Dodging the Weather

Snow on the Road

2019-09-29 Sunday

The big news out here in the west (and in the east) is that there has been a record snowfall in Montana and parts of other states where we have recently visited. In fact, the town of Browning, the center of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, where we spent a day several weeks ago, perspiring while our Jeep's brakes were getting repaired, received 40 inches of snow this weekend.

Our plans for last night, as I wrote already, were to go toward Klamath Falls via Mount Hood. But fear of snow at high elevations (and anxiety about the late hour) caused us to stop for the night down low, and consider our options. So this morning, we continued to discuss whether we should follow our original route or change it. We had heavy rain all night, and the idea that it might be snowing on the mountain tops sent us, reluctantly, to travel via the interstate, in order to have a wider, safer, and less snowy road.

Traveling the interstate means there's really nothing to talk about, but fortunately just south of Eugene, we turned off the I-5 and headed toward Klamath Falls to the southeast. The road was really pretty, running along a river most of the time, but soon we realized we seemed to be climbing again. As the signs on the road informed us that our altitude was going up 1,000 feet at a time, it suddenly occurred to me that maybe there was no mountain-free way to get to Klamath Falls. And indeed, we started seeing snow on trees in the distance.... and soon a bit closer.... and soon it was clear that we were going to be seeing snow up close and personal.

I looked again, more closely, at my maps, and sure enough. We were going over the Willamette Pass, a bit above 5,000 feet. And there had been snow! And it was in the trees next to us, in the woods, and a little bit along the roadside. In the distance we could see beautiful, snow-covered mountains, and we were passing ski resorts. Luckily, we encountered no weather on the ascent, the roads were dry, and we even stopped at several scenic pullouts so I could take photos of Diamond Peak and the Cascade Range in the distance. I also made a snowball, and threw it at the RV's windshield, just for fun.

Diamond Peak and the Cascades in the distance

 We switched drivers at the summit, and Joe drove down the mountain, encountering a very brief squall of frozen rain or something of the sort. But it didn't last long, and we had a safe and scenic ride down the other side. We continued south, passing the turn-off to Crater Lake (we did consider making the detour to visit it again, but I re-read my blog on the subject, and we decided we did NOT relish driving and pulling the Jeep along the curvy narrow roads at the rim of the crater. Been there, done that.)

We thought these clouds were spectacular

 So it was that we cruised into Klamath Falls, chose a KOA from the very sparse choices of overnight parking available to us, and met our godson Adam for an erev Rosh Hashanah dinner at the local Black Bear Diner. The visit was lovely, and certainly a high point of the week for us. And then we came back to our RV, and that was that for our day!

Laundry and Football

2019-09-28 (Saturday)

Today was our combo laundry and football day. We woke up at our nice green state park campsite, and drove down into town, i.e. Castle Rock, WA. It is really a sweet little town-- a lovely riverwalk path, all the necessary small stores and civic buildings, etc. But what we were interested in, as I wrote in yesterday's blog, was a laundromat and good wifi reception, and that's what we got.

We set ourselves up in front of the laundromat at about 11:15 or so, and I loaded 3 loads of laundry into the machines. The washes were finished before 12:30 kickoff, but we had to juggle the dryers a little bit. For one thing, I had trouble using one of the machines and thought it wouldn't start. I also didn't get change out of the change machine after it ate my dollar bill, and Joey had to go next door to get more quarters. Then he was a good sport and stayed with the dryers after the game started. But it was all finished before halftime, and he did some of the folding, and I did the rest while I watched the game.

The game was MSU vs. Indiana, and I seem to be the only one who remembers that Indiana always gives the Spartans fits. This game was no different, and it was remarkably close right up until the very end. I was braced for the worst, but the Spartans pulled it out with the last drive, going ahead in a tied game with a field goal, leaving only 5 seconds left on the scoreboard. Indiana tried a razzle-dazzle, pass the football around like a hot potato trick play, trying to score in those 5 seconds. But on the second pass, the MSU defense knocked it loose, and it bounced into the end zone, where one of the Spartan defenders fell on it. So the final score was a 9-point win, but it wasn't anything like that. It was a great game if you were impartial (like the announcers--they were really enjoying it!) but a nail biter if you were me. But we won--YAY.

After the game, I started trying to figure out where we should drive tonight (about time, right?) Joey went and did the grocery shopping while I calculated our next moves. He even hooked up the Jeep alone. But I finally decided where we should head for (Mt. Hood), and then we left. There was a little sprinkle as we left town, and we saw another nice rainbow.

Before we got to Portland, we saw the Columbia River on our right, which was like seeing an old friend again (we drove next to the Columbia back when we visited Grand Coulee Dam.) We also caught glimpses of Mt. Hood in the far distance--a gleaming white upside-down cone. We were feeling a bit dumb that we hadn't seen Mt. Ranier-- we were pretty close to it for much of our time in Washington. But just after we crossed into Oregon and had maybe 10 miles along the Columbia River, I looked to my left (north, back into Washington) and said, "Holy Crap!  THERE'S Mt. Ranier." I mean, OMG, you can not MISS it, it is so dominating on the horizon!! It is simply humungous. Sadly, I couldn't get any photos of it.

