Event Coverage Three events, 4,552 miles in 2 weeks & 3 days!

Can't wait for more updates. I live for road trips!

Roger, based on this thread I went and read your entire build thread for your '55 (all 44 pages!). Truly epic and very inspirational! Thanks for documenting it so well!

Tommy

 

Outstanding trip! Super well told travel story can't wait for round two!

 

Love this thread! Cant wait for more.

 

Thanx, I'm writing it now...!!!
R-

Soon...
R-

Thanx Tommy, just goes to show ya IF you're confident in your build, the miles will rack up...!!!
R-

Sorry to have missed you Johnboy...but I'm not one to park my butt in a lawn chair behind my car when there's over 2800 other cars to see and ogle...!!!
R-

Appreciate the comments...
R-

Yeah, too bad you didn't make it to Morrill...
R-

It's like sitting in your living room recliner...!!! Rode in a Model A coop yesterday...had a cup of coffee with me...it didn't take long before it was all over me...ruff riding buckboard...!!!
R-

Stay tuned...
R-

See you in September, Trav...

Best part of that statement, Jalopy Joker, is that's the award they gave me at GG's Puyallup...!!!
R-

Thanx Mika, made you jealous...eh...???
R-

Thanx Bill...it's just too bad we couldn't do the same thing your direction...I think it was the six hour ferry ride to your island that killed it for us...!!!
R-

Well mustang6...we thot it was awesome...!!! Thanx for the comment...
R-

It was a ball...what's better than seeing magnificent country thru the windshield of a hot rod...???
R-

Glad to see you're still around Eddie...how ya doin'..???
R-

Thanx, appreciate it...
R-

When you have a great scenery, it's not hard to shoot good photos...

R-

C'mon Bob, I know you do road trips too...!!!
R-

Coming up soon SRS!...
R-

Thanx...
R-

Thanx Toast...
R-

How's the car coming Darren...??? Plan on taking a long trip in it...???
R-

Will do...
R-

I was told I needed a GPS by the organizer...proved him wrong...!!! Paper maps are still the best, show parks, etc., and they don't talk back to you...!!! LOL...

Lack of billboards on the highway was a shocker for a while...
R-

Thanx Rod...
R-

Thanx for the comment on the Caddys...
R-

It was a great adventure...Dan and I looked forward to it for months...now we're disappointed it's over...
R-

Thanx Jay...
R-

Montana didn't know I was coming, maybe they'd have done a little better on the road...
R-

It was...
R-

Thanx Denise...and for the comment on the Caddy...wish we had some of your cookies to go with us, would have made the evening TV watching much sweeter...Dan sez "hey"...
R-

 

Very Kool post, I love to read about your travels. Love to run with ya guys someday.
Maybe we can hook up next year when we go to Indy...



This picture reminds me of a family vacation in our Impala. We were driving two lanes and
was making great time until we saw the sign. "Pavement Ends" The '60 set low and it was
full of family and baggage. We only had about thirty miles of dirt road, we didn't see
anyone else on the road or any homes. It was a good time to pray...

Happy Trails, Mick

 

Here's Post # 2

As a way of introducing some of you that are new to the HAMB and to our Cadillacs, in case you don’t want to read 44 pages of the build thread on my lavendar Caddy (none on Dan’s). Let me give you a short run-down: Dan’s Cadillac is a ’54 (the green one with flames)…and it’s all stock…!!! Yep, you read that correctly…a stock 331” Cadillac engine exactly as it came from the factory (save the fact it was completely rebuilt in 2009). About the only thing not stock is the dual exhausts with Flowmaster mufflers. The original four-speed Hydramatic automatic tranny was rebuilt at the same time as the engine and installed just as Cadillac did it. His front suspension is stock, the brake system is stock and the car does not have any lowering blocks installed…now for the best part: It gets 21 mpg on the highway at 70 mph…Dan averaged 18.3 mpg for the whole 4552 mile trip…!!! Some of our car friends told us were were crazy to take Dan’s Cadillac on such a trip, that we would be stuck alongside the road too many times and we wouldn’t be able to find parts…nothing was farther from the truth. The car and engine was 100% dependable (as Cadillac said years ago) and Dan only used half a quart of oil the whole trip.

