Travel (Mis) Adventure
Sorry I have been off for a couple of days. Mrs. Gramps and I have been traveling across the Evergreen state, otherwise known as Washington State. So often we cut across the middle of the state via I90 which goes across from Spokane directly into Seattle. We have also taken routes through southern Washington too, but, other than a trip into Wenatchee and over highway 2, we have never taken the northern route--Highway 20, known as the North Cascade Route. First, though, we cut across country to see the Odessa High Plains==nothing much but the curvature of the earth--and one Sheriff patrol car watching for speeders coming from the West. We were coming from the East. We dropped into Soap Lake and then went up to Dry Falls--which was at one time the largest and highest falls in the world, Caused by the great floods coming out of Canada and cutting a deep cataclysm out of mostly Basalt Rock thousands of years ago, From there, we went to the Grand Coulee Dam which is on the current Columbia River. It is amazing to see where the ancient river had changed its course from the one that would have gone down to Soap Lake and beyond, to the current one that cuts through the middle of the state. Just a few hundred yards of separation. Up to Omak and then across to Winthrop where we put in for the night.
This is where the mis adventure came to light. In my haste to pack the morning we began I did not pack the headgear for my BiPap machine. Needless to say, it was a long night of little sleep. So, this morning we got up early to go over the North Cascade Highway. Sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon. Since I did not sleep the night before, Mrs. Gramps took the wheel and expertly guided us over some of the most rugged terrain in Washington. We ended up in Mt Vernon where our son lives but had to drop down to Everett to purchase the headgear I left at home.
One thing that shocked us going over the Odessa plain was when we came the few small towns along the route, none of them had an open eating establishment. They are disappearing in rural Washington from what I can see.
So, one small problem. Lesson learned--keep an extra headgear prepacked.
No one was shooting at us. Earthquakes did not happen, Volcanoes did not explode--in this part of the world, they do not erupt, they explode. No deer or other animal hit. But one sleepless night. I survived.
Now, if you excuse me, a bed awaits.
Any misadventures on your part the last time you ventured forth?
This is where the mis adventure came to light. In my haste to pack the morning we began I did not pack the headgear for my BiPap machine. Needless to say, it was a long night of little sleep. So, this morning we got up early to go over the North Cascade Highway. Sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon. Since I did not sleep the night before, Mrs. Gramps took the wheel and expertly guided us over some of the most rugged terrain in Washington. We ended up in Mt Vernon where our son lives but had to drop down to Everett to purchase the headgear I left at home.
One thing that shocked us going over the Odessa plain was when we came the few small towns along the route, none of them had an open eating establishment. They are disappearing in rural Washington from what I can see.
So, one small problem. Lesson learned--keep an extra headgear prepacked.
No one was shooting at us. Earthquakes did not happen, Volcanoes did not explode--in this part of the world, they do not erupt, they explode. No deer or other animal hit. But one sleepless night. I survived.
Now, if you excuse me, a bed awaits.
Any misadventures on your part the last time you ventured forth?
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HckmcNP19Sk
We were woken in the night by cows brushing against our tents and pulling the tent pegs out. Several tents collapsed, and the cows trampled over one. It turned out we had been directed to the wrong field.
We were relocated to an empty manse which had to be swept clean before we could bed down.
The next morning we were all tired and dishevelled, and the two Guides whose rucksacks had been trampled had to borrow clothes from the rest of us. A random elderly woman (no idea who she was) turned up threatening to report the Guide leaders for mistreatment of children. Apparently she was swearing too, but she was swearing in Gaelic, and we didn't understand it.
The rest of the camp was uneventful.
One of Woody Guthrie's catchier tunes!
So most of the group went in convoy to the ferry, but I was flying home so I got a taxi to Belfast Airport. So far, so good.
Landed in Birmingham, and I had 2 hours to wait for the next train to Hereford.
