A Trip to the County Fair

One thing about being married to Adventure Girl is that she doesn’t like those big red colored interstate roads on the map, she prefers skinny black roads, ones with long numbers or no numbers. This taxes our Garmin GPS system but with the built in compass at least we know we are heading in the right direction, which is south currently. So we get up near Olympia WA and head south and somehow end up on a small road taking us through Canby, OR and currently on is the Clackamas County Fair. We stop to check it out and it is the real thing. Rodeo, 4-H clubs, animals and lots of mostly unhealthy (but tasty) food. There are a lot of crafts on show, live country music, more goats than we have ever seen before.
Then we head south towards Eugene, our destination today. We get on the I-5 and suddenly it is a parking lot. There is a grass fire ahead and a hay truck is burning. There must be a lot of fuel in the semi loads of hay because it is burning bright and sending up a cloud of smoke. The highway is closed we hear on the radio and we are lucky enough to get off at the last possible exit and manage a detour adding many miles through farm country and small towns which takes a lot of time but is less frustrating than being stuck in a parking lot on the freeway. When we get back on the freeway the traffic the other way is backed up for miles so it looks like the detour paid off. Because of the slowdown and the detour we cover only 275 miles today but if is a full days driving.
Eugene is quite the charming town it has reputation for being. It is fairly empty now as the university is on summer break. But there are still lots of little restaurants and entertainment. We go to hear a music/spoken word presentation, the fellow came all the way from....Seattle. It is a counter culture world here, much like Berkley. Entertaining but sometimes tiring. We are experiencing a heat wave, it will be 95 tomorrow, break out the sunscreen and get the AC working.