Various short trips around the Willamette Valley

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Matthew H Fish

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May 28, 2019
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First, I apologize if this isn't against the rules, but I thought the best way to do this would be to post one thread, and then post each trip as a separate response. I took a few trips during the pandemic, and because of the obvious difficulties, they were pretty short trips.

I have a YouTube playlist of different places I visit:


But most of those videos are very local trips, some just me walking around my neighborhood. Some of them focus on my attempts to complete a foot journey from Portland to Eugene, sometimes by transit, but sometimes by bicycle. Hopefully, with things returning to "normal", there will be more long distance rail trips.
Also, I am not sure what "rail involvement" means. Especially during the pandemic, with decreased schedules, I used Amtrak Thruways. So some of these trips involve using Amtrak, but not rail---or, when I go to Portland, using rail, but not Amtrak. But luckily, on a few of them, I actually get to ride an Amtrak train!
A lot of my interest here is the "last mile" problem. Sometimes even when travelling to cities with Amtrak rail connections, I had to use multiple different transit methods to get there.
 
So this is my first time using any type of rail after February of 2020 (I completed a long rail journey on March 1st, 2020). This is from July of 2021. It involved usage of an Amtrak thruway bus, and then usage of light rail and local buses.


I visited my father in Vancouver, Washington. It isn't a long linear distance, but it was difficult to fit the schedules together. One mistake I made was to get off in Portland, instead of waiting an hour for the Amtrak Cascades to take me to Vancouver. I thought that I could get from Portland to Vancouver by the MAX Yellow Line and C-Train bus quicker than taking the train. In many cases, I would be right, but this day, it took much longer. And as is the case in a lot of my travels around the Willamette Valley, travel up and down the main rail line, or on buses (Amtrak, Greyhound, Flixbus) using the I-5 corridor is easy, leaving that corridor takes a long time. It takes me less time to go from Albany to Portland than it takes to go from Portland to the Portland suburbs.
Also, the Portland MAX is pretty empty here: the two times since then that I used it, it was much more crowded.
 
This was my first Amtrak rail trip. A month after the Thruway bus trip to Portland:



Prior to May of 2021, Greyhound was only running one bus a day. Some time that month, they went back to two buses up and down I-5 a day. So on this trip, I took Greyhound south, got to Springfield (as I learned in this video, Greyhound had changed their station from Eugene to Springfield, which is one of those minor details that shows how difficult transit can be: the 3 or 4 miles between the bus station and the train station might not seem like much, but for travelers, it is the type of stuff that makes the idea of using transit just that much more difficult.
Still, at the time, it was nice to be able to travel, and as I mention when I get to the train travel portion (around 8:00-10:00), it was pretty thrilling to be on a train again. The trains were still pretty empty at the time. As I mentioned at the end, this was when the Delta Variant was just starting, and I put my more ambitious travel plans on hold.

I didn't mention the "last mile" problem explicitly, but it was part of what made this difficulty. Between Eugene and Albany station, the Amtrak train is super efficient, smooth, and hassle free. But then from Albany back to Corvallis, I had to wait for a local bus. So this trip involved a Greyhound bus ride down to Eugene, an Amtrak ride back to Albany, and then a local bus to Corvallis. It would be nice if these services were more coordinated.
 
After several months without rail transit, in February of 2022, I returned to Eugene:


This time, I extended my walk northwards, to the end of the Eugene city bus lines (other than the bus that goes out to the exurban town of Junction City). Most of this was done by walking, but also, on this day, I used the following transit methods:

1. Greyhound bus from Corvallis to Springfield
2. BRT from Springfield to downtown Eugene
(walking for six miles)
3. From the north side of Eugene: bus back to downtown
4. Amtrak Cascades back to Albany
5. "Local" bus line between Albany and Corvallis
It did take me a few minutes to figure out how to use the bus ticket machines.
A few interesting things about this trip: first, as much as Eugene is seen as an environmentally concerned, transit-friendly city, that falls away once you leave downtown. A couple miles north of downtown Eugene, we see things we could see in any US city: six lane stroads with big box stores. Of course, unlike most cities, Eugene has pretty good transit outside of the downtown core. When I was in the north part of the city, there were big articulated buses going back to town every half hour. But as far as service on the Amtrak Cascades, this local transit becomes a problem. Because if you want to go from Salem or Albany to Eugene, it is very convenient and fast---as long as you are travelling from downtown to downtown. Outside of a two or three mile radius of the station, it starts getting quicker to just drive.
Also, one of the comments to this video made me realize how much of a gap there is between me and many people. Someone commented to the effect that downtown Eugene, especially the area "around the bus station" was dangerous. And in my video, I actually show at least a little what the bus station looks like--- clean and safe. For many people, downtowns are basically warzones that they are afraid to leave their cars in. I understand that it is a complicated issue, but a lot of that seems to be unwarranted fear.
 
