Post-Postscript

Saturday, August 11: Priscilla Arrives Home at Last

It took nearly two weeks, but Priscilla the Prius finally came home too, slithering off a gigantic truck just after sunrise.

Dealing with car-shipping companies is not for the faint at heart. First you go online and advertise your interest in shipping a car. Almost within seconds, a dozen brokers start emailing and phoning you. Each is offering a different rate.

The higher-rate ones bad-mouth anyone else who might come in with a lower bid, saying that they only want to suck you in, and then they'll raise the rate. They also caution you against paying an upfront fee by credit card, and urge you to check with a registry that rates individual shippers based on customer reviews.

But they all have basically the same shtick: the broker you agree to work with posts your itinerary on a central registry; car shippers (which are not the same company as the broker) then connect with the broker to tell him or her if they want the job. Sometimes they agree to the asking price; more often they want a little bit more. The brokers get a commission -- for coast to coast it's between $100 and $200.

I settled on a broker in California (with a five star review rating) who wanted a $150 commission upfront but said she could ship the car (i.e, she would list the car) for $850 more. She called back in a day to say she had a shipper (based in Eastern Washington) who would take the car, but, sure enough, they wanted more: $925. Since even with the $150 commission this was less than most of the other bidders, I said OK. I also got both from the broker and the shipper an assurance that there would be no problem or extra charge if we threw a few personal items in the car.

Joy and I packed all the clothes and souvenirs we didn't want to take with us on the plane into cardboard boxes, taped them shut, and put them in the back of the car.

On Monday, July 30 (after we were back in Gloucester), the shipper showed up in Bellingham with a flatbed truck to pick up the car and take it to the larger carrier, waiting in Spokane. Tom Jr. was on hand to sign the car over to him. The shipper's agent found and recorded on a shipping manifest every scratch, ding, dent, and rust spot he could find. He also checked a box that said "Overloaded vehicle; extra charges will apply." When I saw a copy of the form I called the dispatcher to plead that we had put at most 50 lbs. of extra clothing in the car; how could he call it overloaded?" To my surprise he was sympathetic; I had the feeling this particular agent had a reputation for pulling this and other stunts on other customers. He said I would not be charged extra; I eventually talked him into saying so in writing.

For the next dozen days we waited, checking periodically with the dispatcher on the progress of the shipment, which seemed agonizingly slow. At last, on Tuesday, I got a call from Spokane: the driver would deliver the car either late on Thursday, or on Friday morning at the latest. Alex, the driver, would call me 24 hours ahead of time.

When Friday morning came and Alex still hadn't called, I called him. He had a strong Russian accent that made comprehension difficult, but I finally figured out that he was somewhere in Massachusetts, and he would call me when he was closer to Gloucester. He would get to me around ten, he thought, but he was having trouble finding the customer he was supposed to be delivering another car to.  Where was he? I asked. He told me it was Westport, between New Bedford and Fall River, a good three hours or more from Gloucester.

By ten he still hadn't called, but at 11:15 he finally called me to say he was on his way, and would be at my door at about 1:30 AM.  No way, I said. Get some sleep somewhere and be here at 7 Saturday morning.

Joy and I turned in. Sure enough, precisely at 7 AM, a gigantic car-hauler pulled up a few hundred yards down the hill. There were eight cars on board, piled two-deep on their trailer. Priscilla was on top, near the front.

This will take a while, I thought, but to my amazement, the car was whisked off the top level, down a ramp to the lower level, in minutes, as hydraulic pistons lifted some cars up and lowered others; Priscilla was slipped down a ramp that tilted to allow her to slide under another car, which had been raised up an extra five or six feet, and off the back of the trailer. Only one other car had to be removed from the trailer before the Prius. The whole operation was not unlike a skilled blackjack dealer shuffling cards --cards that were 15 feet long and weighed a ton and a half.

So with  Priscilla and Carmen (the Garmin) back in our driveway, we are all home at last. The great excursion is officially over. Flying home and having the car shipped was an unplanned-for expense, but considering the risk of another and possibly more severe medical problem, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, it was the right thing to do.

Priscilla slides home

 

Postscript

Sunday, July 29. Home at last

We flew home last night, arriving in Boston in a driving rainstorm.  We were met at Logan by our daughter Beth, who drove us to Gloucester and then fed us a hearty meal, which we shared with son-in-law Simon's cousin George, his wife and two sons, all just arrived from Manchester, England. We spent an early evening fruitlessly comparing the relative virtues of east-to-west five hour jetlags and west-to-east three hour ones.  We decided there was no virtue either way.

