This morning when I woke up, I remembered why we ended up in The Dalles. They have a Honda Motorcycle Dealership just a couple of miles from the hotel, and after over 9000 miles on the road, and the bike crossing the 24k mark, it was time for an oil change and a little servicing. They were a small shop, but luckily they were able to squeeze me in. At 24k miles, I should be changing oil & filter, rear axle oil, coolant, and check everything else out. They could do the oil & filter, and the rear axle oil, but the coolant change would just take too long, so I decided to wait until I got back to Orlando. The bike checked out great, and by 1:00 I was out of there and ready to go.
     I talked to the service manager for a while, because the dealership was nothing like what we have in Orlando . There were practically no street bikes, a couple of dual-sports, and a bunch of dirt bikes. But mostly it was ATVs and SxSs. He said he only sells about 4 Goldwings a year, so they are all special order. He was really nice, and recommended that we rent an ATV when we get to the coast and try out the Oregon Sand Dunes. We just might try that!
     While I was at the dealer, Jody was back at the hotel, catching up with friends back in Orlando, and generally doing whatever Jody does when I am not around. By 1:30 in the afternoon, the day was pretty much shot, so we decided to head over to the Columbia River Gorge Discovery Center & Museum since it was only a couple of miles away.
     We arrived just as they were about to do a live Birds of Prey demonstration. Jody was excited as she loves the Birds of Prey center in Maitland. They had three birds to show, a Red Tailed Hawk, a Horned Owl, and a Kestrel. The handler was very knowledgeable and explained a lot about the birds. We were able to take some pretty good pictures . All the birds were disabled in some way so they couldn't be returned to the wild, but they were beautiful to look at. We overheard the handler tell a bus tour group that she would let them in to see the Bald Eagles at 3:30 when it was time to load up the bus. As we finished looking around the museum, at 3:30 we just joined the bus tour crowd and went to see the Bald Eagles. We were even able to get a couple of pictures.
      As we were getting ready to leave, we noticed some nature trails, so we did a little hiking out to the river. This was a "hike down" path, so we didn't want to go too far knowing we would have to "hike up" to get back to the bike. If we had looked at the sign, we would have noticed the entire hike would have been 6 miles out and 6 miles back, so I'm glad we gave up early.
     While I was out getting the motorcycle serviced, I also stopped at the Post Office, or what I thought was the Post Office to get a box to returns some more excess stuff. They had this wonderful old stone Post Office building downtown, marked Post Office above the columns, so i went inside, where the receptionist sent me to the new Post Office across the street . Evidently the old Post Office was now being used as office space in a historical building. I wonder how many times this happens to her every day.
     On the way back from the Discovery Center, we decided to take our chances on dinner. The first place that looked interesting was a place called Cousin's Restaurant. It looked kinda old-timey and country on the outside. When we got inside, it was fairly normal, except for the full size John Deere tractor next to our table and the model railroad engines all around up at the ceiling. Just a little western charm. But the food was good, salon for Jody and meatloaf for me. Nothing fancy.
     Tomorrow we are heading down Historic Route 30 to checkout the waterfalls and gorges. It should be fun, and better than hanging out in a motorcycle dealership all day. At least they had free coffee.

25.4 miles today
9474.1 miles total

0.0 gallons today
228.742 gallons total