I hope this one doesn't break the rules:


This is me visiting Depoe Bay, Oregon, which involves taking a bus to the Oregon Coast. At one time, this bus was an Amtrak Route, and contacted the Amtrak station in Albany with Corvallis and Newport. It still starts and stops from the Albany Amtrak station, but is now operated by Benton (Corvallis) and Lincoln (Newport) counties. After travelling to Newport, I then take another bus a dozen miles northwards to Depoe Bay, a town of about 1,000 people. Most of this video is just me walking around Depoe Bay.
Why this is important in terms of Amtrak and transit is it shows how difficult it is to access rail outside of the I-5 corridor. 1.7 of Oregon's 4.2 million people live in counties with Amtrak stations. (Counting the sometimes-used Oregon City). A little bit more than that live in counties still close to Amtrak (like the 650,000+ people in Washington county, the western Portland suburbs). The Oregon Coast is in an odd position, because the north Oregon Coast has 120,000 people, which is a substantial number, and it is also a big tourist destination. But the population is spread out in such a way that there isn't really any efficient transit either up and down the Oregon Coast, or to the Willamette Valley. It is kind of a hodgepodge of local and state buses, many of which are designed both for local users and long range transit. So if someone in Depoe Bay wanted to go to either Seattle or Eugene on the Amtrak Cascades, while it is theoretically feasible, it wouldn't be a practical choice.
I think I commented on this in another post a while ago, and @Willbridge might have made a comment about it, but at one point, Greyhound had a coastal route that went from Newport to San Francisco, up and down the Oregon and California coasts. Now, to do that, it would require something like five transfers between local bus companies.
 
This is another trip that was very multimodal:


This was part of my goal (now almost complete) to walk everywhere between Portland and Eugene. I went to Springfield by Greyhound, to Eugene by BRT, to Junction City by city bus, and then walked back to north Eugene, where I took another city bus back to the center of town, and then I took an Amtrak Thruway back to Albany, and from Albany, took a city bus back to Corvallis.
A couple interesting things about this. One of the first things that comes to mind is that the last Amtrak Cascades leaves Eugene at 4 PM, and so after that, it has to be an Amtrak Thruway. Most of the time, there is not that much of a difference between a train and a bus (when it is an Amtrak bus), but it also shows the limitations of the Amtrak corridor service.
Second is that while transit inside Eugene is good, the network of buses that goes to the exurban locations around the city (Cottage Grove, Veneta, Junction City) only runs three or four runs per day currently, so they aren't feasible for normal commuting. And they are especially not feasible for someone who is coming in by train.
Third is that the Eugene airport has no bus service. The 95 bus that goes to Junction City doesn't stop at the Eugene airport, although it passes right by it. And of course, if it did go there, it wouldn't be very practical because it only runs a few times a day. This also effects whether someone would use the Amtrak Cascades: it might seem like a good idea to take the train from Salem or Albany if someone wanted to use the Eugene airport (which is much smaller than the Portland airport, but could be more convenient), but they would only get as far as the Eugene train station and would need to find out a way to get eight more miles to the airport.
So I guess the point of this video, which mostly shows me walking down a rural road, is that even in transit-friendly cities like Eugene, the "transit friendliness" mostly is confined to the central part of the city, and that connections between long-range and local transit are still haphazard.
 
This is me visiting Depoe Bay, Oregon, which involves taking a bus to the Oregon Coast....
and @Willbridge might have made a comment about it, but at one point, Greyhound had a coastal route that went from Newport to San Francisco, up and down the Oregon and California coasts. Now, to do that, it would require something like five transfers between local bus companies.
I've posted this before, but the 1975 Oregon Intercity Bus Study had a schematic of the intercity bus service, including the Coast. And it has recommended improvements, some of which were made, and a few of which remain.

