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Road Trippin' with Jim and Bonnie
By Bonie Mueller
I have always loved to drive! Both of our families never flew anywhere on our vacations (of course airplane travel was more for the well-to-do in those times). We drove everywhere, and I can still remember getting Daddy to stop at some road-side attraction for pictures and souvenirs. I had a collection of little pennants from different states attractions….Four Corners, Trees of Mystery, Grand Canyon, Crater Lake, you name it. Jim had those too.
In 2005 we took a fun road trip for 3 weeks and covered 22 states, 7500 miles- almost exclusively NOT on freeways. We use state and county roads, and many times just by accident we stumbled upon most interesting places. Attractions, parks, cool Americana. You just can’t plan for everything, because you don’t know what all is out there. Along the route we bought those little magnets of every state, to put on our refrigerator. Have enjoyed looking at them and reminiscing….
Well, in September of this year when we drove to Kansas for a reunion, we again attempted to stay off of freeways and found many “Bonnie roads” as Jim calls them. Crossed to central Oregon, down into California on 395, took 299 over beautiful winding Cedar Pass east, then south into Nevada to Gerlach (near Burning Man/Black Rock Desert) and onto Hwy 50, the “Loneliest Road in America”. We pretty much stayed on Hwy 50 thru Nevada, and on into Utah. East to Green River and on to Moab, then south and east to Colorado, and back on Hwy 50. The weather had been beautiful until Colorado where it rained all the way across. One highlight of Colorado was Monarch Pass at 11,300 feet. Seems like the rest of Colorado doesn’t drop much below 6-7K in elevation either! On to Kansas, highlights were the Dwight D. Eisenhauer Library & Museum in Abilene & the family reunion.
After the reunion we headed to Kansas City, found a fantastic Steamship museum (The Arabia) in Kansas City MO, and spent a whole day at the WW1 Museum, learning so much!! Of course barbeque and beer that eve. Did I tell you we found at least 8 wonderful brew pubs along the way? ?? And every morning we had to find a coffee shop for our Lattes and to do Wordle. It became an obsession.
Next, checked out Hannibal MO, birthplace of Mark Twain. On to Illinois, then Indiana. Highlight of Indiana was both the Auburn/Duesenberg Museum in Auburn, and the National Studebaker Museum in South Bend. Checked out Notre Dame University. Oh, stumbled upon a great used toy shop in Romney. You never know.
Next was Michigan, actually my favorite state of the trip. Of course it was beautiful weather – I might not be saying that if I was there right now.. We drove up the west side of Michigan along Lake Michigan. So HUGE. Also went to the east side and took in Lake Huron, saw where Jim’s folks grew up. My favorite part of lower Michigan was the Peninsula at Traverse City. Beautiful- about 10 miles long and narrow – packed with vineyards galore.
Crossed the Mackinac Bridge to get to the “Yuppers” and it is so cool you have Lake Michigan on the left, Lake Huron on the right as you drive north on the bridge. Longest suspension bridge in the western hemisphere!
Now, we were on Hwy 2, and our plan was to follow it all the way to Washington, but we didn’t….Veered off to go north to Marquette MI to see some huge docks for the iron ore ships and to check out Lake Superior. Another Great Lake checked off! On to Wisconsin, back on Hwy 2 so we were across WI quickly, but a new state checked off. In Duluth MN got absolutely lost trying to find a route I had read about. It was beautiful crossing MN, brewpubs, statues of Paul Bunyan (kinda wimpy one) headwaters of the Mississippi….lots to see.
Then across North Dakota on Hwy 2, veered off 2 to drive alongside the Missouri River for a way. Next into Montana. Beautiful state! Visited my Sister and niece in Columbia Falls (next to Glacier), then abandoned the Hwy 2 quest in favor of getting home sooner. South to Missoula, onto Salmon Idaho and crossing the Sawtooth Range. Absolutely stunning! Then on to Emmett ID, Ontario OR and cruised on home.
**6740 Miles driven **17 States covered **Averaged More than 30 MPG**Gas is cheaper anywhere other than the West coast***Motels are cheaper in the Midwest!!** More state magnets on the fridge.
We have a beautiful country! Get out and drive it.
Bonnie
You Might be a Duck Fan if ...
By Tim Steck
You might be a Duck Fan if your mother-in-law had season tickets to the UO Women’s Basketball and the Track & Field games before the records were even computerized.
I actually married into a Duck family back in 2003 and Peggy’s mom, who was a UO grad, had season tickets to the Women’s Basketball games since … well we asked the UO office and they said they could only see info since they computerized the records which was in 1996. I’m not really sure when was the first year she got WBB Season tickets.
I started to go to the games in 2003 which were held in Mac Court and have only missed a very few since then, probably could count them on one hand.
Matthew Knight Arena was opened in 2011 and the 1st WBB game was on 1/23/2011 vs Oregon State. The score was Oregon 81 – Oregon State 72. It was the first sold out game (any sport, men or women) at Matthew Knight Arena with the highest attendees to date. Per the research I did, there were 12,369 people there when the arena only holds 12,364 – go figure. All other sold-out games were listed as 12,364 attendees.
You might be a Duck Fan if you went to the WNIT WBB Tournament games in 2010.
The OU women’s team didn’t make the NCAA tournament in March 2010 but was invited to the WNIT tournament. We went to the three games on March 18th, 23rd and when they lost to Cal on March 25th, all of these games were held in MAC Court.
