I Like Trucking

Welcome, four-wheeled reader, as I enlighten you with tales of our week in Oregon enjoying the delights of a big truck. Let me introduce you to our faithful steed, Tara the Truck:

Tara is a Toyota Tacoma, and she's pretty new, with just 6000 miles on the clock. The rental place didn't look at me like I was an idiot as they led me to Tara (in fact there were 3 trucks to choose from, but given the choice, you're always going with the Toyota, aren't you?), although I have to admit this isn't the best-looking vehicle I've ever driven.

Tara's powered by a 3.5L V6, which obviously by American standards is actually a fairly modest motor. Of course, she's an automatic, and I normally can't stand automatics, but having a big engine seems to deal with most of my usual complaints; Tara actually felt reasonably responsive and didn't spend her time constantly in what appeared to be the wrong gear. She is, however, geared very tall, cruising along at 1500rpm at 65mph on the Interstates. It's something like 280hp on tap, but this thing weighs just over 2 tons, so you're not going to set any speed records, but she's not especially slow either.

The driving experience here is very similar to just driving a big 4x4, I guess, you just only have 2 rows of seats instead of 3 (and actually, there's not that much room in the back row of seats). You're up high, and that means cornering is a fairly languid pastime, although she did seem to grip pretty well.

We spent the week exploring the Columbia River Gorge area with Tara, and my goodness it's beautiful there. We had a bit of everything, from genuine rain, some sunshine, trees, California-like deserts, enormously long freight trains, hydro schemes, volcanos with geology field trips, and even a replica Stonehenge, but more on that in future weeks. For now, just feast your eyes on the beautiful gorge - if you can tear them away from Tara, that is!