In the '60's and early 70's the long-distance Greyhound Lines service, descended from Oregon Motor Stages (the SP) covered the coast on US101 2x daily PDX<>NPO<>SFC and 1x daily PDX<>EUG<>RPT<>SFC. The latter was known as "The Redwood" as it was timed for daylight in the most remote area. The PDX<>SFC fare for the beautiful and lengthy run was the same as the other three PDX<>SFC routes. (I rode it on Spring Break 1967.)
 

Attachments

  • Oregon DOT Intercity Bus Study 1975 - OCR.pdf
    9.8 MB
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This is another trip that was very multimodal:
............

Second is that while transit inside Eugene is good, the network of buses that goes to the exurban locations around the city (Cottage Grove, Veneta, Junction City) only runs three or four runs per day currently, so they aren't feasible for normal commuting. And they are especially not feasible for someone who is coming in by train.
Third is that the Eugene airport has no bus service. The 95 bus that goes to Junction City doesn't stop at the Eugene airport, although it passes right by it. And of course, if it did go there, it wouldn't be very practical because it only runs a few times a day. This also effects whether someone would use the Amtrak Cascades: it might seem like a good idea to take the train from Salem or Albany if someone wanted to use the Eugene airport (which is much smaller than the Portland airport, but could be more convenient), but they would only get as far as the Eugene train station and would need to find out a way to get eight more miles to the airport.
So I guess the point of this video, which mostly shows me walking down a rural road, is that even in transit-friendly cities like Eugene, the "transit friendliness" mostly is confined to the central part of the city, and that connections between long-range and local transit are still haphazard.
When Lane Transit District was set up, their taxation and service boundary was set at the new Urban Growth Boundary. The point was to not dilute service by spreading it thin and not fight -- as Portland's Tri-Met and Denver's RTD did -- with rural and small-town interests about paying taxes but getting little or no service. Also, some of those points had Greyhound or Trailways service (see photo - often scheduled for interstate connections, not local travel).

So, when the 1972-75 Energy Crisis hit, many of the rural towns went into the reverse mode, attacking snobby Eugene for not providing them service. Once it became clear that paying taxes was involved the interest narrowed down to providing the service that is described here. It is a compromise that has lasted since the first second-hand Baltimore suburbans were rushed into service in Eugene's hinterlands.

1972 027.jpg
 
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So, when the 1972-75 Energy Crisis hit, many of the rural towns went into the reverse mode, attacking snobby Eugene for not providing them service. Once it became clear that paying taxes was involved the interest narrowed down to providing the service that is described here. It is a compromise that has lasted since the first second-hand Baltimore suburbans were rushed into service in Eugene's hinterlands.

If I would guess, I would say the service is just intensive enough to be costly, but not intensive enough to be useful for most people in the town---the Junction City bus had about eight riders, which is not that few. In exurbs or rural towns, buses are usually viewed as a social service---basically, they might be expensive, but they are a lot cheaper than ambulances.
What is unusual for me about this is that, after living in Montana, when I came back to Oregon, I still view things as being densely populated. Junction City has a population of about 6300 people, which is small for Oregon---but would make it the fifteenth largest city in Montana.
So to me there is a difference between the objective difference in transit (6000+ people a dozen miles away from a city of 240,000 people (Eugene+Springfield)) is not that large in absolute terms, but subjectively, once you go just a few miles from a central area, transit becomes a last option. Someone in Junction City or even the outer reaches of Eugene is not going to think of the train to Portland as a realistic option because they would have to take an infrequent and slow bus to the train station first. (Or drive there and leave their car parked there). People who aren't in the habit of using transit also have many unfounded fears and prejudices about it.
So I guess my overall point is that objectively, Junction City is part of an urban area, and has a high enough population to make it cost effective, but there is cultural reasons against it. As opposed to somewhere like the Oregon Coast, where the terrain barriers do present real problems.
 
