Start Location: Bend, OR
Ending Location: Wenatchee, WA
Miles Today: 328
Trip Miles: 2265
States Visited: 3
National Parks Visited: 3
Low Temp: 65.8° F
High Temp: 93.2° F
Min Elevation: 168'
Max Elevation: 3667'
Route Map:
Pinnacle NP 2023 - Day 09
Compared to some other days, today was pretty uneventful - and we're
okay with that. No fires, no new malfunctions with our gear or the
motorcycle it was almost boring. We just road 300+ miles on roads
that were not crowded and pleasant. When you let Google do the
navigating, you end up with some interesting roads - not sure how they
determine the best route.
Gas
stations in Oregon are still a little weird. They recently passed a law
to let people pump their own gas. You used to have to let an attendant
pump the gas. On a motorcycle they used to let you pump your own but
they frequently made you give them your credit, they inserted it, and
then handed you the nozzle. Now they don't seem to know what to do,
they just sort of hover and they have some weird special keys. We
stopped at a Shell station this morning and the attendants were wearing
really dorky hats and uniforms. When I entered my credit card, it asked
me how much money worth of gas I wanted. I told the hovering guy that I
just wanted to fill up and he pressed the enter key to allow me to go
ahead and finish filling my tank. Why can't they just do things like
every where else?
And speaking of gas pump nozzles, what's
with the vapor reducing nozzles that are all in all stations California
and starting to show up now in Washington. They have a spring loaded
seal around the nozzle that needs to be depressed when you stick the
nozzle into the gas filler tube on an auto but it doesn't really work
on a motorcycle. You have to pull up the seal with one hand and pump
with the other. It's a pain.
We never did find a nice park
where we could stop to eat lunch so we just stopped at a school that
had a nice lawn with some shade and we ate there.
This is
the 15th trip that we've documented this way and it's getting so I can
knock it out pretty quickly at the end of the day. In the early days
very few hotels had WiFi and I used the phone line to upload
everything. Now a days the process is much quicker and easier. Google
messed me up when they switched their API from V2 to V3 and stopped
supporting V2 so I had to back and convert all of my maps. Besides that
the program that I use to convert the route and geocode the photos is
no longer supported and never switched to V3. I had to do a fair amount
of programming to do the conversion but now it's relatively straight
forward.
Tomorrow we head to Winthrop and then over the North Cascades Highway to home.
