The Race to Totality, Day 2

You think after driving over 13 hours the day before we would take it a little easy toady. Wrong.

Looking at my carefully made plans my friend said we should visit Crater lake. That only involved driving a quarter of the way across Oregon. All two lane roads through the mountains. I should have realized I was exhausted when we almost ran out of gas. Eight hours of sleep does not make up for driving over half a day or for the three weeks of late night work getting the telescopes working, figuring out why the new digital camera does not work like the film camera on the scope. Building a sun aiming sigh for the scope, etc.

Found out that at Indian casinos (Casinos on American Indian’s reservations) you get to pump the gas, they don’t come out and do it for you. There’s a law in Oregon that the station personnel has to pump the gas, you can’t pump your own gas. They do not require the station attendances to wear plastic gloves to protect their hands from the gasoline or to wear face mask to protect them from the gasoline fumes. Having to pump your own gas upset the guy in front of me. He expected them to come out and pump the gas. He should have read the sign pointing to the pumps saying you pump your gas this lane and the other lane was for someone to come out and pump the gas. Of course it cost more to have the station people pump the gas.

Refueled and re-orientated we headed on to Crater Lake. They were holding a bicycle race/rally at Crater Lake. Narrow two lane road, with blind curves, double yellow lines in the middle of the road, and bicyclists all over the place. Then a SUV with California plates goes zooming by me at at least 50 miles an hour on a 25 mile an hour curve across a double yellow. No wonder Oregon residents don’t like Californians. There were cars from Washington state doing the same thing.

Crater Lake was nice, there was patches of snow still on the ground. It’s August and the patches were in places in the open where the sun could shine on it, not under trees. The lake is high and I got short of breath walking up a path from a look out point.

I asked a forest ranger how much snow they get. She said 43 to 44. I said 44 inches is a lot. She said; no, 44 feet. We couldn’t even see the three story building over there last winter.

From Crater lake we drove back across the state through Bend, OR and several other places to Fox, OR. It’s a small town of maybe a couple of dozen people. They had lots of yellow tape to keep people from parking in front of drive ways and houses. After scouting the area we drove on to Long Creek, OR. A nice little town of 220 people. The town had lots of things for the people coming to watch the eclipse. All the money the town made from the eclipse was going to the local school. We stopped and visited a friend who was camping the school yard (the camp ground was set up by the town).

Found out that there was a parking lot in a field that the town had set up just for those that were coming in the day of the eclipse. Another change of plans.

From Long Creek we drove on to Dayton, Washington. I had reservations in Dayton. It was a long drive. Much of it on roads I had never driven on before and in the dark. During the trip I almost hit four deer. If you see a deer on the road or near the road then there is another one you don’t see. It’s either a doe and its fawn or a buck and his doe. The second one will run out in front of you to catch up with the one that just ran out of your way. Always look out for the other one. We got into Dayton around 9:00 that night.

Dayton is a small place with no fast food places. Even the bar closes the grill at 9:00. We ended up goes to a convenience store/pin ball pallor. The guy there made us a couple of hamburgers.

The hotel was packed. They had two wedding parties there. It was also nosy with all the drunks.

Stay strong, write on.          Professor Hyram Voltage.