(I shared this video in another thread, but it also fits here)



This was a trip up to Vancouver, Washington to visit my father. So basically a commuting trip. I don't talk about it in the video, but I used a Flixbus to get from Corvallis to Portland. Only my Flixbus was an hour late and so we were waiting in the rain for an hour. I use Flixbus instead of Amtrak because Amtrak leaves from Albany, not Corvallis, and that adds time to get to Albany. The delay on this trip might make me rethink Flixbus.
Once I get to Portland, I take the MAX Yellow Line to Delta Park, and then a C-Train shuttle to Vancouver. Depending on how the connections go, and how long the bus takes to go through Jantzen Beach, the trip from Portland to Vancouver can take almost as long as the trip from Corvallis to Portland. The Max Yellow Line itself is quick, it is the connections after that can take time.
The video doesn't really talk about that, the video is about historic areas in Vancouver, and also why Vancouver looks the way it does. I also talk about it from a personal viewpoint, that as much as I am a transit advocate and use transit, I actually grew up in Clark County, which is a suburban area. So to me, even though roads like this are not the best suited for transit, I still personally like them.
On the way back, my Flixbus was delayed for 2 hours going south---so I took a chance to walk around Northwest Portland (and also rode the Streetcar). Being in Portland reminded me of a lot of good memories from when I was younger. It also made me realize how thin the threshold for urbanism and transit is: Portland is not that much more populous or dense than Vancouver, but it has gone over a tipping point where it is a lot more active in the streets, and also where there are many more options for transit.
 
I hope this one doesn't break the rules:


This is me visiting Depoe Bay, Oregon, which involves taking a bus to the Oregon Coast. At one time, this bus was an Amtrak Route, and contacted the Amtrak station in Albany with Corvallis and Newport. It still starts and stops from the Albany Amtrak station, but is now operated by Benton (Corvallis) and Lincoln (Newport) counties. After travelling to Newport, I then take another bus a dozen miles northwards to Depoe Bay, a town of about 1,000 people. Most of this video is just me walking around Depoe Bay.
Why this is important in terms of Amtrak and transit is it shows how difficult it is to access rail outside of the I-5 corridor. 1.7 of Oregon's 4.2 million people live in counties with Amtrak stations. (Counting the sometimes-used Oregon City). A little bit more than that live in counties still close to Amtrak (like the 650,000+ people in Washington county, the western Portland suburbs). The Oregon Coast is in an odd position, because the north Oregon Coast has 120,000 people, which is a substantial number, and it is also a big tourist destination. But the population is spread out in such a way that there isn't really any efficient transit either up and down the Oregon Coast, or to the Willamette Valley. It is kind of a hodgepodge of local and state buses, many of which are designed both for local users and long range transit. So if someone in Depoe Bay wanted to go to either Seattle or Eugene on the Amtrak Cascades, while it is theoretically feasible, it wouldn't be a practical choice.
I think I commented on this in another post a while ago, and @Willbridge might have made a comment about it, but at one point, Greyhound had a coastal route that went from Newport to San Francisco, up and down the Oregon and California coasts. Now, to do that, it would require something like five transfers between local bus companies.
 
I did enjoy the video on Depoe Bay. I always like a visit in any small town or harbor town, especially in Oregon. This summer I'm planning a 2 day stay in Sisters, Oregon.

I subscribe to a magazine entitled "Northwest Travel and Life". They always have articles on small towns and interesting places to visit throughout Oregon, Washington, and the Northwest. Has anyone ever stopped in Winchester Bay, along the Oregon coast? Looks like a great place if you like crabbing and fishing or for just walking around a small, quaint village.

https://is.gd/BWC0rD
 
I did enjoy the video on Depoe Bay. I always like a visit in any small town or harbor town, especially in Oregon. This summer I'm planning a 2 day stay in Sisters, Oregon.

I subscribe to a magazine entitled "Northwest Travel and Life". They always have articles on small towns and interesting places to visit throughout Oregon, Washington, and the Northwest. Has anyone ever stopped in Winchester Bay, along the Oregon coast? Looks like a great place if you like crabbing and fishing or for just walking around a small, quaint village.

https://is.gd/BWC0rD

I have been through Winchester Bay several times. It is actually an unincorporated area right outside Reedsport, which is a city, and large enough to have a supermarket, which means by Oregon Coast standards, it is pretty big. Much like what I said about Depoe Bay, but more so, Reedport and Winchester Bay are nice to visit, but can be hard to live in. They are also hard to travel to and from.
 
The Northwest article mentioned that it is difficult to get to Winchester Bay. The Unpqua River lighthouse looks interesting (established 1857, the oldest lighthouse on the Oregon coast).

Another place I would like to visit is Garibaldi. A friend of mine says it has several really good restaurants. If I ever get there, I would like to take the "Oregon Coast Scenic Railroad", Garibaldi to Rockaway Beach. Is that one worthwhile?

https://is.gd/7ifwzK
 
The Northwest article mentioned that it is difficult to get to Winchester Bay. The Unpqua River lighthouse looks interesting (established 1857, the oldest lighthouse on the Oregon coast).