As for my Caddy, if you didn’t read the build thread, it took me 5 ½ years to build the car and it’s equipped with a 1970 500” Cadillac engine with a T-400 behind it. The engine sits on a 1978 Pontiac sub-frame with disc brakes, a sway bar and power steering. It also has 2” lowering blocks in the back. The engine is basically stock with an Edelbrock 750 CFM carb and it has shorty headers and dual exhausts with Flowmasters. I had new coils put in it a month before we left and had new ball joints put in it cuz I didn’t trust the originals any longer. I averaged 14.4 mpg over the length of the whole trip. Not the best in the world, but acceptable. Oh, both run Diamondback radial whitewalls and needless to say, both ride like Cadillacs.

So, now that you know a bit about our Cadillacs, let me back up and tell you that I turned the first one thousand miles of the trip on my odometer forty-four miles south of Regina…Now let’s get on with more of the trip.

Oh, one more thing: I need to send a shout-out to Mr. 57 here on the HAMB……he walked up to me in Regina and introduced himself and we chatted for a while…

And of course, I cannot forget all the Canadians we met on this trip…those guys, and gals, are just as car-crazy as we are…and most times nuttier than us…matter of fact, Theresa (left) and her mother, Stacey, (shown in the photo below), joined us on a couple of days of the trip…She’d passed Dan and I on the highway and I was shocked to see two females in the car, by themselves. Said to Dan “we need to go meet these two and get what their story is.” So we did at our next overnite stop.


Theresa built this Beaumont (Canadian Chevelle with Pontiac badges) by herself and drove it on the WCPC…and she could explain every part on the car. They ended their trip with us in Medicine Hat as they had relatives there and were to return home in the morning.

The whole trip was a lot of laughs every time all of us got together at the local cruise-ins and especially at the motels…there wasn’t much to do except sit outside, enjoy the evening and shoot the bull…besides, everyone kept asking us if we brought any American beer as beer is not cheap in Canada…!!! $30 a six-pack…???!!!

OK, here we go…Once past Calgary, the mountains were spectacular…


Talk about rocky mountains…most of the Canadian Rockies are nothing but solid rock…and on the taller peaks nothing grows…!!!


Tunnels…??? Naaahh, these cross-overs were built for deer, bear and other animals to get over Canadian Highway One, from one side to the other. There were several of these built above the highway…complete with trees, rocks and all kinds of green growth…guess they wanted to keep the animals safe and sound…and of course, keep them off the highway…!!!

We took the time to drive up to Lake Louise and see the lake and the glaciers…the water in Lake Louise is such a glassy emerald green/turquoise color it’s hard to describe…and of course we got to see the glaciers that feed the lake.

The parking lot at Lake Louise is huge but it was packed…we had a hard time finding two parking spots next to each other. Once we parked, we were surrounded by people that wanted to ask about our cars and where we were from…our ColoRODo license plates shocked most of them…however, most of them were polite enuff to ask if they could shoot pictures of the cars and the majority of the tourists there were absolutely flabbergasted with our cars and the fact we’d driven “them old-fashioned cars” (as one little boy put it) so far…


The Chateau Lake Louise hotel and lake…


Dan checking out the glaciers…it was noted on a sign there that the glaciers had receded several hundred feet since the late ‘70’s…they used to be very close to the lake but are no longer.…

Our scheduled stop for the evening was Golden, British Columbia, which was just inside the British Columbia Province, 43 miles from Lake Louise and 142 miles from Calgary (or 319 miles from Medicine Hat where we started from that morning) Unfortunately, we didn’t see any signs along the highway telling us we were in BC, so no pix of us entering British Columbia. The mountains in this area were spectacular…there wasn’t a straight stretch of road from Lake Louise to Golden that I remember anyway-curves and up and down all the time. I think the worst part of Canada’s Highway One is there are not any pull-outs off the highway in order to check out scenery…too many times we had to simply pull off onto the shoulder… and that’s not the world’s best thing to do so a lot of these photos were shot thru the windshield of my Caddy or Dan’s Caddy, that’s why you see blurry parts-smashed bugs on the windshield, ya know…??? I shot 395 pix on this trip and Dan had purchased a new camera just before we left and he shot 623 pix…


The huge glacier above Lake Louise…zoomed in ten times normal.



