on the oregon trail: day 12

This was the day we had to say goodbye to both Beth and Nate. We went to Bagels by the Sea for breakfast, and then we waved goodbye to Beth and headed for the Portland airport so Nate could catch his flight back to Nebraska. (He is currently on a mission trip in South Dakota.)

Our last picture all together!

Val let him take her phone so he could call if he ran into any trouble. Just as we were passing the tree farm that so fascinated Nate on our way out, he texted to say he was in Salt Lake City waiting for his plane to Lincoln to take off. A couple hours later, he texted again to tell us he was on the ground in Lincoln. At that point, we were still in Oregon! It truly felt like we would never get out of Oregon . . .

When we got to Boise, we needed to find a wireless connection so that we could use Priceline’s name your own price to find a hotel for the night. We were sure that Boise would have at least one Starbucks, but we didn’t know where to find one, so we began our drive around the city. Val pulled out her computer, and we drove slowly to see where she could pick up wireless. We finally pulled into the parking lot of a Red Lion Hotel and “borrowed” their connection. It was very weak, and we didn’t get very far with Priceline, but we were able to find the address for a Starbucks nearby. When we got there, we discovered the connection was only free if you had a registered Starbucks card that had been used in the past 30 days. I have one, but I haven’t used it in ages—in fact, I don’t think it even has a balance. I was about to add money to it when I saw that there was an option to log on with another wireless service. I suddenly remembered a postcard I got from Qwest a few weeks ago, saying that they were proud to announce they had partnered with thousands of coffee shops around the nation to provide free wireless to their customers. At the time, I thought scoffed because I thought that most coffee shops offered truly free wireless; however, I was very glad for that info on Sunday! I entered my Qwest login info, and we were on our way to finding a Priceline deal. I never would have thought of trying Priceline, but right before we left on the trip, a friend showed me the ins-and-outs of getting a great deal. Anyway, my price was accepted at a Red Lion in Twin Falls, Idaho. We thought that was really funny, considering we’d been using a Red Lion connection earlier!

Our “eat locally” mantra fell by the wayside on our trip home—we didn’t want to take any extra time finding places to eat. We pulled off at some exit between Boise and Twin Falls, and we each went to a different fast food place. I got a spicy chicken sandwich at a Jack in the Box. I went there because we don’t have them in Nebraska, so I wanted to try it out. I need to find out what drink normally comes with a combo meal because I was charged an extra dollar-ish for substituting a Diet Coke. I noticed that coffee comes with the breakfast combos. I was amazed at their menu—burgers, chicken, Asian, and Mexican.

Our hotel, which Priceline called 3-star, was basically a glorified Super 8. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! (And the price I paid was considerably less than I paid for either Super 8 on the way to Oregon.) I just looked up the Red Lion website, and I think that we were in one of the shabbier ones . . . I intended to blog, but instead we watched last week’s episode of The Bachelorette, where we saw Jillian finally come to her senses regarding Wes!

Steph & Val relax in our hotel room.