Hitched and Rolling

Having made the necessary preparations for the necessary preparations for departing first thing Monday morning, and seeing as we are mostly adjusted-still to the eastern time zone, we woke up and said our goodbyes to Bean, and had wheels on pavement leaving Breckenridge before 7:30 am.

We drove out of Breckenridge, and on our way out of town we stopped for one more throw of fetch with Duke at Carter Park. Bre grabbed a Starbucks and she would need it because she was going to drive literally the entire day. This was first day of Hitched and Rolling’s second week and it was my first day back at “work“. 

Bre drove the entire day and the Starlink worked great (thank you to Mr. And Mrs. Duber for the wonderful starlink hardware, which was a wedding gift) as I did zoom meetings, wrote code, and responded to emails, all from my laptop while traveling 70ish Mph down i70. 

Aside from Bre driving and me working, the day was not particularly eventful. Soon after noon we stopped at Green River State Park in Utah where Bre took Duke for a walk while I had a zoom meeting.

I was sorry to not be participating in the road trip but the reality of the matter is that if we are going to be spending 6 weeks out here it is not feasible that I can ignore my gainful activities for that entire span of time. In the afternoon we hit a bit of traffic but kept heading west until we arrived at our stop for the evening – a harvest host called Uinta Family Farm. It was dark when we rolled in so we didn’t get to see much, but we briefly said hello to Robert the farm’s owner. The weather was nice and we cracked a chilly window for optimal sleeping frigidity. 

The way that harvest hosts works is that you get to stay in cool locations (vineyards, farms, breweries, etc) and in exchange you are expected to buy something. In the case of Uinta Family Farm they had a small store set up that sold Alpaca wool products. Uinta Family Farm’s primary resource, as it were, is alpaca, so their store had quite a nice selection of goods. Robert had just retired after 36 years at the Department of the Interior and offered to show us around the farm after our quick shop in the farm store. 

We got to see a variety of birds (ducks, swans, chickens and Pea fowl, as Robert called them) and also the alpacas. Robert separated the Alpacas by age and sex and he suggested that we might want to see the female pen because they were cuter and less likely to spit. Sounds good! 

We said hello to the Alpacas which was really fun. They are very curious animals, always wanting to walk up and say hello, and we didn’t get spit on even once. We also got to meet the guard dog Tank, who weighed 180 lbs. Yes, you read that correctly. Wow! Tank is right. 

Eventually we packed up and left the farm and continued our trip westward. Due to the presence of the farm animals and Tank, we were not able to play fetch with Duke in the morning. My new strategy when it comes to finding places to play with Duke wherever we are is to search on google maps for the keyword “county park”. I find these to be the perfect mix of accessible (nearby), open (expansive enough to play fetch) and unpopulated. The park at which we found ourselves this morning was unexpectedly tranquil – almost perfectly quiet. The cold night’s air had frozen the blades of grass which crunched and became imprinted as I walked in. 20 minutes and one tired dog later, the conditions had warmed such that my return walk made no such impression. 

For the second day in a row I worked on my laptop in the back while Bre did all of the driving. She drove for about 10 hours today, only stopping to fill up gas and occasionally use the restroom. I am more than happy to be her flight attendant, fetching her Topo Chico (seltzer water), coffee, or snacks from the fridge as needed.

All of the sudden I looked up and we were taking an exit. The captain had made a decision. It was night time. “Where are we?” I asked. “Pendleton, Oregon”, she proudly replied.

Well okay then! Pendleton, Oregon it is! 

The main street was old-fashioned and idyllic, kind of a quintessential western town. We stopped into two irresistible bars on Main Street, each with quite opposing appeal. One dive bar which proudly claimed to be the oldest bar in Oregon, and one luxurious hunting-lodge-themed cowboy bar, where we split a French dip sandwich before retiring to our evening’s improvised rest on a hill overlooking town and the highway below.