The motel in Golden we were booked into was small…probably no more than 40 rooms so we filled that fast when we finally dropped in. The local A & W hosted a cruise-in early that evening but Dan and I didn’t arrive there til late and missed it…we were too busy sight-seeing while most of the Canadians with us on this trip had already seen most of the Trans-Canada highway. At this time, there was about 75-80 cars on the trip…we had one more night on the road and the next stop would be in Merritt, BC ., 271 miles down the road.

The event organizer, Chris, took us thru the town of Golden in a small ‘parade’ and we ended up at their rec center …most of us hung around there for a while shooting pix and shooting the bull. Dan and I got hungry so left to find a restaurant…the A& W was the only ‘fast food’ in Golden I saw but we needed something a bit more substantial this nite…prices for food in BC were staggering…several times we paid $18.00-20.00 for a hamburger lunch…and close to $40.00 for a simple dinner… A Denny’s Restaurant breakfast of toast and a side of bacon and coffee cost me $14.00…

Ya know, I read Bob K’s adventure to Alaska and the thing I got out of it is Bob K likes to drive…and drive he does. I used to think Dan and I put a lot of miles on our cars, but I think Bob K is the undisputed champ. Also Bob K likes to eat and takes pictures of his food on his trips…I’m not much of a food connoisseur so you won’t see pictures of what I eat in my reports… LOL…!!!





A few of the cars that took the trip with us…this shot in Golden’s rec area.

Anyway, I didn’t realize Canada’s Rocky mountains covered so much territory…it took us three full 6 to 8- hour days to drive the mountains…and I’m not kidding when I say mountains…it was up and down, up and down and around curves for hours on end…and there were several times in the mornings that Dan and I had to pull out our sweatshirts and wear them cuz it was around 40 degrees.


More snow-pack just past Lake Louise, near Roger's Pass…

We had one more overnight stay, Thursday, and then we’d beat feet for Seattle , Puyallup and GoodGuy’s event at the fairgrounds…it was another full day of driving mountain roads, except we could feel we were getting closer to the coast. During the afternoon, the temperatures in the mountains was a lot hotter,close to the 80’s. It was 271 miles from Golden to Merritt, BC and our last overnite stop in the mountains. Dan and I still couldn’t get used to daylight at 10 PM in the evening.


Even tho we were in the mountains of BC, the sun didn’t actually set until right at 10PM…it was dusk at 10:30PM…hard to want to go to your motel room when it was still daylight but when you get up at 6AM to get on the road, it makes a long day.


The mountains and the setting sun shot from our motel balcony, note the pink in the clouds, doesn’t even look like 10 PM does it. In Denver, it’s dark about 8:30 simply because the mountains on the west of our city block out the sunlight.

Gotta back up a bit here again…we didn’t have a Driver’s meeting on Thursday morn and we all just kinda left on our own. Dan and I pulled out of the gas station at about 8:30AM that morning. Fuel in BC was about $1.41 per liter…and that works out to close to $5.60 a gallon. Some of the Canadians said BC, as in British Columbia means “Bring Cash”…!!! I don’t know much about that, I’m just reporting what was said…!!! I had to run premium in my Caddy as the engine was pinging really bad when I climbed the mountains. I didn’t want to have to mess with ‘tuning’ it up there in BC so simply bit the bullet and put premium fuel in it…it made a lot of difference since premium is a higher Octane rating than we have around here…much better than the crap we have here in the states.

We were around 50 miles from Golden when we came across “Roger’s Pass”…imagine that, someone in Canada named a mountain pass after me…??? We stopped to shoot the sign before we got to the summit and it was still a tad cold…the cars whizzing past blew their wind at us and man it was cold enuff to think it was a winter day. We’d just parked when a black Chevelle pulled up behind us…the young guy got out and asked us if we were having trouble. “No”, we responded, “just shooting pics.” We introduced ourselves and found he was German and living in Calgary, name was Helmar …really nice guy. He and his GF had heard about the WCPC and decided to join all of us. He shot a pic of Dan and I standing in front of the Roger’s Pass sign…and then stayed with us as we motored toward Golden.


As you can see, we weren’t the only ones that got a late start that morning, note the Camaro going by. Check out the snow on the mountains in the background…it was way too-ooo cold for shorts that morning and by the time we got back into our cars, we were shivering.


