a Sunday cruise (and)

The plan was to drive east on US 26 to go over the Cascade mountains and to get out from under the clouds to see the solar eclipse yesterday.

I drove 301 miles, from Portland to central Oregon and back. I was looking for the Peter Skeen Ogden roadside rest area. The weather report yesterday indicated that I wouldn’t see anything, eclipse-wise, but I had been wanting to go to the rest stop for a while, and so yesterday I said to myself, "(censored) I’m going anyway".

I have been there before, last in 2008, with my friend Jhni as we drove down to southern California, but in the four years since, I guess I forgot exactly where the rest area was; I thought it was on US 26. 26 meets US 97 in Madras, Oregon and runs with 97 for a few miles before splitting off and continuing east. I stayed on 26… and by the time I got to Prineville, 140 miles had passed and I realized that I had missed the rest area.

No one knew what I was talking about, in the McDonalds I stopped in for coffee, but, looking at my AAA map, I realized that, 1. Peter Skeen Ogden rest area is NOT on US 26, and 2. the eclipse was long past by then.

It turned out I was less than 30 miles from the rest area, and that is exactly why I drove all that way, to see the rest stop, so instead of just driving home, I drove over to US 97 and found the rest area.

It was rather late in the day by then, but it looks like I took 101 pictures there. I’ll edit them and upload them to Photo bucket and post them here later.

***

Had I stayed in Portland, sigh, I hear that the weather cleared and that a friend of mine was able to see the eclipse from Rocky Butte, here in town.

I guess the eclipse was the excuse for the long drive I had been meaning to take anyway, and that rest area over the Crooked River Gorge is totally photo-worthy.

Stay tuned please.

***

AND

I forgot to mention the moments of panic last night.  I don’t text or use my phone in the car; it’s got a Bluetooth system in it so I don’t have to handle the phone to use it.  At some point yesterday, I put the cell phone in my flight jacket and the jacket in the back seat.  Coming home, I heard a text come in, and stopped a few miles on at the rest area in Warm Springs on the Deschutes river.

I got out when I stopped and put on my jacket and paniced when I could not find my phone.  I got out my flashlight and looked under the seats.  I looked here, and there and in my jacket three times and realized…

I had lost my cell phone.

I started thinking of where I had stopped – would it be possible to drive back to each place and look for my phone?

Umm, no, not really, and besides, oh shit!

(and besides, I had heard it recieve a text  ten minutes or so before I stopped.  It had to be somewhere in or around the car!)

I was just about to go try it anyway – it’s my phone – and was planning the way I’d go, where I had been and oh shit oh shit oh shit.

I walked around the car from the passenger side, resigned to back-tracking myself and lost in the "oh shit" mindset, and… I saw my cell phone lying on the ground where it had fallen from my jacket pocket.

I could get high off those feelings of relief… but the stress of creating them isn’t worth it.

 

*****