Another place I would like to visit is Garibaldi. A friend of mine says it has several really good restaurants. If I ever get there, I would like to take the "Oregon Coast Scenic Railroad", Garibaldi to Rockaway Beach. Is that one worthwhile?

https://is.gd/7ifwzK
With a little bit of exaggeration, once you get to the northern Oregon coast (everything between Newport and Astoria), you don't really have to think in terms of individual cities, because it is just a ribbon of tourist-oriented businesses. There are lots of good restaurants on the Oregon coast, but I didn't know that Garibaldi was specifically known for that. I also didn't know there was a heritage railroad between Garibaldi and Rockaway Beach---but I don't think it is something I would go out of my way for, since it is 5 miles between the towns, and to me that sounds more like a carnival ride than a train trip.
 
With a little bit of exaggeration, once you get to the northern Oregon coast (everything between Newport and Astoria), you don't really have to think in terms of individual cities, because it is just a ribbon of tourist-oriented businesses. There are lots of good restaurants on the Oregon coast, but I didn't know that Garibaldi was specifically known for that. I also didn't know there was a heritage railroad between Garibaldi and Rockaway Beach---but I don't think it is something I would go out of my way for, since it is 5 miles between the towns, and to me that sounds more like a carnival ride than a train trip.
Not to be too harsh with you, but I can guarantee that the volunteers who keep that train running (Oregon Coast Scenic Railway), don't consider it a "carnival ride". They have a large maintenance building at Rockaway Beach where you can go in and see which project they're working on. This railway was part of the Port of Tillamook Bar Railroad which ran all the way to Portland. See attached link (I hope).
 
Not to be too harsh with you, but I can guarantee that the volunteers who keep that train running (Oregon Coast Scenic Railway), don't consider it a "carnival ride". They have a large maintenance building at Rockaway Beach where you can go in and see which project they're working on. This railway was part of the Port of Tillamook Bar Railroad which ran all the way to Portland. See attached link (I hope).

I didn't mean to be derogatory. I guess my point was, if I was going to visit the Oregon Coast from outside of the Pacific Northwest, nothing in Garibaldi or Rockaway Beach would strike me as specifically a tourist draw. Both for history or natural interest, there are other places on the coast I would go to first. Probably Astoria (which is also a place that has an Amtrak Thruway bus of sorts to it) would be the most obvious location.
Of course, a lot of this is just my prejudices based on my own experiences. The last time I was in Rockaway Beach was as a teen in the 1990s, drinking store brand pop with my teenage friends. So maybe I didn't appreciate the area as much as I could have.
 
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This is from a trip back in April, to Blodgett, Oregon.


As of a month or so ago, Blodgett is now a location on the Amtrak network, and the bus I took is now an Amtrak route! This is a flag stop, and apparently on the Amtrak website, this stop doesn't exist, so you would have to get a ticket for Toledo and just ask to be let out here. Also, if departing from this station, or two other stops between Philomath and Toledo, you have to ask in advance.
In a lot of places where I travel, the population densities are high enough that some type of transit (including rail) would be feasible, but it is a chicken and egg problem to get it started. But here, we have a stretch of highway 38 miles long where the largest community might be between 300 and 500 people---over a diffuse area. The area that I cross in this video is actually towards the "populated" side of this road. And this highway is itself over the Coast Range, which is much more densely populated than the Cascade Range.
Even with that, as I show in this video, there are actually rail lines here---with trains on them. So the problem here isn't the engineering problem of putting a rail line through the hills---it is the problem of having enough of a population base for passenger rail.
 

This is Waldport, Oregon, about a month ago. To get here, I followed much the same process as getting to Depoe Bay: I take the bus to Newport, and then take a bus southwards. Waldport itself also has a road going to Corvallis, but its twistier than the Corvallis-Newport one. Almost all of what I said about Depoe Bay applies to Waldport: its a really nice town to look at, and nice to visit, but its a town based around tourism and retirement, and it is hard to get to anywhere from there.
Also, the bus I took from Newport to Waldport goes on to Yachats. In Yachats, there is a bus to Florence. In Florence, you can get a ticketed bus (cross-ticketed to Amtrak), that goes from Eugene to Coos Bay. Once in Coos Bay, you can get a "City Bus", 100 miles south to Brookings, where you used to be able to get the Amtrak thruway bus to Klamath Falls. I haven't added it all up, but I think it would take like 3 days to get from Newport to Arcata, California---something that used to be a Greyhound bus trip down Highway 101.
And, as mentioned, some of this is an engineering problem, some of this is a population density problem, but a lot of it is a jurisdiction and coordination problem.
 