Dan turned around to look behind us and saw this shot of the mountains behind our cars at Roger’s Pass. I was cold so got in my car...Mountains and more mountains…!!! We’d just driven from there…!!!

Several miles down the road, we came across the town of Salmon Arm…what a strange name for a town, except we found out why it was called that. The valley is filled with water-the ‘Shuswap Lake’ is long, matter of fact, it’s about 14 miles long, running from Sicamous to Salmon Arm. There’s three valleys here filled with water, Salmon Arm was the eastern most lake. We followed the lake from Sicamous to Kamloops, which is a grand total of 75 miles…did I mention the lake is loo-oo-ong…??? At Kamloops, the lake continues west for another 30 miles but we took the road south at Kamloops, headed for the U.S.

Dan and I stopped in a small picnic area just past Salmon Arm, above the lake to shoot some pix and there was a lone biker parked there. As we pulled in he lowered his camera, stopped what he was doing and watched us pull in. After we’d shut off the cars he walked over to us and said ”Several people in gorgeous cars ahead of you told me I should keep an eye out for two old Cadillacs coming this way but I figured when I got back on my bike, I’d miss ‘em somewhere, but here you pull into my favorite spot and I get to see ‘em up close.” He held out his hand to shake ours. “My name’s Rick.”


Not only is the lake long, but it’s plenty wide and deep, too.

While chatting with Rick, he informed us the lake is about 400 feet deep. He also told us every time he comes this way on his bike, he has to stop at this particular picnic area simply because the scenery is so gorgeous at this spot. He wasn’t wrong.

After we’d spent about a half hour chatting with Rick, we continued on and the mountains got closer together…and the sides of them almost straight up and down…we approached what Dan thot was a tunnel except it wasn’t. It was an avalanche shed built across the highway. I’d seen pictures of these sheds in magazines but had no idea we’d be driving thru them…anyway, the sides of the mountains were so steep that when an avalanche comes roaring off , it would have buried the highway and swept whatever was on it at the time off into the creek several hundred feet below…the sheds prevent that from happening and the highway from being closed. We went thru about half a dozen of these.


It amazed me they built these strong enuff to withstand the forces of an avalanche.


Some of these ‘sheds’ were several blocks long…

We had one more nite to spend in Canada, and that was in Merritt, 271 miles from Golden and a lot more mountain driving.


To be continued…

R-

 

Very kool, I need to quit reading your post because my bucket list just gets
bigger. I got to do this someday. Looking forward to the next chapter...

 

Those disc brakes sure come in handy, huh Roger? So cool that, with all that severe mountain driving, the Caddys held up so well! Vicarious thrills.

 

WOW...........those pictures are spectacular!!!! Hurry up with Chapter #3

 

Road Warriors those Jetter boys, Road Warriors..........E

 

Great road trip, awesome pics!

 

WOW!! Outstanding photographs and the trip just keeps sounding COOLER and COOLER! Not just the temperature! Sounds like a very very FUN and EXCITING trip can't wait for round three! Thanks for the update!

 

Hey Roger, Can't wait for the third instalment. The WCPC was a hoot!!!

 

Post # 3
Thursday nite was our last motel stop on the WCPC but before we got there, we had to stop in at Canadian Hot Rods...


Preston Towle's Model A sedan parked in front of the shop while he and his wife, Lana, check out Wayne's place.


Just a few of the '55's Wayne's put Vette suspension under. He builds complete chassis for these type cars as well as many others.


Wayne drove this truck on the WCPC.

When we got closer to Merritt, he invited all of us to stop and see his operation. I'd chatted with him a couple of times on the trip about the truck and how low it sat and he told me he builds chassis using Corvette components only,this truck is Corvette suspendedbut the best part of this truck is that he drove it all the way to Winnipeg, from Tappen, BC, which was near Merritt) to start there with the rest of the tour..and then drove with us all the way back to Tappen, where his business is located. His shop does it all except upholstery,he was working on a really nice '59 Chevy sedan delivery when we stopped in, getting ready to put some paint on it.

