Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Day 58: Nampa, ID to Vale, OR
Today, unfortunately, started with a flat.
Lucky for us this was a really slow flat. I was able to just inflate the tire and get us going again. But we'd have to watch it. We had two goals before we left Nampa - first we had to check out the awesome looking coffee garage we'd seen yesterday, and second we had to stop at Walmart and investigate a new tire for the trailer.
Finding the coffee garage wasn't too hard, and Nampa seemed to have a pretty awesome little downtown. The coffee garage was a converted garage, with all sorts of space for having coffee. I had yogurt with granola, Jillian had milk with granola, which was kind of like granola milk. I wound up finishing that one.
Back on the road, we headed west, to Walmart. The manager at the hotel had given us ridiculously awful directions. If she'd just said something like "Stay on 55 - it'll be on your left' we'd have been happy. Instead there was all this discussion about which Walmart and what not. Sigh.
The ride down ID-55 was pretty awful. No much of a shoulder, lots of traffic, lots of lights. We ended up on the sidewalk here and there. When we did reach the Walmart I bought some supplies and spent forever returning some tires that we didn't need anymore.
After a stop at a Wendy's in Caldwell, we got on US-26 and followed that west out of town. We finally saw a sign we were going to the right way:
That's Ontario, Oregon, not Ontario, Ontario.
US-26 was a pretty relaxed ride, without high winds and without the temperature being too awful (or maybe we were just acclimated?). We passed through the little town of Notus, before arriving in Parma, which might be the yellow onion capital of the country. There we stopped at Apple Lucy, chatted with patrons and had a wonderful lunch of hamburgers and milkshakes.
Eventually we were able to drag ourselves away from air conditioning and milkshakes and get back on the road to Oregon. Tonight we'd be staying at the Bates Motel in Vale, Oregon. As a small, Mom & Pop hotel, we needed to get there before they closed for the night.
Out of Parma we turned North, heading through vast fields and watching Onion trucks roll by. If we looked to our West, we could easily see Oregon across the valley. When we did cross the river, we entered the town of Nyssa, the Thunderegg Capital of the world. We weren't entirely sure what a Thunderegg was, but we did take some pictures of our entering our final state.
There was some tricky construction to navigate in order to get through Nyssa, but we decided we were due for a stop there and we gladly stopped at the Thunderegg Coffee Company.
Inside the owners informed us that a Thunderegg is a round rock with a geode in it. They were even kind enough to give us one to take home. We stayed all together too long here, having fruit smoothies. We also enjoyed the XKCD comics plastered on all the walls.
Having spent most of the day enjoying delicious frozen drinks, we realized that we should probably get on the road if we wanted any hope of making it to Vale before close. We got back on the road.
We followed US-26 West, and caught wonderful views of Malheur Butte (Malheur means misfortune in French). It was pretty easy to spot.
Apparently it's an extinct volcano, which is pretty awesome.
Eventually we came to an overlook.
I also leaned that the county we were in - population 31,000 - is 9900 square miles big. According to the sign, and since checked on Wikipedia, that's approximately the size of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Deleware put together.
We arrived in Vale at about 8 - before sunset for once.
Most impressively, Vale has bike lanes everywhere. Vale's a little town - about 2000 people - but there were arguably more miles of bike lanes than there are back in Frederick, population 60,000. First we found our way to the hotel.
We were a little hesitant to stay here, but the reviews on TripAdvisor were awesome. We shouldn't have worried. Except about the decor.
The couch felt a bit like cardboard, too. But we were glad to have a room - if we hadn't made a reservation that morning, we wouldn't have been able to get a room at all. After exploring the town and shooting photos of the murals, we got dinner at the Starlite Cafe, which had really excellent food. Take our reviews of food with a grain of salt - we're always starving - but this did feel like a home cooked meal with friends, even though we didn't know anyone there.
Back at the Bates Motel, we took a little bit of time to get our gear in order before showering in the original all tile showers. Like any older hotel, the shower heads are about four inches too short for me, and I had to crouch the entire time. Good rate through.
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| posted at: 04:02 |
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