2014 October Road Trip

Overview:

Provinces/States Visited: British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana.

Points of Interest: Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum, Bonneville Salt Flats International Speedway, Larry H. Miller Total Performance Museum, Hill Aerospace Museum, Yellowstone National Park and Old Faithful, Old Montana Prison, Montana Auto Museum, Grand Coulee Dam North Cascades Highway, Museum of Flight.

Day 1 (Saturday) – 575 Km: An hour and a half on the 8am ferry and then a two hour wait at the border. On and off heavy rain until stopping for the night at Woodburn Oregon.

Day 2 (Sunday) – 315 Km: Visited the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum in McMinnville Oregon, SR-71 number one. Drove on and spent the night at Bend Oregon.

Day 3 (Monday) – 779 Km: Got a relatively early start and made it to Elko Nevada. I am not going to have time to make it to Pike’s Peak so have changed plans and will go north to Yellowstone and Old Faithful and then home along the North Cascades Highway. Yesterday I drove through the town of Sisters today Brothers.

Day 4 (Tuesday) – 674 Km: Bonneville Salt Flats International Speedway, the Larry H. Miller Total Performance Museum and the Hill Aerospace Museum. The Miller Museum contains about $100 million dollars worth of Ford race cars from the sixties, including Mustangs, Cobras and GT40s. The Hill museum has a huge collection of military aircraft, I didn’t have a lot of time so just had a quick look around, SR-71 number two.

Day 5 (Wednesday) – 672 Km: Pocatello, Idaho to Butte, Montana via Yellowstone Park and Old Faithful. Many roads in the park are either closed or under construction, so now the car is covered in mud. I entered the park via the West Entrance and exited by the North Entrance. There were two big bull buffalo having a rest but there was no where to pull over to take a picture, I then came around a corner and there was another one walking down the middle of the road. Unfortunately somehow my camera had switched itself to manual focus and I didn’t notice so all the pics are out of focus and not suitable for publication.

Day 6 (Thursday) – 758 Km: The Montana Auto Museum is just up the road and is located at the Old Montana Prison, now if I can just set up the camera correctly or put on my glasses so I can see if something is wrong. After the museum I spent the day driving and trying to find a bank with an ATM, looking for a car wash and trying to find a Dairy Queen for a chocolate shake. Found the ATM, didn’t find the DQ but did find a car wash only to have the blow dryer remove a piece of trim, luckily it snapped back into place. Maybe tomorrow will go smoothly 😉 Oh, also stopped at the Grand Coulee Dam but didn’t really have time for anything more than a quick look around, picture below.

Day 7 (Friday) – 669 Km: I am only a couple of hours from Sedro Woolley so I will take in the Museum of Flight in Seattle. Man is I-5 a rough road. I made it to the museum around noon, saw my third SR-71 Blackbird of the trip, a Concorde, the first 747, an older Air Force 1 and many other interesting aircraft. The wait at the border was short and the sign on the road said the 6pm was 67% full so when I got there I was surprised to be one of the last cars on the upper deck. While I was gone the hard drive I keep my photos on had died, hopefully is just the power supply and I can find one.

Note: All photos can be clicked for a larger version. Left/Right arrow keys will move to previous/next photo and ESC key will exit the large photo.

Map of the journey:

Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum

The Spruce Goose Cockpit

And without the wannabe pilot

Gives and idea how large the Spruce Goose really is

SR-71 Blackbird Engine

And this is the business end of the engine

Some nose art

Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15UTI – Midget

Beechcraft Starship, one of 53 built. As of January 2010, nine Starships hold an active registration with the FAA

The water slides start in the 747. This is located next door to the museum

Bonneville Salt Flats International Speedway

Video from Triumph

End of the pavement

This time of year the salt floods

Museum at Miller Motorsports Park

The collection is all Fords and is valued at close to 100 million dollars. The last car added to the collection cost approximately 8 million dollars. The cars are close together and they have that rope in front of them so it was hard to take pictures.