Woke in Troutdale - just outside of Portland. Had breakfast in the hotel.
Backtracked a few miles into Portland to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI). Got there a little after 11 and bought some tickets for the Exhibits hall and also the submarine tour.
Walked through the "Robots!" exhibit, which was interesting. Not a huge amount of new info for me, but lots of interactive exhibits so playing/controlling the robots was fun. At noon a 45 movie about Robots as part of the exhibit. The "androids" portion was scary -- there were some very, Very, VERY realistic looking skin, faces, etc... although the facial expressions & movement were clearly artificial. Janice loved how the simple things - walking and grabbing - are so hard to duplicate. Then had pizza in the museum restaurant before starting the submarine tour at 1:10.
The tour was of the USS Blueback (SS-581) which was one of only 3 subs built that still had diesel engines but sported the new "tear drop", aka "porpoise nose" front end. Thereafter, all Navy subs have been nuclear. Tour guide was a self described "spook" (aka "Intelligence Officer") aboard subs during the height of the cold war.
Got back on the road heading for Spokane. We had expected to spend a 2nd night in Portland, but realized we'd messed up the reservation dates and had a non-refundable reservation in Spokane, so we decided to forge ahead.
But, about 8:15, on highway US-395 we had a flat of the right rear tire. As the sun was going down, I hustled to start unloading the back of the van - 2 people's luggage for 2 weeks, plus furniture we were taking to Joy.., a bureau, a large leather chair, a side table, 2 stools...
Luckily before I finished unloading I cleared access to the panel that clearly said the jack was inside. I opened the panel and.... no jack. Then I realized the spare was supposed to be under the car, not in it. I could not see it, but the car was sitting very low because the tire was completely shredded; the car resting on the rim. But I knew I didn't have a jack anyway... while wondering how I might change a tire without a jack, a good Samaritan named Jose pulled over behind us. He was *amazing*. He pulled out the donut spare from his own car and offered to give it to us! Unfortunately, it did not fit. Then he called his brother in law, who had a wheeled jack that could lift the car higher and we verified that there was definitely no spare under there. His spare also did not fit.
So we called AAA - which was joined especially for this trip! - and got a tow truck there in under an hour. He took us back to Pasco, instead of ahead to Connell, because it was a bigger town with a tire store and a hotel that actually shared the same parking lot, so we could drop the car and walk to the hotel. We did not make our confirmed, non-refundable deposit hotel reservation in Spokane. Fox Rental appears to be stepping up in reimbursing us for both the tow and the hotel room. They won't cover the tire unless the tire store says the tire was defective, so we had to pay for that.
The Hampton Inn there was a great hotel, but we were exhausted and decided to leave as early as possible Thursday to make up some time and get to Kallispell Thursday night.
