Travelling to Bandon

12/17/11  We headed out.  Lisa's last treatment was the 15th and we had planned to celebrate during winter break.  Although Belize was not to be, we chose a Pacific Northwest venue for our celebration, Bandon, OR.  The road to there consisted of many, many, many miles of road tripping, but in the end, it was well worth it.

Walker Pass had all of what we expected, a little bit of everything including some misty mountain hop.  When we left Port Angeles, it was overcast and kinda foggy.  But as we headed east, round 'bout Sequim, the sky poked through and we decided that 101 'round Hood Canal should prove to be quite scenic and it did.

From there, we headed onward along I-5 and the sun came out to greet us on our journey.  Traffic was relatively light.  We plugged in "Das Contraption" -- which is our iPod plugged into the 12V plug AND into the tape player -- and jammed to our favorite travel jams.  We had left PA at about 9:20 AM so we would end up in Bandon by about 6-ish PM.

Along the way, fog happened.  The funny thing was, we hit fog south Centralia all the way to Portland but Portland was clear and 55 degrees.  With our bikes loaded and locked onto our racks, we were pushing a lot of air and it had a marked affect on our gas mileage.  Fully loaded with two bikes on top, we were lucky to get 30 MPG at 70 MPH.  Just goes to prove, weight and wind resistance cost energy.  So, gotta lose weight AND gotta wear even tighter gear.  The one sorta requires the other 'cause who needs to see a shrink wrapped blimp?

All in all, we made fairly good time.  We stopped in Springfield for food but didn't find anything that fit our mood.  Nonetheless, we ate at a cafe and motored on.  We fueled in Roseburg and remembered the last time we had made it to Roseburg.  We had vacationed in Bend the summer before after Lisa's back surgery.  On the way home, we headed to Crater Lake and failed to fuel before entering the park.

After circling the lake, we headed west to Roseburg but were running low on fuel.  It was an interesting trip as we watched the fuel meter drop one bar at a time.  Again, we were fully loaded with bikes locked and loaded.  Luckily, the road to Roseburg is all downhill, complete with elevation markers delineating each thousand foot drop.  I purposely drove at around 45 MPH just to conserve fuel.  We made it to a town just east of Roseburg and fueled up with mere vapors in the tank.

We made to Bandon as planned.  It was dark and we were road weary so we unloaded the Prius and headed to the Steakhouse we saw at the turn off of 101.  It was Saturday night and they had the football game on so we ate, watched a bit and called it a night.  Welcome to Bandon.