Friday Night Halfway... on Monday?

Oregon Cascades Travelog #1
Klamath Falls, OR - Tue, 1 Jul 2025, 00:20am

It's like Friday Night Halfway... except on Monday! We hit the road Monday afternoon after work to get a jump start on our 4th of July vacation. We're headed to Bend, Oregon for several days. Tonight we've gotten as far as Klamath Falls; thus the Friday Night Halfway comparison.

With getting 8 hours of driving behind us, though, it's technically more like 3/4 of the way there. But I call it halfway because it's more lyrical. Would Bon Jovi's 1986 hit Livin' on a Prayer have been as successful if the band had crooner, "Woah we're 3/4 of the way there"?

Oh, but the map above/right shows 6 hours not 8, right? Yeah, that doesn't include traffic or stops for dinner and gas. The drive of 387 miles took us almost 8 hours. We left just before 4pm and arrived at the hotel at a quarter to midnight. Along the way we stopped in Fairfield/Vacaville[1] for dinner[2], Red Bluff for ice cream and a bathroom stop, and Redding for gas[3].

[1] Yes, there's a town in California that's named "Cow town" in Spench. Or is it Espançois? Frañol?

[2] We ate dinner at Del Taco, a fast-food chain restaurant we kind of make a point of visiting when we're outside our home area as there aren't any near us. You could call it a guilty pleasure but that's a misnomer because we feel no guilt about it. I'll be happy to explain why it's a slightly odd pleasure, but it won't be a guilty explanation.

[3] We drove 30 more miles from Red Bluff to Redding before filling up on gas because (a) I wanted to run the tank reasonably far down before filling to stretch the time 'til the next fill up and (b) there's a Costco in Redding, where a fill up saved us over $10 versus buying gas in Red Bluff.

So, we're at our hotel for the night. It's a Days Inn that looks a bit dowdy from the outside, though the rooms are... slightly... nicer on the inside. And it's less than half what the local Holiday Inn Express was asking. It's quiet— even the two vagrants outside are politely minding their own business, quietly— and the bed's very comfortable to stretch out on. Those are the two main thing I ask for right now.

The drive this evening was a long one, especially on a day when I'd gotten up at 4:45am (dratted neighbor's howling new puppy). But the good news is there's less driving for Tuesday. It should be an easy 2.5 hours to Bend. And that's the point of a Friday Night Halfway. Even if it is on Monday.

Day 1 of Vacation: Work

Oregon Cascades Travelog #2
Klamath Falls, OR - Tue, 1 Jul 2025, 9:45am

Woohoo, the first day of our vacation, amiright? Haha, not exactly. After driving 8 hours to Klamath Falls, Oregon, last night today I'm working from the hotel room in Klamath Falls. My day started with responding to some urgent requests at 7:30am.

"WTF are you doing working on vacation?" you might ask. "Aren't you always writing about how you don't work on vacation?"

The fact is I'm working today because it's not vacation. It's a workday!

One of the benefits of working remotely is that remotely means anywhere I have a good internet/phone connection and the ability to focus on work. It's not just working from home. I'm working from a hotel today because having left yesterday afternoon— and knocked out those 8 hours of driving— means I'm that much closer to starting my actual vacation later today.

Vacation Day 1: Work, Waterfalls, and Beer

Oregon Cascades Travelog #4
Bend, OR - Tue, 1 Jul 2025, 8:30pm

It's been a good first day of our vacation in the Oregon Cascades. After starting this first day of my vacation with a day of work from a hotel in Klamath Falls, Hawk met me back at the room after she finished her shopping fun and we drove northward toward Bend, stopping to hike at Paulina Falls in the Newberry Crater Volcanic National Monument along the way. The blog for those waterfalls is currently in my backlog, awaiting attention on the photos. I'll share it soon.

After Paulina Falls we tried to visit another falls on the way to Bend but got rained out. For that matter we were almost rained out of Paulina. We hiked those falls despite a gray sky, drizzle, and rumbling thunder(!). By the time we got close to the other falls the sky was dark and the rain was falling a lot faster than a drizzle. We pulled the plug and got back on the road to Bend.

In Bend we checked into our hotel, another Days Inn like the one in Klamath Falls— but without tweakers or drug dealers loitering in the parking lot. We stowed our bags in the room and headed out right away for dinner.



Hawk wasn't feeling too particular on dinner, other than "no pizza/Italian", and left the choice mostly up to me. I took the opportunity to pick something genuinely interesting to me— a brewpub! In this case the Deschutes Brewery & Public House. It's just over 1/2 mile from our hotel. And it has pizza, which I enjoyed eating, plus not-pizza that fulfilled Hawk's preferences. She ordered a gut-busting burger with guacamole with french fries with barbecue sauce.

Along with my pizza I enjoyed a few glasses of beer. The standout among them was one of the brewery-only specials, a limited anniversary edition of their Obsidian Stout made with bourbon. It tasted kind of like a beer Manhattan, but in a really good way. It was too rich to enjoy with food so I save the glass for dessert, after drinking a few pints of regular beer with my pizza. 🍕🍺😋