Glacier to Portland, OR

Today we got up early and had a quick breakfast, packed the car, and started driving to Portland, Or. Waze was suggesting two very interesting routes. One way would travel northwest before heading southewest. Another way would travel south a ways to get on 90W and. Even weirder was the southern route had two options. Our highlander navigation had a route that would cut about 25 miles of southern travel off to basically cut the corner but go on what seemed like less of a main route. Since I looked at the map install date and it was over a year old and doesn’t update, and our waze was crowsourced driving, we opted to follow Waze. It was slow, but our estimated arrival time didn’t change as we drove.

Since it was Father’s Day, and for some reason I thought McDonald’s sounded really great (I haven’t had it for a year and some of the kids had never had it), I decided we should go there for lunch. I ordered what I always do—a Double Quarter Pounder Meal—and since I never get it, I gave in to my guilty pleasure and ordered it large size. I got it with a Coke, since I didn’t see my new favorite Coke product—Coke Zero Sugar—at the drink fountain. Well, since A got sick the only time she was ever at McDonald’s (when she went with her Grammy when we told Grammy to go anywhere but McDonald’s), she saw a Subway nearby and decided she wanted to get that. It took some convincing on her part, but we decided to go to Subway after McDonald’s, even though we were trying to get back on the road since we were driving 631 miles in one day.

Well, we should have known when we pulled up to Subway that it would not be a quick experience. The drive thru (and I didn’t even know of a Subway with a drive thru before this experience) clerk said when we pulled up that, “I am going to have to take care of the customers in the dining area right now, because we are short handed. Is that alright?”

We pulled around to the dining area and decided to get in line. Jill got A’s order and then got in line. I ate my food quickly so that I could drive when Jill got back to the car. I told Jill what I did, and she suggested I wait in the line, since it hadn’t moved since she came in. I waited in line behind a middle-aged white woman and man and a younger white man. It seemed that the men were father and son and said while the lady was making her sandwich, “It’s okay. Take your time. We are not in a hurry!” I thought to myself, “Well, I am. Apparently you don’t see me standing right beside you and have not considered you are not the only people in the world. The had a talk about cheese, because the lady at the front of the line chose to get a piece of each kind of cheese on her footlong rather than just choose one. The young man thought that was an ingenious idea. Jill later informed me that they had the same conversation while she was waiting. They were acting like this was a fine dining experience and they had never been to Subway before, but later in the conversation said, “I love Subway!” I was really torn about what to think about this group. Is this really a correct sampling of what America has to offer, or were these people that bottom part of the barrel. Anyways, C’s belly didn’t really like that he had McDonald’s either. I don’t know why McDonald’s upsets our kids digestive system, when it should have the same things in it as Wendy’s or Burger King, which is our fast food of choice at home, but it obviously isn’t a good thing.

The landscape changed from the lush fir forest and rocky snowcapped mountains at the beginning to more of what we saw in Wyoming and the Dakotas—rolling grass hills and little trees with lots of farmland. It started to change back again when we got to a certain point to the lush forests and dramatic mountains as we got closer to Portland.

We got to our Hotel at around 8pm and unloaded and had dinner in the hotel. The hotel has a great kitchen in it that is fully stocked and is right on the streetcar line. After dinner, I was dealing with the realities of returning to work the next morning. I showered, shaved, and read a little bit more of Learning React before falling asleep before Jill even got out of the shower.:w