Priscilla the Prius, who toyed with the idea of staying in Bellingham, is coming home by truck instead, bringing Carmen the Garmin with her. Both deserve a long rest.

Now to mow the lawn, collect a month's worth of junk mail, renew the newspapers, and get to the beach.

We hope you enjoyed the travelog.

Sunday, July 22

Sunday, July 22: Port Townsend to Bellingham: 78 Miles           

A cloudy day with occasional drizzle. We checked out of the motel at 8:45 and boarded the ferry to Whidbey Island at 9:15. It was a short, half-hour ride and an easy drive from there to Bellingham, where we arrived at our son Tom’s house at noon. There he was, with Deb, Molly, and Abby, three birds, two cats and a snake to greet us. Deb and Abby were pitting and slicing thousands of cherries for drying – a chore I vividly remembered assisting in four years ago. Didn’t volunteer this time. Joy, Tom and the girls walked over to our B&B three blocks away, while I drove the car. There we met Ricci, our host at the Canfield House, an immaculate Victorian in which we have a canopy bed and our own bath. Very clean, very comfortable, very convenient. Ricci has a pot of spices boiling on the stove for atmosphere, and that will take getting used to.

Saturday morning, as I was driving north toward Port Townsend, I experienced an unexpected heart problem. I have been living with atrial fibrillation (an irregular heartbeat) for more than 25 years. Normally this means no more than an occasional skipped beat (and a daily pill to minimize its irregularity and another to thin my blood to prevent coagulation), but something wasn’t working. I pulled off the road, took a few deep breaths, and checked my pulse. It was very fast. I didn’t feel like fainting; the sensation was more like being underwater. Not a good omen. I soon  recovered, we had lunch, and I felt fine while Joy and I took turns driving the rest of the day.

But we decided it wasn’t worth the risk of driving home for another week or ten days after our visit in Bellingham, and then having the same experience or worse on some remote country road in the Dakotas.  So we made reservations to fly home next Saturday. Faithful Priscilla will stay in Bellingham with Tom.

So the trip is over. 4750 miles, including perhaps 500 miles of side trips.  22 days of hard (and not so hard) driving, in temperatures ranging from the 50s to the 100s, through broiling sun and driving rain, gusting winds and calm. The country is vast and bountiful, the people we met friendly and interesting. We saw great museums and exciting works of art. We were in awe of the courage and determination of the emigrants who followed the trails west, and of the patience and resilience of the native American peoples displaced, attacked, and abused for generations. We saw many extraordinary natural phenomena and missed many others.

But we had a wonderful time. 

Our Travels, July 1 -  22, 2012

Saturday, July 21

Saturday, July 21: Vancouver, WA to Port Townsend, WA. 196 Miles           

A beautiful day, and a beautiful drive up the east side of the Olympic Peninsula. At some point in the day, about 25 miles north of Olympia, Washington,  we reached the westernmost point of our round-the country trip. Toast us with champagne, if you must!

A Geoduck (eww!)

We left our Vancouver motel at 9:30 and headed north, first on I-5, full of cars, then on US 101, slightly less full of cars, and finally on WA-20, full of cars and motorcycles. But we bowled along, through tall stands of fir and tamarack (aka hackmatack), very different scenery from the day before. We followed the shore of the Hood Canal, a deep channel west of Puget Sound, and home of a large (and controversial) Trident nuclear submarine base. We stopped at the Geoduck Restaurant for lunch at about 2, where we sat on a deck overlooking the Canal and a broad mudflat (the tide was way out). We could see a clammer here and there (not gathering geoducks, we were told, which are plucked from deeper water. Geoducks -- pronounced “gooeyducks,” if you don’t know them -- are huge clams with alarmingly long and large necks. Ugly, but thought to be edible).  We had a salmonburger (Joy) and a Reuben (me).

At the Geoduck Café

Joy struck up a conversation with a pleasant woman busily sketching at the next table. She turned out to be a fellow artist, traveling with her photographer husband. Almost every other customer was a motorcyclist, clad in black leather festooned with patches proclaiming his or her warlike outlook (though dated; all the sentiments seemed to date from the Vietnam era, with a strong emphasis on gittin’ them POWs back again and declaring that “these colors don’t run”). Yet mixed with these macho messages were peace symbols. And the motorcycles, all mammoth Harleys, were impeccably maintained and glistened with chrome. A lifestyle experience we seem to have passed up.

