:

How awesome is an activity that creates art not only on your chosen surface, but also on you?

THE GALLERY OF AWESOME

Julia

John

Julia + Mom

Claire

Tori

Jason

Coolest sidewalk in Forest Grove--at least until next Festival Day.

Medford-John's view

John's in da house! Today you will read about our travels from the perspective of a 12 year-old. So here is the scoop on mom's hometown, Medford.

Before we got to Medford we stopped at Abby's Legendary Pizza (a popular chain out west). When we got out of the "motorcade" (aka van, aka stupid ol' car, aka...Bessie?), the first thing I noticed was: hey it isn't 50 degrees anymore! Which is to say, I was hot.  The pizza at Abbey's was good, but I would not say it's legendary. News flash: it was still hot when we got back outside.

A half-hour later and we arrived in Medford. It didn't look like much at first; the tallest things besides the mountains were the advertisement boards for motels and restaurants, but mom said this was only the back part of town by the highway. Anyway, we got a room in a Quality Inn and spent the better part of the night watching the Treehouse Masters season finale marathon (actually a great show for Animal Planet).

The next morning we missed the way-to-early hotel breakfast so we went to the Elmer's next-door. Then we went to see mom's childhood home. Mom said it looks so much smaller. I say nothing can be smaller than our house. After that we went to the cemetery to visit mom's dad, my Grandpa Jones. I had some leakage problems in my eyes when we got back in the car.


Then we drove around Medford, and boy is there a lot of driving to do out there.  

What I remember most was the pear orchards and the hawks' nest complete with  two swooping hawks (awesome).

After lunch, we did what all Medford people do: we left Medford. We went to nearby Lithia Park in Ashland. After finally finding a parking space we proceeded to not notice the "Do Not Feed the Ducks" signs posted everywhere and got nervously told off by a young park worker. (I probably intimidated him.) Then we spent a while wading in an awesome creek which got me at lot wetter than I intended. And to top it all off we got ice cream outside of the park.

Oops.  Don't feed the ducks.

Our mom used to do this when she was little.

So all in all, mom's hometown, and the area around it, is pretty cool. This is John Dresen signing off. 

Sunday in the City

Awesome as Forest Grove is, with the nearby field, playground and pool, Portland is a wonderful place to spend a summer afternoon.

Unfortunately, the boys left the market
with splitting head aches.

So on a bright sunny Sunday we headed out to the "Saturday" market (what's in a name, after all) to see what was on offer. Those of you who live in Del Ray know the annual "Art on the Avenue" festival. Well, multiply it by 10 and have it run every weekend from March to December, and you'll get a rough idea.

Fun Portland fact....they love their fountains! The drinking fountains are plentiful, and always running. Why so many? They were set up so that the loggers coming into town would be able to slake their thirst on something other than beer. Then there are the many decorative water fountains...most of them, such as the one at the Saturday market is set up for kids (and kids at heart) to walk in and play.

Powell's Books on Burnside includes the 3-story white bldg.

But you can only have 3 kids look at kitchy art stalls for so long before the insurrection (no matter how fun the fountain!). So after a couple hours it was off to Powell's Books. It's like a cross between Ikea and Amazon - with new and used books grouped into color-coded rooms. It's huge!

This should last us for the week.

Like Ikea, there are maps for patrons to use and plenty of signage. And, like Ikea, it's hard to go in without finding just a few things you can't live without.

On the way to Powell's we passed a Portland landmark - Voodoo Doughnut. Everywhere we went that day we saw people walking around with the eye-catching purple box of awesomeness. One look at the line outside the place, and it is instantly clear why you see people with boxes (after that wait, you can't just buy one), and why we would be giving it a miss this time around.