Adventures from Stillwaters

In these blogs I talk alot about Stillwaters and life within this community and this week I am going to focus on venturing outside of Stillwaters and using public and mass transit.

On Tuesday Mr. Blogger and I took the train to Portland and then the light rail to the Portland airport.  This was an experiment to see how easy this “non-driving” adventure would be.  You know sometimes things look and sound easy but turn out not to be.  Well, this was a very easy way to get there and I thought you all might find it helpful to know the details of this alternative to driving.

First, the Portland airport is so much easier than SeaTac to drive to and park that we most often use this airport for our travels.  In an upcoming trip Mr. Blogger will be traveling to the airport the day before I do and then we will meet up the next day in Las Vegas for a visit with family.  Our adventure on Tuesday was to see how it would work for him to take the train light rail to the Portland airport on his own.

If you have flexibility in your schedule (to allow for possible train delays) it is quite simple to take the city bus from Stillwaters ($1), the train from Centralia to Portland ($20) and then the light-rail, MAX ($2.50) to the airport.

The city bus for Centralia comes through Stillwaters twice an hour from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Schedules are available here in the Stillwaters Office.

The upside: No driving nightmares and no worrying about parking your car in a strange parking lot for days. The downside: Need a flexible schedule, a willingness to walk 4 blocks from the train station to the closest MAX station (or take a readily available taxi) and the ability to carry your own luggage.

Our trip on the train was very comfortable and the sightseeing was great.  This is a transportation option that is worth considering. Happy Travels!

Quote of the Week:

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.  – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Timely New Feature: Preparedness!

I have had several people asking me about Disaster Preparedness and this is timely.  September is  National Preparedness Month. Something I will start including in next week’s blog is a week by week “Shopping list” for preparedness.  The idea is that if you prepare a little each week you will soon have a well prepared house for most any disaster.

If you would like to participate just locate a bucket, bag or even an old suitcase to put your prep items in.  Then each week this column will suggest a few items to buy at the grocery or hardware store to add to your collection.  Whether it’s bad weather, earthquake or volcano we all should be prepared for disasters.  Join the action and start collecting next week!