We found our motel in Merritt, BC easily enuff, just off the highway. It had been warm that afternoon and by the time Dan and I pulled in, we'd had enuff driving and sight-seeing for the day. We checked into the motel and took a quik nap,about 5 we decided to check out Merritt, which is a small town. I decided I needed a new chamois, so we hit a couple of auto parts stores and found a good one at 'The Canadian Tire' stores.
Tire stores carrying chamois...??? Well, the store was a combination of Wal-Mart, Cabela's outdoor stores, O';Reilly auto parts and Goodyear Tires,really strange...!!! But it appeared they were doing a good business...!!!

Oh, two thousand miles on this trip clocked off my odometer just east of Merritt..we figured we'd have about 2200 miles ticked off by the time we reached Puyallup and looks like we weren't going to miss it by much...

We had told most of the people on the tour that we had brought along a bunch of door prizes to give away on the final nite about 7, so at about 6 we decided to go eat with several of the tour&,needless to say when you eat dinner with a bunch of people, the service gets rather slow...we were almost late for our own prize giveway.


Just a few of the people in the 73 cars that made the final stop.

When we had concluded the door prize giveaway, Dan and I presented "The Caddy Boys" award for the Coo-oo-oolest Cruiser of the WCPC. Rob Shuba and his wife, Brenda, had joined us in Regina and drove with all of us, his sense of humor was the clincher as he kept us in stitches most of the way.


Rob and his wife, Brenda, in front of their '53 Chevy.


Of course, we couldn't pass up a chance to have these two guys pose with us in front of our Cadillacs -Left to Right, Me, Rob Shuba, Chris McMillian-the event organizer, and Dan, such a motley crew,eh...???

Oh BTW, that pic was taken at 10 PM…after, we all sat around discussing the trip and how most of the Canadians would like to do another trip. Dan and I even chimed in that a yearly tour would be a good thing;so I think plans are underway for a Second Annual WCPC.

Since this was our last nite and we'd be in Puyallup tomorrow, we hit the sack shortly after that pic was taken we'd planned to hit the road at about 5:30AM so we could be in Puyallup at the GG's event by noon Friday,but we still had 276 miles, and some mountains to drive thru in order to make it by 12 noon.

We didn't get on the road til about 6:30AM Friday morn, looking forward to Puyallup and the event but certainly not looking forward to driving Interstate 5 and I was correct .what a nightmare that drive was.

We went thru the border about 10 that morning, there were about 10 cars in front of us when we pulled up and didn't even have to answer too many questions from the guards; we breezed right thru and were on our way.


Step right up, absolutely no waiting.


And of course, this...!!!


And this- Mt. Rainier in the distance.

From Everett on the north, all the way south to Puyallup, it was constant city,a distance of 52 miles and of course, everyone is in a great hurry,told Dan I wanted to find a two-lane but he said there wasn't any without going thru so many little towns along the way. We started on the 5 but decided to take the 405 around Seattle ,figured there'd be less traffic-NOT...!!! We missed the turn off for Puyallup and ended up on some state highway, but it was a decent state highway ( I GOT my two-lane after all...!!) and took us thru most of the Puyallup Industrial area,we found a quarter car wash about three miles from the fairgrounds (although at the time we didn't know how close we were) and stopped and cleaned several days driving off them, we finally found the fairgrounds and the registration area.

After registration, we immediately took a cruise around the fairgrounds. We parked and started looking at cars I'm not a Deuce guy or even a square bodied car guy (neither is Dan) so you won't see any pix of those types here...


Nice '57 Pontiac with some minor kustomizing.


Some Gassers are too cool for school.


'53/&'54 Chevys are nice, especially uniquely painted sedans like the two-toned model.


How about a '59 Biscayne sporting a big block F-O-R-D under the hood, talk about too cool for school...!!! This man does his own thing...!!!


Saw this HAMBers car there..at least I think he's a HAMBer...

The northwest was big on the fifties and sixties cars and the '54 Olds shown below was one of the more unique cars there (below).




Of course, Cadillacs are way kooo-oool...










We left Puyallup Monday morning, heading south for Mt. St Helens. We'd been to the volcano in 1986,just a short 6 years after it blew,but I'm going to have to save those pix and description of the mountain for the next part cuz I've got 20 pix in this section and that's all I'm allowed,sooooo...

To be continued...

R-

 

Hey Tim, glad to see you joined the forum...post up a pic of your '57...

Yeah...the Western Canada Power Cruise was a real trip...!!!