And this is from today:


This is from a bus that departs from the Albany Station, and goes eastward through Lebanon and Sweet Home to the Foster Dam. At which points there is about 70 miles without settlements with services. Unlike the Albany-> Newport bus, which is cross-ticketed as an Amtrak route, this is strictly a "city bus", although the distance it travels (30 miles) is obviously more like an intermediate-range service. It only costs a dollar, and as is often the case, is run more for social service purposes than to move substantial amounts of people. Due to the schedule, there is also no marketing it as a tourist or sight-seeing service. If you wanted to see the Foster Dam recreational area, and you wanted to ride Amtrak to Albany and then take a bus to do so, you could, but it would not be an easy task.
So to reiterate a point I said above, while the Amtrak Cascades service is really good if you want to just move between cities directly served, once you want to do lateral movement off that service, things get tricky. Eugene to Albany is 40 minutes, Lebanon to Veneta is probably more like 4 hours.
 
I didn't mean to be derogatory. I guess my point was, if I was going to visit the Oregon Coast from outside of the Pacific Northwest, nothing in Garibaldi or Rockaway Beach would strike me as specifically a tourist draw. Both for history or natural interest, there are other places on the coast I would go to first. Probably Astoria (which is also a place that has an Amtrak Thruway bus of sorts to it) would be the most obvious location....
PDX<>ART has five Thruway buses a day and the US26 -- Sunset Highway -- trips have comfortable buses. (I haven't ridden the US30 -- Lower Columbia -- trips.) It's possible to make a circle trip. I'm planning on riding the US26 route again in August.

Seaside is on the US 26 route. There also is local transit service between Seaside and Astoria.
2015 11 27 - Seaside sunset.jpeg

A Portland<>Seaside<>Astoria bus at Portland Union Station.

P1040565.JPG

In the maritime museum in Astoria.

2013 November-December 067.jpg

Astoria - a good place to enjoy fresh seafood.
2009 Portland trip 055.jpg
 
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I visited Astoria, a few years ago, during a Columbia Gorge boat cruise from Clarkston, WA to Hayden Island, OR. The Astoria stop was interesting, especially the Astoria Column.

Sometime in the future, I've been thinking about a trip from Klamath Falls, OR to Ashland, OR by means of a POINT bus, travelling along their southwest run:

https://is.gd/EEHM2K
To start, a departure from Martinez, CA with an early morning arrival at Klamath Falls. Then a POINT bus from Klamath Falls to Ashland, OR for an overnight. The next day, renting a car for a drive to a favorite spot, McCloud, CA. McCloud is an old company lumber town with 3 great waterfalls in the area. If time, a drive over to Dunsmuir, CA with an overnight at the Railroad Village. Then back to the historic town of Jacksonville, OR to spend the night. After dropping off the rental car at the Medford, OR airport, a POINT bus for the return to Klamath Falls. Then, a late evening boarding of the southbound Coast Starlight for the return to Martinez.

Has anyone ever taken POINT bus along their southwest route? Your impressions. It looks like a scenic trip from Medford to Klamath. However, about a 2.5 hour wait at the Amtrak Klamath Falls station , assuming the southbound Starlight will be on time.
 
Has anyone ever taken POINT bus along their southwest route? Your impressions. It looks like a scenic trip from Medford to Klamath. However, about a 2.5 hour wait at the Amtrak Klamath Falls station , assuming the southbound Starlight will be on time.
I have taken the POINT bus between Medford, Oregon and Brookings, Oregon, when I lived in Brookings. I've never taken it east of Medford. As I understand it now, the bus west of Grants Pass changes to being a string of local buses. Which would make it very unwieldy for a tourist with luggage.
But from what I can remember of the buses physically, they were small (like an E450?) but well maintained and a smooth, easy ride.
Depending on how much luggage you have, being stuck for two and a half hours in Klamath Falls doesn't sound like a terrible thing. Although, if I remember correctly, it will probably be at night?
 
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