View from the Aladdin

At 3:00 we checked into the Aladdin Motor Inn in Port Townsend,  a three-story motel right on the waterfront, with an unparalleled view: sailboats gliding in and out of the nearby marina; the Port Townsend-Whidbey Island Ferries chugging back and forth, and far off, beyond a green peninsula two miles away, and Puget Sound beyond that, the distant snow-capped peaks of the Cascades. Quite a sight. (But we waited in vain for Mts. Rainier and Baker to “come out”).

We took a walk on the beach, and then went out to a delicious but expensive dinner at “Fin’s,” an excellent seafood restaurant downtown. We sat out on the deck and shivered in the 65 degree temperature – astounding after all the days we’ve experienced in the 90s and even 100s. I went back to the car for a fleece vest; Joy managed without, and we enjoyed a delicious meal by the shores of Port Townsend Bay, accompanied by the shrill exclamations of dozens of screaming gulls whirling overhead – fussing about a nearby eagle, we were told by our waitress – as the day came to a close. We were both happy. And happier still when we were back in our warm motel room. 

Friday, July 20

Friday, July 20: On the Oregon Trail: Hermiston OR to Portland OR to Vancouver, WA. 196 miles.

A tiring but inspiring day. We left Hermiston at 9:30 after the usual motel breakfast, and got back onto I-84, which soon dropped down to parallel the Columbia River, following the course of Lewis and Clark and the emigrants who followed them on the Oregon Trail.

The Columbia River Gorge is a phenomenal sight. Geologists think that it was caused by a series of massive floods perhaps as much as 15,000 years ago, created when gigantic glacial dams in what is now Montana burst, sending towering walls of water from Lake Missoula downstream at up to 80 miles per hour, scouring out the gorge, flooding most of eastern Oregon, and scattering huge glacial erratic boulders over a vast area. 

Dams built in the last century have changed the appearance of the river valley since Lewis and Clark and the Pioneers that followed them saw it, but in many places it remains much the same. It is amazing to visualize the challenges these men and women faced.

At the attractive visitors’ rest stops the State of Oregon has built every 90 miles or so, there are interpretive displays illustrating the progress of the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery and the emigrants, with quotations from their journals and letters, and maps and drawings illustrating the vicissitudes they faced.

One of the emigrants complained “we faced hed (sic) winds” day after day, and we can attest to the fact that they are as strong as ever. The westerly “hed” winds we drove into must have been blowing 25 knots or more, to judge from the whitecaps on the river, and driving westbound was a challenge. Poor Priscilla, accustomed to getting 45 to 50 miles per gallon through most of our trip (and 99 miles per gallon for the half hour drop from the Grand Canyon to the valley below), was barely getting 35, and laboring at that. The only people enjoying the wind were the dozens of windsurfers we saw from time to time on the river below, zipping around like dragonflies, at unbelievable speeds.  And  hundreds of great white wind machines that lined the crests on either side of  the gorge for mile after mile were spinning and pirouetting in a giant ballet.

We arrived in Portland at 1:30, and scouted out my sister Nell’s condo and her daughter Sara’s house, in the southeast section of the city. Nell was back in Maine, but we were curious about where she lived, and it looked very nice from the outside. Sara was at work, so we asked a man we encountered in Nell’s condo complex where we could find a good place for lunch. He steered us to “Bread and Ink” on Hawthorne Avenue, which is a marvelous and hip (if not Hippie) street, with funky shops, a huge Powell’s bookstore branch, second hand shops, restaurants and bars.

Bread and Ink had a nice menu, and we each splurged on an irresistible dish: breaded and fried Pacific oysters, huge and delicious, with aioli sauce and salad. Our efficient and comely waitress was a startling sight, wearing a black T-Shirt with short sleeves that showed off her magnificent tattoos, covering both arms from waist to shoulder and beyond, and shiny black tights that were very tight indeed. A short black waitress’s apron provided a necessary touch of modesty, for there was no skirt or other pants to do the job. But this was pretty standard dress for the neighborhood –at least for the young women who could get away with it. 

We shopped for some gifts and a book we had been looking for (at Powell’s – an enormous enterprise that I suspect is dwarfed in size by its parent store in Downtown Portland), and we each had an ice cream cone at Ben and Jerry’s before stopping to see my niece Sara, now home from work, and her son Nathan.

