Trip Update 6/23/01

Overview

Week one of the trip has now been completed, and as expected, we are fairly tired of driving. Four of the last seven days have involved 12+ hours of driving, but fortunately, those days are gone, probably until October. We are now at Julie's cousin's house in Portland, OR, and are leaving for Astoria, OR, in a few minutes. Before we do, I thought I'd do a quick "trip update". - Matt

We just sent in our first couple of rolls of film today, so pictures are still a couple weeks away.

The following is a quick list of some of the fun things we've done so far...

Won't See This in Chicago

From the list of new experiences, this one sticks out from a couple days ago. At the urging of a Steamboat Springs local, we decided to take a dirt/gravel road north out of Steamboat to catch the east-west interstate through southern Wyoming. It was promised it only add 45 minutes to our trip, but the scenery would be a thousand times better. He was right. About 2/3 of the way through the narrow, winding, gravel road, we rounded a bend over a hill, and looked down at a sea of cattle on the road about 1/3 mile ahead. We quickly saw that the cattle were being driven down the center of the road toward us by 4 cowboys and cattle-herding dog. The road was fenced in, so there was nowhere for the cattle (or us) to go. We briefly thought about turning around and waiting at a turnoff about a mile back, but decided to stand our ground instead, and pulled off, into the ditch. We sat there for about 15 minutes as what must have been 150 cows and calves marched toward us, their "moos" growing deafeningly loud as they approached. They passed, without incident, with several of them stopping and staring the truck down, thinking that we might back down. Eventually they all went around the truck with minimal cow-slobber being left on the hood from several cows looking in the windshield and "yelling" at us. As we rolled away, we saw what the correct protocol demonstated by a truck coming toward us (approaching the herd from the rear), as they simply plowed through the group of animals, seamingly pushing them aside with their bumper.

The Rover

As many of you know, we started having problems with our truck 2 days before we left, and actually had to have it towed to the dealer b/c it wouldn't start. It was something to do with the alarm system and the ignition cut-off. The dealer couldn't reproduce the problem. We could - in Cedar Rapids on day 1. Since we had just replaced the alarm system a month ago, we figured on a loose connection somewhere. I jiggled around all the wires and connections around the alarm, and we finally have it in a steady state, where the Rover at least starts, but the central locking system doesn't seem to work, so we have the minor inconvience of manually unlocking any door we need to use (a much better trade off to having a vehicle that doesn't start). Besides that, and a "ANTI-LOCK" warning light that came on in Iowa that we are ignoring, the truck is performing excellently.

Where From Here?

From here in Portland, we are heading to the mouth of the Columbia River, to a town called Astoria where more of Julie's family lives. I will be doing some sturgeon fishing... trying to lock on to a 7 foot fish like we saw earlier in the week. After a couple days in Astoria, it's off to Vancouver Island for our first big hike of the summer.