R-

 

amazing Roger! livin' the dream

 

Great story!!!

 

Awesome write up Roger!! Glad you guys had fun on your Canada trip. We have driven semi through the rockies a few times, I'm sure its funner in a car!!

This is a real testament to the building you two do, to rack up that many trouble free miles....great job!!

Bill

 

Hey Rodger, great read and beautiful picts. it was a great pleasure to "cruise" with you guys, and hopefully we will see you again in our part of the country or possibly at one of the future goodguys shows.


PS my wife's name is Brenda

Rob

 

Thanx Rob, I thot I'd seen you here on the HAMB...the WCPC was a ball...

I changed the captions above, NOW you can show this thread to your wife...!!!

R-

 

thanks Rodger but the H.A.M.B plaque under my hood should have been a dead give away. really enjoyed read your story here also my wife will like the fact her name mentioned as well have a great rest of summer and hope to see you and your Brother again next year

Rob

 

What a great road trip, thanks for the virtual ride, even if it is through my beautiful homeland. I know you were in good company, as soon as I saw Wayne's shop, I've known him and his wife for many years. Great people.

 

Don't recall seeing the HAMB plak under your hood...of course, you only had the hood open once...

I try to include everyone that I meet, including your wife altho I couldn't remember her name (didn't write it down either...!!!) so thanx for the "help"...!!!

You are quite welcome. Why didn't you join us...???

Wayne's shop is nice and he builds some really tasty stuff.

R-

 

I like your signature; I saw a T shirt that said "Titanic - The Irish Built Her; The English Sunk Her"

 

Post #4

At the Puyallup event I had said to Dan more than once “We should find a rod run somewhere up here next weekend. We aren’t really in any hurry to get back home. Would be fun and we'd prolly win long distance if they gave out that award.” Our friends from Casper, Wyoming, Stan and Judy Goodwin, were in Puyallup and we ran into them on Saturday…we got to talking about a rod run somewhere and they told me they were headed for West Yellowstone the next weekend and it was a good event. I told them we didn’t have any reservations and they said they had a motel list and we could call and see if there were any vacancies. I asked what motel they were at and they gave me the phone number of it.

Saturday nite, while eating dinner I told Dan to call and see about rooms. We called Stan’s motel and were told there were no vacancies…so Dan told them his name was Stan Goodwin and to cancel the room cuz they weren’t coming…Dan hung up and called back and got their room…at least, that’s what we told Stan and Judy on Sunday…you shoulda seen the look on Stan’s face…he immediately called the motel to confirm his reservation…!!! What are friends for anyway…??? Well, to backtrack a little, the motel had had a cancellation that morning and Dan phoned at the right time and we were lucky enuff to get that room at their motel…but we sure panicked Stan and Judy.

Anyway, we left Puyallup, Washington on Monday morning, going south to Mt. St Helens. We’d been to the volcano in 1986…just a short 6 years after it blew…and this morn we took several two lanes thru the dense forests of Washington…it didn’t take us long until we came across this locomotive sitting alongside the road in the small town of Elbe, population almost zero, but it had a post office…!!!


Looks like it’d been sitting there for a very long time…

There was the huge Adler Lake nearby and we assumed perhaps this was a tourist destination years and years ago and the train prolly hauled passenger cars north…we were only about 20 miles from Mt. Rainier at that time but we continued to head south…

There were several peaks nearby but they were only less than 5000 feet tall and we didn’t get to see much of them…the forest of Washington get lots of rain and the trees in the forests were covered with moss…


Been growing on there for years…

From Elbe it was only another 28 miles to the entrance of Mt. St Helens National Volcanic Monument. Coming in from the north you’d never know a volcano had blown out in this dense forest.


As you can see, it’s 30 miles to Windy Ridge.

And this two-lane thru the trees isn’t the best in the state…it appeared the area had had a lot of rain and many sections of the road had simply sunk…sometimes as much as 12” and as long as a car and as wide as half to three-quarters of the roadway…we couldn’t drive over 30 mph the whole way.


This stop was about halfway there…the mountain in the background is Mt, St. Helens.

