Day 9: 9/24/2010
Portland, OR-Alturas, CA, 523.8 miles
http://goo.gl/maps/GPJe

Well, so much for oatmeal in the morning... All clocks but my cell phone had at this point been put forward to the correct time zone, but the phone/alarm was still set to Alaska Standard Time... So quick showers and a mad dash to Ford, lead by the GPS that had to contend with new roads it didn't think existed.

At the service center, we were met with "who is your appointment with?" Uh... this is a foreign question to the girl who's only dealt with the Ford in Fairbanks, but eventually we were pointed in the direction of Ryan, the most happy bubbly mechanic I've ever met. Awesome! That was exactly what I needed. Yay!

We spent the next hour ish in the customer lounge laughing about the specialty coffee machine and treasuring more time with the internet :p Ryan found us with the words, "Well, she failed." At least he knew my car is a she... They'd done the simple recall reprogramming on the computer, but found the transmission too far gone. So recall became repair...

The car needed a new transmission kit, which Ryan said would be in by Monday (This is Friday) or they'd just take it out of the rental car... which is covered! It's all still under warranty and with rental coverage we can still go spend the weekend with Mathew's dad. Also, Ryan said he got us pushed ahead of some other cars so we could get done by monday because we from Alaska and road tripping. Being from Alaska finally pays off!. Lol. We waited a bit longer and talked over some plans... We decided to come back for the car monday, have fun getting to San Francisco, and fly Mathew out of there on October 2nd. That way we wouldn't be missing out on seeing Weronika along with a dreadfully direct route across the country to D.C.

The rental agent came in and chatted with us while Mathew booked a plane ticket and then took us to the Enterprise office. We had been told it was a 250 mile a day limit and could only go through Washington and Oregon, but they gave us northern California, too when they learned where Mathew's dad lives. And unlimited mileage! But that turned out not to matter as the two days in Alturas we wouldn't be driving the rental anyway. Because we were from Ford, we weren't charged for the extra driver, which was great. A bit of paperwork to sign and then the Ford Focus, late named Rescue Car, let us continue our journey!

So off to Route 101! We arrived in Lincoln City, Oregon on the coast, and headed south to Florence. Along the way we saw amazing ocean vistas and stopped in some really interested places. In Lincoln City we stopped at the beach briefly and they had these huge kites tied down so they were always in the air, then we headed south and the next major stop was at Cape Foulweather, which was named by Captain Cook! Mostly it was just little stops and viewpoints, but we did take a bit of a walk up to Heceta Head Lighthouse, which was very fun! We just missed the tour times, but it was ok.

We stopped briefly in Florence, Oregon for dinner in Old Florence, where some of the older buildings are still around and being used. We ate in a seafood chowder place called Mo's, yummy! Then... hours of driving to Klamath, Oregon and finally Alturas, CA, most of which I do not remember as I was asleep... Near the last few hours, we stopped in the road (a small one) to watch a jackrabbit dance! it was awesome, it bounced back and forth a bit, and then jumped up really sudden and then bounced away. Yay! We also saw a few dear, and Mathew had to dodge one at one point, but at 3am we made it safely to his dad's house!

We tried to be quiet going into the guest room and getting ready for bed, but one of the dogs had other plans. Bungie is the dog I've heard about, a black lab... he's deaf enough not to notice us. It was the 4 month old Chihuahua, Trixie, who made Mathew's dad's wife come out to meet us :p Not long after though, sleep!