We left for our motel in Vancouver, WA, across the Columbia River, at 4:30, just in time to be stuck in the Friday night homeward-bound rush hour. As soon as we had crossed the Columbia River and entered Washington, however, the traffic eased. We checked into our Quality Inn at about 5:30. Despite its tacky neighborhood of fast food restaurants and gas stations, the motel is set back from the highway in a leafy glade, and our second-floor room is delightfully quiet. We’ll sleep well tonight.

Thursday, July 19

Thursday, July 19: On the Oregon Trail, Boise, ID to Hermiston, OR. 248 miles

Off at 9 am on a cloudy day, trading a Comfort Inn next to a busy airport for another next to a truck stop and a stockyard!  But our new overnight digs are among the most comfortable yet (for a standard motel), and the stockyard is not in business!

It was a tiring day, only 248 miles, but it took about 6 hours, with stops. And the route had a lot of steep, winding mountain roads. Still it was lovely country all the way. And we were following the route of the Oregon Trail! (historical markers sprinkled all along).

Deadman's Pass

At one rest stop we turned off to follow a side road to a scenic overlook called Deadman’s Pass.  It was a beautiful sight, but we were unsettled by the sight of a pickup truck (with New Hampshire plates, of all places) parked with no one around. For some reason we both felt it was a little creepy, and didn’t stay long after taking a couple of pictures.

Then it was on to a six-mile downhill 6% grade, with frequent 180° switchbacks and impressive ramps for runaway trucks. None ran away, but there were a lot of trucks on the road today, many of them double and triple rigs. Huge, roaring things.  

We pulled into Hermiston at 2, and Joy promptly flaked out for a nap.  We then walked across the baking asphalt between rows of semitrailer rigs to an A&W Root Beer shop where we both ordered root beer floats – aka Black Cows. Very satisfying.

Joy and a Black Cow

Tom Too

Dinner at a great Mexican restaurant in Hermiston (which is more than a truck stop). Chile rellenos for both of us. We were rewarded with a double rainbow as we left the restaurant. Surely a good omen for tomorrow, when we will head for Portland.

Wednesday, July 18

Wednesday, July 18: Logan, UT to Boise, ID.  289 miles.           

We were up at 7, and off by 8:30 after the usual motel breakfast (coffee, juice, yogurt, waffle (me) and eggs (Joy). 

A Spraying Mantis at Work

Southern Idaho, from the Utah border to about 30 miles west of Twin Falls, is a lush and lovely landscape of rolling hills, small farms, green meadows, giving way to larger spreads with great rotating sprinkler systems (we’ve dubbed them “Spraying Mantises” for their profile: long bodies -- actually multiple thoraxes, sometimes as many as a dozen segments, ending with an uplifted head) tracing great green circles on the land.  But from then on almost to Boise the land is brown and uncultivated. For mile after mile the ridges south of the highway have sprouted dozens of gracefully turning wind turbines, but north of the highway the stubbly grass and sagebrush were black from recent fires which had spread over many square miles. Whether the fires were intentionally set or accidental wasn’t clear.

Footprint of the Spraying Mantis

We stopped to pick up a couple of sandwiches at a huge Oasis truck stop, the Garden of Eden, (in Eden, Idaho, of course), where any traveler’s knickknack you could imagine, from jewelry to camping gear to T-shirts to coffee mugs to condoms to scented fir trees to hang from the rear view mirror was for sale, and you could eat at dining area with fake palm trees and rock walls, indoors. Stairs led down to a lower level (marked “Truckers only”) to an area where truckers could shower, exercise, and nap. Gas was expensive ($3.99 a gallon) but the Prius doesn’t drink much or often.  

Snake River Bridge, Twin Falls, Idaho

We drove on to Twin Falls, where we crossed a high suspension bridge and then took a winding road down to a public park on the banks of the Snake River. Until we started down we hadn’t realized we were in a canyon, with high cliffs on either side. Or that the Perrine Bridge at Twin Falls was a mecca for BASE (Building, Antenna, Span, Earth) jumpers, sport parachutists who like to jump off  not-so-high objects using steerable sport chutes. They jump from the middle of the 486-foot high span and land on the ground below.

After a nice lunch and a walk around the park we stopped at a visitor information center, where parachutists were busy repacking their chutes and comparing notes with each other. One was lying on his back with his leg in an inflatable cast; he had wrapped a riser cord around it in his last jump, badly lacerated it on landing. He had no plans to jump again soon. And we didn’t stay to watch his companions jump either.

We arrived at our motel at the Boise airport at about 4:30, glad to put our feet up. We’ll go out to dinner and get to bed early. Off to Pendleton, Oregon, tomorrow.