Suzie's Excellent Adventure

I got up at 3:30AM to get to the first day of the Great Reno Balloon Race at Rancho San Rafael regional park in Reno.  I didn’t know what to expect, but the event vastly exceeded any expectations I might have had.  From the choreographed “glow show” with tethered hot air balloons in the dark, to the beautiful sunrise, to the national anthem sung with an airborne balloon carrying the American flag, to the mass ascension of around 90 balloons – it was a fantastic experience!  The only thing I didn’t get to see on Friday was the “dawn patrol”, with a few balloons going up in the dark; I may go back on Sunday (8/10) to see that.  I’m only posting a few photos here; check out all the rest in the album.

9/28/16: Hazleton PA -> Cleveland OH: Cuyahoga Valley NP near Cleveland OH, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Beach Boys concert

9/29/16: Cleveland OH -> Madison WI: Unpleasant drive, especially around Chicago: – wind, rain, road construction, traffic, aggressive drivers, high tolls

9/30/16: Madison WI -> Sioux Falls SD: Amazing WI State Capitol building in Madison, colorful fall foliage (finally!) near Wisconsin Dells, Spam Museum in Austin MN

10/1/16: Sioux Falls SD -> Buffalo WY: Corn Palace in Mitchell SD, Wall Drug in Wall SD, miles of sunflower fields in SD, billboard encouraging people to wear fur as a way to help control animal population, SD Air and Space Museum at Ellsworth AFB in Box Elder SD, Vore Buffalo Jump in WY, coal in Gillette WY, first day of hunting season in WY (all the hunters are in the parking lot of my hotel with their hauls)

Oh, I know why there are dead animals around: part of my motel is a taxidermy shop.

10/2/16: Buffalo WY -> Missoula MT: Crazy clouds, snowcapped mountains.

10/3/16: Missoula MT -> Seattle WA: Cold weather in the mountains, lots of trains, crossing the Columbia River

10/4/16: Seattle WA: Rummaging through my storage unit, visiting with Meteorcomm friends

10/5/16: Seattle WA -> Bend OR: Super-rainy drive across the Cascades

10/6/16: Bend OR  -> Reno NV: Sugar-dusted mountains, wildlife, crazy plane contrails, home!

9/20/16: Hazleton PA -> Albany NY: TBD

9/21/16: Albany NY -> Lake Placid NY: TBD

9/22/16: Lake Placid NY: TBD

9/23/16: Lake Placid NY -> Hogansburg NY: TBD

9/24/16: Hogansburg NY -> Geneva NY: TBD

9/25/16: Geneva NY -> Corning NY: TBD

9/26/16: Corning NY -> Hazleton PA: TBD

9/27/16: Hazleton PA: TBD

I am doing a cross-country road trip.  Part 1 is Reno NV to Hazleton PA.

I forgot how wonderful it is to do a cross-country trip; I haven’t done one in over 10 years.  A trip like this makes you realize what a diverse and beautiful country we live in.

9/9/16: Reno NV -> Salt Lake City UT: Beautiful northeastern NV landscapes, the amazing salt desert in UT, the Great Salt Lake in UT, the UT state Capitol in Salt Lake City.

9/10/16: Salt Lake City UT -> Cheyenne WY: Sustained driving at over 6000′ for most of the day,  a bunch of interesting sites between Laramie and Cheyenne WY, trains outside my hotel room.

9/11/16: Cheyenne WY -> Lincoln NE: The WY State Capitol undergoing renovation, long flat drive all day, Union Pacific’s Bailey Yard in North Platte NE (world’s largest classification rail yard).

9/12/16: Lincoln NE -> Princeton IL: The NE State Capitol, an Iowa winery, the largest truck stop in the world.

9/13/16: Princeton IL -> Dayton OH: Starved Rock State Park and locks on the Illinois River, almost getting rear-ended (twice, by the same person) in Indianapolis traffic.

9/14/16: Dayton OH -> Wheeling WV: Ovewhelming number of planes and exhibits at the National Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton, rainstorms on the way to WV.

