Last night we had stayed up until midnight planning where our trip was going to take us, now that we'd decided to avoid the heat and fire in California and Nevada. We had eventually settled on a plan to travel Interstate 84 to Boise (the capital of Idaho), and then continue on up to Yellowstone National Park where we'd stay for a week. We planned three stops on the way to Yellowstone; the first for three nights at Emigrant Springs State Heritage Area (about halfway to Boise), one night in Boise, and one night in Rexburg. We would then be able to leave Rexburg very early in the morning (4am or so) and get to Norris Campground in Yellowstone early enough to snag a campsite. Norris is first-come-first-served, so we want to guarantee that we'll be at or near the front of the queue. We had also booked ourselves a hotel in Portland for one more night, as there were still more things we wanted to explore.
This morning Linda, our Airbnb host, cooked us up some waffles for breakfast. We told her about our plan (which was somewhat based on suggestions she'd given us yesterday), and she thought it sounded fantastic. We talked with her for a while about camping trips all around North America that she'd been on, the campervan her and her husband had owned for some time, and about how she now wishes they hadn't sold it.
We packed up our car, said goodbye to Linda and Stormy, and headed back into Portland. Our first stop was a hip coffee shop/bar called Either/Or, which had coffee blends from five different countries that you could choose from. We sat there for an hour or so on a laptop, me catching up on blog writing and Katie doing some planning of what we should go and see during the day.
We decided that the first stop should be the Portland Vintage Racing Festival, held at the Portland International Raceway about 15 minutes out of town. Since today is a Friday, and the competition was still in the practice and qualifying stages, there were very few spectators around. This made it really easy to find shady parking in a paddock and to walk around the tents and look at the beautiful old racing cars without having to contend with thousands of other people.
We saw Porche 911s, Mustangs, Corvettes, Cobras, various Lotus', some 60's E-Type Jags, and much more. We even saw several historic Formula 1 cars! We walked around for an hour or so until we heard an announcement over the PA system that Land Rover/Jaguar had a track set up on the infield, where you could drive an F-Type around their autocross track or go off-roading in a Range Rover. No way I was missing out on that, so we headed over the bridge to sign up.
First up was off-roading, actually in a diesel (pronounced dee-sill, apparently) Land Rover Discovery. They were showcasing the fantastic suspension and automatic transmission and braking control that the vehicles had, by getting you to drive slowly around a very bumpy and steep dirt course. The first thing they demonstrated was a road with alternating divots, where the two opposing corners of the car (front left, back right, etc.) would be in deep holes while the other two corners would be on high ground. It was a weird feeling, seeing how deep the holes were, but almost not noticing them because of how good the truck was at keeping itself level (accomplished with some tricky air equipment, and ridiculously long suspension travel). We didn't even notice when one wheel came off the ground!
We went from there to some really steep up and downhill bits, where they showed off the crawl function (which would drive the car slowly uphill without you having to touch the accelerator, like really low-speed cruise control) and the downhill descent and braking control. The downhill braking was pretty amazing; the car would sense that you were on a steep hill, and even when you let the brake off suddenly it would take over and ease the brake off so you didn't suddenly start rolling off. It would then use engine and active braking to make sure you didn't go faster down the hill than the speed you'd set on the dashboard (2mph in this case), without you ever touching the brake or accelerator.
The final trick they showed us was a road that banked sharply from one side to the other, demonstrating how steep a hill the Land Rover could drive across without rolling (I think we got it to 33 degrees, according to the display). Katie was sitting in the back seat by the window and was sure we were going to tip over as she could have opened the window and touched the ground!
Next up was the autocross in a new Jaguar F-Type! They gave me two laps of their short course, one slow to get to know the corners, and then a fast one. It wasn't nearly enough time to really understand what was happening though, and the guy sitting in the passenger seat next to me didn't give any input, which I thought would have improved the experience a lot. Katie took a ride as a passenger with one of the other Jaguar people. She thought it was insane! The guy who was driving told her all about how the track was laid out and explained the different coloured cones marking braking zones and corner apexes, which I don't think I even noticed on my lap.
The day was heating up by this point, so we left the track and autocrossed our way to Great Notion, another brewpub suggested by our landlord Max. We sat outside in the shade, thinking the breeze would help cool us down, but the air was just as hot as in the sun. After sampling a couple of hazy IPAs and a cold smoked chicken sandwich we escaped the heat in a nearby ice cream shop. Salt & Straw make their own ice cream in crazy flavours like Goat Cheese Marionberry Habanero, Wasabi & Raspberry Sorbet, and Strawberry Honey Balsamic with Black Pepper. We played it safe and went with Sea Salt with Caramel Ribbons.
We checked in to our booked-last-night hotel out by the airport and had a nap in the gloriously air-conditioned room. We woke up much later than planned and went for a late dinner at a newly opened brewery called Backwoods Brewing. Everything about the bar was themed around wood, lumberjacks, saws, and so on. Because it was so new, the whole place still smelled like freshly cut logs. While we were eating, we watched one of the bartenders making a cocktail out of a flaming glass of Bacardi 151, which he sprinkled cinnamon into to create a burnt, smokey flavour, before topping it up with Kahlua, Cointreau, Frangelico, fresh coffee, and whipped cream. It looked delicious!
After dinner, we had a peek in the window of a big arcade and then drove back to the hotel. The parking lot was being re-sealed, and they hadn't planned very well how many parks to rope off. People were parked all over the place, and someone had moved some of the cones blocking part of the newly sealed area, so because we couldn't find any space anywhere else, we followed their lead and found a spot on the brand new and unmarked section.