And here’s where I should have kept to what I had planned. 
Instead of following the Oregon Bikeways path between Salem and Champoeg, we made the mistake of using Waze. Waze kept wanting to put us on the freeway. Unfortunately, every entrance to the freeway had very long backups. We would wait for a while and then Waze would re-route us further south, to wait in another long line for the freeway. We did this four times, never actually reaching the freeway, before I called, “Uncle,” we stopped at a truck stop to have a mediocre meal, and I took over the navigating.
This man was walking faster than cars were moving.
There was a lot of this:
I didn’t keep track of what time we left Salem, probably 1:15-1:30 pm. After the truck stop, I used Google Maps and chased the roads that were green. It meant we went out of our way, but at least we were moving. Once we got far enough north on back roads, we easily popped onto the interstate and had a quick trip home. But overall? Probably five hours in the car. It took us an hour to get there.
Still totally worth it.
My work-mate mentioned that there would be a special postage cancellation at the capitol, so soon after the 8 am capitol opening time, I went in search of it. This is Helen, who not only works at the post office, but also designed the special cancellation. I bought commemorative envelopes from the gift shop and a sheet of eclipse stamps, plus some postcards and headed back outside to do some on-site corresponding. (Sadly, I took pictures of none of this, not the many postcards, or the special envelopes, or the special cancellation.) You can do a Google Image search though, which is more fun, because you get to see cancellations from across the country.