All the trees you see here are ‘new growth’…only about 15-20 feet tall…the Pyroclastic blast came this way and literally knocked all the old growth 80-100 foot tall trees down, laid them all in the same direction. There was a monument sign that said loggers were allowed in to remove all the blasted trees and that’s why you don’t see many dead rotting trees in the new growth. The majority of the trees seen here were all planted in the years after the blast.


A close up of the volcano…still steaming and causing tremors to this day.



Above is the 1972 Pontiac a copper miner owned and was prospecting on the mountain when it blew…He’d had a cabin nearby and parked this car 8 ½ miles from the mountain. Not much left of it now since everyone that came up here decided to jump on it and smash it down. When we saw it, it had a fence built around it so no one could get at it…guess the Park Service decided it wasn’t important enuff to keep it intact.


Here’s what it looked like just months after the explosion. This is the sign next to what’s left of the car today, you can see what the blast did to the forest behind the car.


This is Spirit Lake. What you see floating on the surface is logs.

Those logs have been floating there since May of 1980…I couldn’t believe they were still there… the lake was in the direct path of the explosion…the blast pushed the lake up the side of the mountain at the end of the lake…you can just barely see the high water mark on the right side of the pic (870 feet above the lake) and the lake is now 270 feet ‘higher’ than it was in 1980 simply because of all the dirt the mountain released.

We spent most of the day at the volcano… yet our destination for the evening was Longview, Washington, because we wanted to go over the Astoria, Oregon, bridge either that nite or in the morning…after we finally got down from Helens, we were tired, the road was the problem, especially for cars as low as ours…there were no 60-70 mph sections of that road…and it was getting late…we finally got to the four-lane and got into Longview about 6…found a nice Red Lion motel and spent the night there…

The next morning we headed for Oregon…we crossed the Columbia River at Longview and drove the Oregon side to Astoria.


THE bridge…it had to be this tall to let ships pass under…the crossing is about three or four miles long across the Columbia River .

This shot is from the up-ramp heading across from the Oregon side…we went across to Washington , turned around in the Lewis & Clark Monument park and headed back over…

From Astoria, we ventured down the coast cuz Dan wanted to see the ocean…well, sorry to say we didn’t get to see much of it for all the trees…but got to see enuff so we turned inland, headed for Portland. I wanted to stop and see the B-17 Bomber us kids played in way back in 1954…if you are interested, there’s a story about the bomber here: http://www.katu.com/news/local/95638799.html
Scroll down to the section labled “He was pretty crazy”…it tells about how Art Lacey got the B-17 out of Oklahoma. Anyway, the old bomber today is in a serious state of deterioration although the Lacey family is trying to restore it…and that is a challenge at this time.


What the B-17 bomber looks like today.


This is what the gas station and restaurant looked like in the early ‘70’s…note the price of fuel…!!! The restaurant is behind the station, it can be seen thru the pillars holding up the plane. We visited this plane in 1986 and it was intact then.


This is the cockpit inside the museum…it’s been restored and so has the ball turret. It's going to take a long time to restore this bomber.

We spent too much time at the Bomber Restaurant and it was getting late…we got caught up in the I-205 rush hour traffic (which certainly was NOT a rush anyway…!!!) and spent an hour and a half to go 9 miles to I-84 east. We wanted to do the Columbia River Gorge and take old Highway 30 for a ways…it was too late in the afternoon for us to do that so we found a motel in Troutdale, at the beginning of the Gorge.

As we were registering, we saw a guy on the lobby computer, he was wearing a GoodGuy’s shirt so I asked him if he had a hot rod outside and if he was staying a the motel…he said he’d just gotten in from New Zealand and was doing a three week trip around the area looking for suppliers. He introduced himself as Jimmy Keyes and he owned a rod shop in Palmerston North called ‘Ace-Customs’…we hit it off immediately and so we asked him and his wife if they wanted to go eat with us…he agreed and I cleaned out my ’55 Caddy back seat and we took that off to a really nice Italian Restaurant. We spent the next several hours with them and then called it a nite. They were headed west into Portland and Vancouver the next morning and we were going east.

