Journal of Journeys

Klamath Falls, 2021

    Dear Journal, one of my favorite times when I traveled was when I went to Oregon for my 15th birthday, that was a year ago, since then I've traveled a bit more. For now, let us focus on that Oregon trip, it was very eventful and kind of a shit show. We left early in the morning, packing our bags into our old prelude car and heading out. We had decided to drive inland to make up for some time lost when we ended up having to drive back to grab a bag we forgot. The drive was going well, it was a pretty boring drive where we just listened to music and talked about what we were doing the entire time. We made it to Redding and decided to pull off the highway to grab some food, as we pulled off and slowed to a stop at a red light our car temperature went straight to red. Quickly, we pulled into a parking lot as our engine started to steam badly. We pulled over and got the hood opened and found boiling coolant and an engine that was way too hot. It was 113 degrees Fahrenheit, and our old car wasn't handling that too well. We ended up stuck in the parking lot of a Starbucks and a Subway for 7 hours. We had to wait until dark for it to cool enough (only getting to 97 degrees) to check out our car, we managed to fix it and continues our drive to Oregon. Before we left my dad had gone to the Autoparts store and realized that when he got a ride back, he left his phone in the guy's car. 

   We were pretty much stuck there until dark, I was inside most of the time as my dad was worried that I'd get heatstroke. I kept taking water out to him while he tried to figure out what was wrong with the car. Eventually he came inside, and we both tried to figure out what to do, we were trapped hours away from our house and our hotel without his phone. Even if we did make it to Oregon our reservations to hotels were on his phone so we didn't know if we could even check into our room. We spent hours calling my momma and researching things, I ended up with a mechanic, who I didn't know, and I had his number in my phone so we could talk with him. We grabbed some food at the next-door subway just so we had some food in our bellies. Around four in the evening, after we got final refills on water from the Starbucks before they closed, we were outside working more and more on this car, just trying to get it to work again so we could get somewhere. We managed to get the car somewhat fixed and coasted it downtown, ready to leave and head to Oregon, but we made it to an intersection and the second we slowed down the car overheated again. Stuck at a gas station we pulled off to for about an hour before deciding we can probably make it to Oregon and to our hotel if we just continuously drove, the air flow keeping the engine decently cool. So, we drove, almost nonstop all the way to Oregon, we made two stops, both to give the car a break and so that we could use the restroom. We made it to our hotel around one in the morning, even though it was pitch black while we drove there it was still a really pretty drive, the stars were beautiful. On the way there we drove through a huge area that had been burnt by a fire, you could still see some of the embers burning. Once at the hotel we showered and talked about the plan for the next day for a total of 10 minutes before we were both asleep. With a plan to rest, get a new phone, and explore the town of Klamath Falls. 

 Oh, I'm Rory by the way, and this is my first journal entry, July 28th, 2021.