Friday, August 11, 2006
The first order of business was to get the car started. Turning the ignition only produced clicks, and it was too early in the morning to go around the campground asking for help. So Joe called AAA. We were mostly packed by the time the truck showed up, so we didn’t really lose much time. We were driving toward Bend by 8:10 a.m.
Start point: 44 09.629 N, 121 21.422 W
End point: 44 03.594 N, 121 17.426 W
The first half of the walk was rural, climbing the Tumalo Highlands and crossing the postcard-pretty Deschutes River. At 4.5 miles we entered the Bend sprawl. Traffic from start to finish was almost as heavy as any we had encountered on our West Coast rulks. Our trip ended facing east on Highway 20 in Bend, just before it reaches the base of Pilot Butte.
We had paid less attention to how much change we were finding than on the previous day, assuming that an all-time record is safe for awhile. But we knew we were still finding a lot. For part of the way we had walked on opposite sides of the highway, a maneuver that theoretically should increase the money found. So when we reached the car, we counted it all. We had $2.21 for the day, beating the new record set the day before by one cent!.
And, hallelujah! The car started.
Walk rating: 6.8
Money found: Day: $2.21 (ANOTHER new record) Trip: $6.37 Project: $10.69
Distance: Day: 8.8 miles Trip: 63.4 miles Project: 188.3 miles
Elapsed time: Day: 3:26 Trip: 23:55 Project: 72:58 (3 days and 58 minutes)
Significance: End of Ocean Stew Trip 02; largest city until Nampa, Idaho
We drove back to KOA and finished packing up and taking showers. We drove back to Albany, where I met Sandy at Amtrak (over 5 hours late from Klamath Falls). We spent the night at Joe and Lisa’s before driving home to Bellevue on Saturday.
NEXT TRIP: Our goal is to ideally put in 4 weeks per year. This was our third week in 2006, and we hope to do one more week around October 1st, which is not that far away now. If we are able to do that, we will start at Bend and follow Highway 20 through the sagebrush and rim rock country toward Burns, Oregon, making it about half that distance in 7 days.
