Off to Oregon
My friend Tori had told me about her desire to check out Bend, Oregon, sometime in early 2008, and by happy coincidence, a friend from Fort Collins mentioned that she’d be housesitting for her mom in Bend for a whole month and we were welcome to come up and visit. Road trip!
For me this would be a nice opportunity to revisit the wonderful little town in Central Oregon that I had nearly moved to two years ago instead of Fort Collins, and for Tori, a chance to look at investment property. House prices, after all, seem to have plummeted out here by 15-20% in the last two years after a big run up in the first half of this decade. (This is one reason I am happy I ultimately chose Fort Collins, where home values have held steady or even gone up during that time.)
Day one of our trip was reasonably uneventful, taking less than ten hours from Stockton to Bend with clear skies for most of the trip and almost no traffic.
Above is a photo taken in Weed, CA (that is the actual name of the town!) of Mount Shasta. Tori’s Ford Escape Hybrid averaged about 28.2 mpg for the trip up. That doesn’t sound too good for a Hybrid, but that is great for an SUV. In the city, it gets much higher mileage—about 34 mpg—since it can run in electric-only mode at low speeds.
Unfortunately, I won’t have much time to blog but will try to check in now and then!