You might be a Duck Fan if you went to watched the UO WBB team play the Pilots in Portland.
Twice we drove up to Portland to the Chiles Center on the campus of the Portland Pilots just to watch a single game against the Ducks. On 12/5/14 we beat the Pilots (72-49) and they had an attendance of 313 for that game. Last season on 12/4/2021 we drove up to the Chiles Center in Portland to watch the ladies beat the Pilots again with a score of 62-59.
You might be a Duck Fan if you went to every PAC-12 WBB Tournament since 2017.
Peggy and I have gone to every PAC-12 Tournament since 2017. They are always around the 1st weekend in March. In 2017 and 2018 they were in Seattle and but starting 2019 they have been in Las Vegas with the exception of 2021 which had no spectators because of Covid-19. During the past years of the PAC-12 Tournaments we have had other close friends that went with us including Jim and Bonnie Mueller (every year), Bill and Cheryl Baugh (2 years), Jerry and Cherrie Braunberger (1 year). OK, we like some Beaver fans. We are going in 2023 too but this time it will be just us. I have purchased the tickets for the tournaments throughout the years and this year they messed up with our seat selection (we usually get the same seats every year) and for some reason this year another sales rep gave our seats away but our rep made it right by giving us front row Floor seats for the 11 games in the PAC-12 WBB Tournament. We will be seated around the 3-point line. We have never sat on the floor level for any basketball game and we will have to see what it will be like.
You might be a Duck Fan if you flew to Las Vegas just for a mini two-day tournament.
In late December 2017, we and the Mueller’s flew to Las Vegas on the 20th, the games were on 21st and 22nd then we turned around and flew back to Eugene on the 23rd. We won both games by 22 and 41 points, it was worth the trip.
You might be a Duck Fan if you saw the UO WBB play in the First and Second round NCCA Tournament in March 2018.
These two games were at our home court in Eugene which made it nice to go to. We won both of those games 88 – 45 and the second game was 101 – 73.
You might be a Duck Fan if you drove to Walnut Creek, CA to watch the WBB play a mini two-day tournament over the Thanksgiving holiday.
In November 2018, Peggy and I drove down to Walnut Creek (just east of San Francisco) to watch the Ducks play. Walnut Creek is Sabrina Ionescu’s home town. It was just under 500 miles and under 8 hours of driving. We drove down on Wednesday; Thursday was Thanksgiving and the games were on Friday and Saturday. We drove back home after the last game on Saturday. This was the only time I can remember ever being away from “home” for Thanksgiving. That felt a little strange. But we found a restaurant that served a more or less traditional Thanksgiving dinner and we still had a “Thanksgiving” dinner. It wasn’t even close to what my mom used to have when I was a kid or what Peggy does now.
You might be a Duck Fan if you went to see the UO WBB team play in the First and Second round NCCA Tournament in March 2019.
These two games were at our home court in Eugene which made it nice to go to. We won both of those games 78 – 40 and the second game was 91 – 68.
You might be a Duck Fan if you went to see the UO WBB team play in the NCCA Regionals in March 2019.
5 days after the above 1st and 2nd Round games, we drove to Portland and watch the WBB team beat two more teams heading their way to the Final Four that year.
You might be a Duck Fan if you watched the UO ladies play Team USA on November 9th, 2019.
What a game. This was the very first game that the WBB team had played this season and with an attendance of 11,530 (almost a sellout) the then # 3 Oregon’s women basketball team handled the U.S. Women’s National Team its first lost by a college women’s team in 20 years with a score of 93-86. They are only the second college team that has ever beaten Team USA.
You might be a Duck Fan if you still went to every home game no matter what their record was.
We went to all the home games in the 2012 – 13 season when they only won 4 games ALL YEAR. We played Samford University (Birmingham, AL) on 12/28/12 and the attendance was only 1,118. No that’s not a typo. The good news was that this was one of 4 games they won with a score of 72 – 61. Our next game was with Portland (in Portland) and it has an attendance of only 438.
You might be a Duck Fan if you drove to San Diego to watch the Lady Ducks play in the San Diego Invitational.
We started our journey about 6:00pm on Friday night December 16th, 2022 and we drove straight through to Torrance, CA which is just west of Los Angeles. It was about a 13-hour drive. We stopped in to the Del Amo Fashion Center to do some shopping in the 8th largest shopping center in the US. It was big, too big for Peggy. I use to live just a hop, skip and a jump from this mall and back in the 80’s and early 90’s. I have shopped there many times. We shopped for only a couple of hours. We then got back in our car and continued a couple more hours to our motel in San Diego. We had Sunday and Monday to do some touristy things before the games started on Tuesday. The Ducks won their 1st game and we also watched the other teams play to see who our competition would be on Wednesday. As expected, it was the #3 Ohio State team. Our hotel was within walking distance of the arena which made it nice because we didn’t have to drive to the games or worry about parking. Wednesday came around and we checked out, walked over to the arena and watched the two losers of Tuesdays games play each other. Now it was the Ducks turn to play Ohio State. Ohio State, being the #3 team in the nation, I wasn’t surprised that our Lady Ducks didn’t beat them. The game was over around 5:30, we walked back to our car which was still parked in the hotel’s parking lot and left for home. We started the 15-hour drive back home and pulled into our driveway just before 9:00 Saturday morning. Needless to say, we were tired.
We are Duck Fans, especially for the UO Women Basketball team!!
Go Ducks!!
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