I have a pair of photos from May of 2000, taken when I had made the trip up from Houston to Seattle in my 1996 Toyota Camry.
I had long wondered at which rest area the one picture is taken, and now I know.
Here is how it went.
It was the year 2000, and there was no Google, and no Google Maps. I used my trusty 1999 Rand McNally Road Atlas to put this route together (demonstrated on Google Maps). I remember driving through the south of Wyoming. The Matthew Shepard murder of 1998 in Laramie, Wyoming was still fresh in the memory, and (irrationally), I was not going to stop for anything in Wyoming. On to Salt Lake City, which I had been to before then, and through Idaho to get me to the border with Oregon.Here is the picture of me at the rest stop. (Yes, a very plain photo. I had used my 1997 Olympus D-320L 2-megapixel digital camera on the grass, with its 12-second timer). Really not much to go by in the picture, right? .. but I knew from my route, that I had taken Interstate 84 through the northeast of Oregon .... and NOW it is the year 2021, and I can google ‘Interstate 84 rest areas in Oregon’, and a list comes up right away. Just check them out one by one, with Google StreetView, and voila! there is the wooden utility pole, and the hills in the back that look the same. It is no other than the Weatherby Rest Stop, at Milepost 335.9, I-84, Weatherby, OR 97907. (That’s a nice truck & trailer combination that was caught by the Google camera).So right here is where my car was parked, in one of these spots. If I have it right, that is Pedro Mountain and its peak in the left center of the picture.One mystery remains: exactly where on Interstate 84 this photo was taken. The ‘Deer Crossing’ sign is not much help, but with a little patience, I should be able to use the surrounding landscape to find it. Stay tuned. 🙂
2 Replies to “Friday/ decoding a road trip, from long ago”
Under the caption on the rest stop pix, you meant northeast Oregon on I-84, not northwest Oregon. But who cares, enjoyed your look back and I think I have stopped at that same rest stop.
Under the caption on the rest stop pix, you meant northeast Oregon on I-84, not northwest Oregon. But who cares, enjoyed your look back and I think I have stopped at that same rest stop.
Take cafe, Dale C
hi Dale!
Thanks for pointing out my mistake! I appreciate it. Yes: it’s northeast in the Pacific Northwest. 🙂
-W.