USA - Canada - Mexico 2016 - Day 47

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Saturday, 22 October 2016 - Sutherlin, Oregon - Portland, Oregon

Well, here we go again. Started the day at 8 degrees C and thick fog. Where have I heard that before? At least today there was no rain but the wet weather gear was on for the fog and the cold.

We travelled through to Eugene and came out of the fog to beautiful blue skies just as we got there. We then turned into Springfield to sort the GPS out, again, and took the opportunity to remove the wet gear and top up with fuel. Back on the road and almost immediately into thick fog again and the temperature still hovering around 10 degrees C. Continued north to a rest area on the Santaim River. Nice big Rest Area and the river was flowing high, wide and strong. Probably the result of all the rains last week. A lot of water per hour was flowing down that river. We turned off toward Salem, and once again the fog cleared and we had clear blue skies for the rest of the day.

Today's plan was to go to McMinnville to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum. The ride up here, finally in better weather, was very picturesque with vineyards and apple orchards lining the sides of the road. The apple business must be booming or expected to as there was a lot of new plantings.

This museum has the actual Howard Hughes developed plane, "The Spruce Goose" as depicted in the recent movie, "The Aviator". It also has the movie props/model used to depict the finished plane and the backdrop diorama of the fuselage and wing under construction.

What a massive plane, Wingspan - 320ft, Length - 219ft, Height - 79ft, Weight - 300,000lbs. There are dozens of other planes in the show area from small personal aircraft to a WWII B17 bomber and "The Spruce Goose" absolutely dwarfs everything else. So many planes in the area makes it hard to get clear photos of specific planes and almost every photo ends up containing part of "The Spruce Goose"..

In another show area is the Space Museum containing actual and replica items such as space capsules, launch rockets, Vi and V2 rockets of WWII, and lunar modules and vehicles. There are also a number of helicopters and aircraft including a SR-71 Blackbird spy plane. Great place to spend a day if you have the time and interest in aviation and space flight.

Then it was a long slow haul to Portland with the GPS battery going flat at a crucial time as it had refused to recognise the external power source from the bike. A regular occurrence every day but I wasn't monitoring it closely enough to switch it off when not necessary. I haven't been able to identify if this is a wiring fault or a GPS fault. The wiring checks out OK whenever it has been checked but that is when the bike is stationary. Strange issue as it usually occurs when the bike is almost stopped or just moving off.

Enjoy the few photos we could get, not long to go now. Two days and we join up all the Spot dots.

358 klms today, total to date 17,452 klms.