9/15/16: Wheeling WV -> New Britain PA

9/16-18/16: New Britain PA

9/17/16: New Britain PA -> Hazleton PA

My last day of being homeless marks a total of 18 weeks on the road; woohoo!

Today, I bought my first LED TV (after getting rid of two perfectly good tube TVs in Seattle) and some new pots & pans.  I also got some great buys at Goodwill: a $3 landline phone (in case the cable company requires me to have one with the bundled phone service that I don’t really want) and a cool $5 antique telescope-style lamp base with shade and 50 cent coffee mugs (cuz I didn’t want to dig mine out from the bottom of the box in my Seattle storage unit).  After shopping, I headed to the bar at Pearl in the Silver Legacy casino.  Neal, the snow-boarding bartender whom I first met last year, made me a special margarita to celebrate my relocation 🙂

Well, this is my next-to-last day of being homeless.  I spent most of the day shopping for items I will need for my apartment, and the rest of the day eating, drinking and gambling 🙂

I made the drive from Burns OR to Reno NV in 3 segments.  The first segment was on a super-peaceful back road on which I never saw anyone in front of or behind me on my side of the road.  But I did see a coyote on the side of the road!  The next segment was on a much busier back road with crosswinds that blew dozens of tumbleweeds across the highway.  And the final segment was on I-80 from Winnemucca NV west to Reno NV.  I made a quick stop in Sparks NV to unload the contents of my car into my storage unit, then proceeded to my destination for the next 3 nights: the Eldorado casino/hotel in downtown Reno.

I ate both a cheese omelet and a waffle at the hotel breakfast buffet this morning; I will be starting a diet next week 🙂  I got on the road a little after 9AM and headed away from the madness of Portland/I-5 traffic and toward the serenity of Mt. Hood and the high Oregon desert.  There are some peculiar town names near Mt. Hood: Boring, Zigzag, Rhododendron.  When I got to Warm Springs, I felt like a needed a little sightseeing stop so I took a side road to see the Lake Simtustus reservoir created by the Pelton Dam on the Deschutes River.  On the way back to the highway, I drove over a critter – intentionally.  Someone had just recently run over it, but it wasn’t dead; it was flailing around, but it was squashed and stuck to the road.  So I drove over it to put it out of its misery.  I hope I did the right thing.

A little further down the highway, I made a stop at the Madras airport to take some photos.  I was curious about the Spanair planes on the runway.  Google informed me that Spanair went out of business a few years ago and that Erickson Aero Tanker purchased some of their DC-9-87 (MD-87) planes to turn into fire fighting planes.

A few hours later, I made it to my destination of Burns OR for the night.  I agonized over my dinner choices in this small town, but eventually decided to go to Safeway and shop for dinner: a bag of salad, frozen lasagna, grapes and ice cream.

The first item on today’s agenda was a dental checkup and cleaning in Bellevue WA.  The hygienist spent quite a bit of time scraping stuff off the back of my bottom front teeth; unusual for me.  When I asked her if there was a problem, she said it was likely a side effect of all the sunshine (i.e., Vitamin D) I got in the past 4 months!  Fascinating …

After one more stop at my storage unit to get a few last minute items, I started my drive south on I-5 from Seattle WA to Portland OR.  It took nearly 4 hours to go about 160 miles; annoying traffic in all the usual places: Tacoma, JBLM, Chehalis, Portland.  Tomorrow, I will be taking scenic back roads to Burns OR.  It will take longer, but I think I will be much happier than if I got back on I-5.

I started the day with breakfast at Ikea with my former coworker Doug W.  Then I headed over to Boeing Field to watch the Blue Angels (they are in town for Seafair this weekend) practice session.  I got to see them take off (deafening) and land, and I saw a few acrobatics (which were mainly over Lake Washington, not over the airport) as well.  A few BNSF trains also went by on the tracks across the street from the airport.  It made for a nice hour or two, out in the sunshine along with quite a few other airplane aficionados.