Veggie Voyage Part Two
By Leah Kleinberger

After being on the road since May 31, my sister Vered Kleinberger, and I, Leah, have traveled over quite a bit of land. Our journey began by leaving Marietta, GA, the only city I have ever lived in, and driving for two days straight to my new neighborhood in Eugene, Oregon. I will be attending the University of Oregon next fall, and out-of-state tuition is, in my opinion, excessively expensive. Therefore, I plan to establish myself as an Oregon State resident. In order to do this, I must declare myself financially independent, take less than 9 credits of classes at the University, and have proof of paying taxes.
The first thing on my list was to find an apartment. After calling almost every single real estate company or landowner that my sister and I could find by driving around Eugene all day on Saturday, I finally signed off on a place on Monday. Tuesday I got my Georgia driver's license changed to an Oregon one, and we set on our way to Canada!
Our first stop was to Vancouver, British Colombia, Canada. A very nice guy and fellow veggie powered driver, James, kindly showed us around town all day. Early the next morning, we were off again, heading down the breathtakingly gorgeous and windy highway 3. Everything was so green, there was rushing water around every turn, and the trees and mountains were so big that I could not help feeling tiny. We camped in a small railroad town, Yahk, and continued to Calgary the next morning. The road to Calgary, highway 22, was a magnificent drive as well, with open pastures surrounded by distant, tall mountains. We arrived in Calgary, refueled, and journeyed to make camp in the Rocky Mountains, which are so big and beautiful that I would not believe it unless I saw them for myself.
For those of you who do not know, my sister's car is powered by vegetable oil as well as diesel. There is a second tank in the trunk, some filters and hoses in the hood, some switches, a second gas gage and temperature gage on the dash, and there you have it, ecologically friendly and renewable fuel! There were only four stops we had to make to pick up some filtered vegetable oil between when we arrived to Eugene and where we are in Canada today. First we bought 80 gallons in Portland from a nice guy named Larry. He had an incredible filling setup. Then we filled up 20 more gallons from an organization called Enviofuel in Corvallis, OR. They provide products and services to people whose cars run off of vegetable oil.
After we hit the road to Canada, we met up with James bought another 40 gallons from his beautifully filtered supply. Yesterday, Saturday, we received another 40 gallons from a friendly man, Blaine, who recycled veggie oil for restaurants in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. We still get more than 20 miles to the gallon on my sister's Mercedes 300 TD, even with its very heavy almost 80 gallons of vegetable oil storage space. We are very thankful to all of our fuel providers who have helped make this adventure possible.
Additional information and photos will be available online at http://www.homeschoolexcursions.org.