I wasn't the only person waiting for the Hereford train - and here's where it started to go wrong. First the announcer told us to go to one platform, and when we were there he said we should be on a different platform, and while we were going up the stairs to the concourse he changed his mind again and sent us back to the first platform, by which time the chap on the platform had allowed the train to leave, even though he'd seen the group of us responding to the tannoy announcements. By this time, we were all furious, and went off in search of the train company offices in the station.
Poor girl on the desk - it wasn't her fault, but if we could have found the tannoy announcer we would probably have lynched him.
So I had another hour to wait for the next Hereford train, which meant that I'd miss the bus home from Hereford and I'd be stuck in Hereford for another three hours until the next one. Which was the college bus, so it was always full, and there's me with all my luggage.
The college bus broke down on the outskirts of Hereford, and the only thing we could do was to wait by the side of the road for the next bus - in an hour. Some of the college kids called their families and got lifts home.
So finally, I'm on the last bus home, and by the time it gets to Hay, the heavens have opened, so I trundle up to my front door looking like a drowned rat, about 5 hours after I thought I'd arrive home.
(The train company sent me a £5 voucher for money off my next ticket, which I never used because I don't travel by rail very often.)
On the first night I was woken by Mr RoS roaring loudly in the next bed. I called out to him, but got no response, but when I switched on the light saw he was thrashing about, eyes wide open and staring, but neither seeing nor hearing me.
I tried to rouse him with no success. He seemed to be trying to fight off something that I couldn't see.
I decided that maybe I needed to get an ambulance. I had no mobile phone, of course, back then, so went to find help. On the landing there was a bell (like a school bell) and a sign saying if we needed our hosts to ring it.
Mrs farmer came in response to the bell, I explained, and having looked in on Mr RoS, still staring, shouting and unresponsive, we went downstairs to the phone, to be joined by Mr farmer. All of us a bit shaken.
The ambulance turned up quite quickly and Mr RoS was beginning to be aware of his surroundings by then. They did all the usual checks, and waited until the patient was able to make sense of what was going on, and departed - much to my relief, as we were in the middle of nowhere, I don't drive, and had no idea what I would do if he was hospitalised.
The following morning he woke totally back to normal, and with only the vaguest memory of there having been other people in the bedroom during the previous night. With no 'diagnosis' we continued with our holiday plans. The ambulance attendants (Would they necessarily have been paramedics back then?) had only said to see his own doctor when we got home. The nearest I could come up with was a sort of Night Terror, being in a strange place, after a long and stressful drive. Nothing like this had ever happened before.
Four and a half years later he had another 'turn', this time at home, and over about five years another three. Eventually he was diagnosed with nocturnal epilepsy, probably as a legacy from a serious head injury he had received 50 years earlier.
I had previously discounted that, having witnessed epileptic seizures in my work in residential care, and I hadn't recognise the form his had taken.
I was a bit wary of staying overnight anywhere out of easy access to home for a couple of years.
We eventually got the bag back, though Air Canada made no effort to find it until we filed a formal claim just before the limitation period was up. A day later we got a call from the baggage room in Dayton, Ohio. Granting that it wasn’t very smart of me to put the bag into the system in that state in the first place, I still boggle at why AC decided to send a suitcase with no apparent owner to Dayton, Ohio.
A trip that could have gone very wrong but miraculously did not was a day trip to the Cistercian monastery at Poblet. We took a local train from Barcelona. About halfway there, there was an announcement in Spanish that we did not understand. Fortunately, the train conductor was standing right beside us and was able to explain to us that the train was about to split in two with only one part of it (luckily, our part) going up toward Poblet. Then we got off the train at L’Espluga de Francoli and discovered that the train station is more or less in the middle of nowhere. Again, we got lucky and there was a taxi driver waiting to meet the train just in case somebody wanted a taxi… Moral of the story is to actually figure out where the train station is in relation to where you want to go before getting on a train.
On the return, we were aiming to visit friends in New Haven. But the car hire at the airport, despite our best efforts to sort things before we left, was not ready to give us a vehicle for several hours. We then got snarled in traffic diversions on the last twenty miles or so of the drive from New Jersey. We got to our friends late at night - never have I fallen on a G&T so gratefully.