Road Trip – Omaha to Seattle – Day 17 – Portland, OR – Bend, OR – September 27, 2010

Woke up to the sound of construction equipment outside Kalie's apartment. They are redoing a sports field behind her building. No bother, though, I went back to sleep and woke up for a second more to tell Kalie goodbye as she went to work. Matt didn't have to work, so I got up around 10 and took a little more time to get ready. Got online, facebooked a bit, showered, then I reorganized the whole car and got everything off the top and inside the vehicle.
Decided to go to Eugene, OR where the University of Oregon is. The Ducks are really good this year, so I thought I'd look around the stadium and sports center. The band was warming up, I got right on the field, and it was a beautiful day. I got my oil changed in downtown Eugene, got a sandwich and soup combo at a local place called Erinn's bistro. It was small and unrefined, but it was good and cheap. I stopped at an auto parts store and got some new windshield wipers and put them on, then I called some camera shops to see if they could puff some compressed air on my image sensor to clean it off because I noticed a spot on some pictures I loaded onto my computer the night before. One place had their repair guy on vacation, and the other place said he had to put some liquid on it as well and it would be like an hour because he had other customers. I called bullshit on that. I've only had this done done like 5 times before. You don't need liquid and it takes about 4 seconds to do, I don't think I've ever even been charged for it. He just wanted money. I would've gladly given him like 5 bucks just to puff it, but not when he's trying to squeeze me. I told him to stick it where the sun don't shine and headed out of town to get toward Crater Lake.
Drove through a couple cool little towns on the way, and I started realizing that I would have to book it to make it by sundown. Of course there was construction, and the way there was very windy mountain roads. But I got in a little pack with a CR-V and a Rav-4 that were probably thinking the same way as me, and we rocked it. Doing 65-70 through windy roads for about 50 miles. I didn't make it for the perfect light, but I got there just after. There was still really good light around the west rim and the sunset was awesome. It was amazing! I think I was the only one in the park, and I stayed for over an hour until it was completely dark. I think I could see every star in the universe. I've been to other remote places at night, but I never remember having seen this many. I just looked up in awe for minutes. I tried to capture them on camera, but I haven't checked how they came out yet. I had the shutter open for 2 minutes on a couple shots, so it should have gotten something cool. If that wasn't enough, all the stars were reflected in the lake at night as well. If I spaced out just right, it looked like there was like a branch in front of me(the mountain and its reflection) and all the rest up and down were stars. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome.
My GPS was having a heck of a time maintaining a signal on the way down, and it still was. That led me to have a pretty inconsistent speed the whole way there, because one thing I have really been relying on it for in the mountains and at night especially, is the sharpness of upcoming curves. It lets me know if I can go into it at the same speed, or if I have to slow down. It also tried to lead me down a road that didn't exist, so I spent a little extra time in Crater Lake NP. After that, I high tailed it to Bend, OR, where I couldn't find the rest area I had been looking for, so I parked and slept in a Wal-Mart parking lot with about 10 other campers. Looked like they needed a rest area to me.