We left the motel at 7AM the next morning and lo and behold, old Highway 30 was no more than a mile from the motel…what luck…!!! We climbed out of the flatland up into fog…we were disappointed we wouldn’t see anything in the gorge, but our luck held and the fog lifted enuff to give us a view of several miles up and down the gorge…the best spot for viewing was the Crown Vista Point, built back in the 20’s and stuck out on a promontory…



From there we went on to Multnomah Falls and hiked up to it…


The first drop is 542 feet into a pool, the second drop is 69 feet…

It took us over six hours to go 26 miles that day simply because there was so much to see along old Highway 30…which at one time was the only major highway going all across the U.S. (yes, I know all about Route 66, but 30 ran from New Jersey to Oregon…).

We visited Cascade Locks and Bonneville Dam toward the end of the gorge. Along the way we went thru Pendleton, Oregon and my odometer turned over 3000 miles at this point, I noted it in my log book and then we beat feet for Ontario, Oregon near the border of Idaho and our overnite stay.

We still had a few miles to go to Yellowstone…after we left Ontario, we decided to take a short cut across Idaho and get off the interstate again…we found a two –lane out of Mountain Home and took it…it would shorten the trip, via the interstate by about 75 miles. After we visited the “Craters of the Moon” lava flow area, which was an unexpected bonus on the two –lane, we pulled into the town of West Yellowstone about 4:30 that afternoon just in time to register for the 43rd event at the rod run headquarters and the trip to ‘Old Faithful’ in the morning…we found the motel after that…and got a surprise. The motel desk clerk said she had some bad news for us…they’d make a mistake and gave us a room that had already been booked…sorry, we were out…!!! And then I noticed the smirk on her face and knew Stan had put her up to it…paybacks are a bitch…!!!

We found a car wash and cleaned both cars, took a tour of the town to see what it was like (1100 regular residents plus about half a million summer tourists, Dan and I included), found a place to eat and then retired for the nite…the “Old Faithful” tour was to start at 10AM.

We lined up at 10AM and entered the park together, but of course, other tourists got in between all the cars as we were paying our entrance fee for the park …about 20 miles inside the park there was a huge parking lot…we all stopped there and then after one of our leaders blocked the incoming lane, we all pulled out together..can you imagine over 90 rods and kustoms in a line heading to Old Faithful…???



The rest of the way to the geyser was about 16 more miles…we took a big portion of their parking lot when we all parked.



Old Faithful spouting...



Stan and Judy drive this ’55 Plymouth, he’s working on a ’56 Plymouth convertible, with a Hemi in it but it didn’t get done in time for this trip…this shot was taken at Yellowstone Lake. I’d forgotten how big that lake is…

We kinda let Stan lead us around the park…we spent some time there in the Old Faithul Lodge, then we drove down around Yellowstone Lake and went to Yellowstone Falls…what a spectacular view that is…



We got back to West Yellowstone late afternoon. FWIW, There’s 185 miles of road in Yellowstone Park and we did about ¾’s of that seeing the sights in the park with Stan and Judy…the Ice Cream social was going on at the headquarters motel but we decided to get something to eat first, then go over. About nine I was dragging so we decided to head for our motel “cabin.” Oh, let me tell you about our little cabin- it was no bigger than two beds and a small bathroom…the shower was so small and tight Dan couldn’t even turn around in it to get his back wet…and we had a constant parade of black ants going from one corner to the other in the bathroom…I told Dan they were termites and the whole cabin was going to collapse on someone sleeping one night…I hoped it wasn’t us.

About 2:30 that nite we had one hell of a thunder and lightning storm…woke me up and then rained really hard…sounded like hail so had to get up and look….but it wasn’t. We had to chamois off the cars in the morning so we could look good for the huge parade thru town…Oh, the temps when I got up at 7AM was 34 degrees…my fingers got really cold squeezing the chamois water off the car…we thot we’d be early for the parade when we headed for the line at 9:15…boy were we surprised…but I’ll save that for part five…

To be continued…

 

Roger, that is some stunning scenery!!! Makes me want to do Good Guys Spokane and Pleasanton next year. Looking forward to the next instalment.

 

I know I've said it before but you had one kool trip. I've enjoyed reading your post,
thank you for taking the time to document it. Happy Trails, Mick

 

Very enjoyable reading, keep them coming.

 

WOW!!! This is a trip that keeps getting BETTER! Why would anyone want to go home? Outstanding story and photographs got me yearning for more!

 

Wow. Inspirational road trip in some great cars. And what about that scenery! Jealous. Something for the bucket list. Thanks for sharing.