As I write this, we are staying in a Super 8 Motel in Salem, Oregon; the price was right, the rooms have been recently renovated and there’s free Wifi. Besides I spent half a day on the internet and phone two days ago and every B & B and fancy hotel was booked. Now that we are here, we have learned that there is a county fair going on nearby and some sporting event which has drawn participants, parents and viewers from far and wide. At least now we know why there weren’t any vacancies anywhere else.

It was a long day getting here; we left before 11:00 AM this morning (barely) but with heavy traffic, detours, heavy traffic and a stop along the way, it took forever to get here. Did I mention that there was heavy traffic? It reminded us of Highway 400 in Ontario on a Friday afternoon of a holiday weekend. The crazy thing is it isn’t a long weekend here, there’s a whole ocean over to the west and we were heading south on the I-5!

You’d think we’d learn that we aren’t fond of lengthy days on the motorcycle and we should shorten them but for some reason we don’t. My ass is killing me (I think the circulation was cut off in my right leg), my body feels like I swallowed a vibrating motor and my ears are ringing. Oh well, the weather was great, we took a short ferry ride over to Tacoma via Bremerton, avoiding the bulk of the traffic (hard to believe!) and had some clam chowder soup on the ship. Thank God for the ferry ride because the soup was the only meal we had all day! We arrived in Salem at 9:15 PM and by the time we got checked in (the desk clerk was incredibly slow) we were just way to beat to go out to eat.

Before we left, Monet checked out the bike and Makai reluctantly let us go!