Unfortunately, as we drove down the highway, there was a heavier rainstorm, and clouds, and I started to worry about driving in the dark. So as we passed Portland, we pulled over into a parking lot and used several different apps, until we found a county park about 15 minutes or so south of Portland. We got here just as it became truly dark, but the camp host came out to meet us, and now we are tucked in for the night. There's even a shower--an unexpected luxury. So we're feeling okay. Tomorrow we'll head for Klamath Falls, to see our godson Adam. And then into Northern California to Lassen Volcanic National Park (yes, more volcanoes). And we'll try to avoid the winter storm that is threatening the entire northwest. I didn't pack any winter jackets!

Varied Landscapes

Day 18: Sept. 13, 2011

We planned a long driving day for today, so we woke up early (i.e. when the alarms actually went off!) and were out of our campsite, lovely though it was, by about 8 a.m. Stopped for gas in the city of Bend, and then headed east out of the city. Almost as if we crossed an invisible line, we were in ranchland and sagebrush territory. If you look at the map, you will see that there is nothing between Bend and the town of Hines/Burns except about 130 miles. Well, there is NOTHING between them--as landscapes go, it was remarkable for its sameness. Not that we didn’t enjoy it--but it was simply amazing how much nothingness there can be along one road. And that includes traffic--there was almost none. We love that.

I joked with Joe that I could write the blog right then, as a little poem, and be finished already. It went like this:

We drove all day. Nothing else to say. We arrived okay. Now I’m hitting the hay.

The day wasn’t much different than that, actually, except for the details. Joe drove the first 2 hours and we stopped for gas in Hines. It’s a very small place. Burns was not much larger, although it had some fast food places and some kind of small strip shopping center. They are adjacent--really one town. Then it was my turn to drive. And the scenery changed: this time into wonderful mountains, curving roads, and lots of colors and volcanic outcroppings (we are experts at identifying these now). A river ran next to us for a while, cutting through the mountains. They weren’t huge mountains but they were remarkably pretty--lots of browns (we passed one which looked like it was made out of cocoa), some bright white (we aren’t sure what that was), and in one place, some bright reddish color. I would have taken lots of photos but unfortunately I was driving, and my co-pilot said he doesn’t do photos.
After the mountains, we encountered a lot of agricultural scenery, which culminated in Ontario, Oregon. The billboards on the sides of the barns announced that it was the Onion Capital of the World, and that they export 22,000 lbs of onions every year. The amazing part was, we could smell the onions as we drove past, even though we could see the tops still in the ground. I never went through a town which smelled like onions before.

We reached the end of the second 2 hours at the border of Oregon and Idaho. Someplace in Oregon we crossed into Mountain Time, so we lost an hour. I continued to drive for another couple of hours until somewhere past Boise, when we stopped for gas again and Joe took over. Southern Idaho also had a lot of absolute nothingness, but we were on the Interstate so we did have cars. We also saw a lot of farms, where intensive irrigation had allowed the nothingness to become fruitful. There was a line of mountains marching along to the north the entire way.
Finally we left the Interstate and headed northeast, and the mountains got closer. The landscape changed yet again, from the previous farms to range (we saw a lot of cattle out grazing, and at least one feedlot), but most noticeable was the lava flow poking up through the grasses. There was sage, and yellow flowers (we think that’s the sage blooming, but we aren’t sure), and yellow grasses in tufts, and black crunchy-looking rock everywhere.

We stopped for gas one last time (there is a theme here: you do NOT want to get caught short on gas when you are driving through so much nothingness!) and then we approached Craters of the Moon National Monument. All of a sudden, next to the road, the grasses totally disappeared and we were driving next to acres of black rock, which looked like giant cinders. It looked as if a huge fire had taken place, and all that was left was the solid black remnants. Not ash, just chunks everywhere. It was mindboggling. And then we saw the sign, that we had entered the park. As we drove, the landscape was simply like another world. On the right was all the black rock “cinders”, sometimes with lava piles sticking out of it. On the left was the same thing, but beyond that were the mountains, and between them were some green and yellow grasslands. That side was simply gorgeous.
We came to the park loop road entrance at about 7:45 and all around us was black. Not night yet--but the entire ground was black *everywhere*. The white RVs parked in the campground stood out as if they were spotlighted. We drove past the visitor center, which was closed, and went to choose a campsite. Opening the door, I could have sworn I smelled ash and burning, like a fireplace the next morning, but Joe says I am wrong and it doesn’t smell. He also insisted the stuff under our RV and all around us is too hard to smear soot in the RV. It is just a mind-game, I guess; because he’s right, the stuff is like very small black pebbles. It crunches when you walk on it--it is the only ingredient on the ground here! They paved some roads and walkways, but we are parked on this black stuff.
This park is simply like another world! Joe and I agreed, we don’t think it’s at all like what the moon surface is, so that’s kind of a misnomer. But it is absolutely black in this park and it’s like nothing we’ve ever seen before. There aren’t even any lights in the campground except from the windows of the campers--PITCH BLACK. We are very excited about exploring it tomorrow. [Note: The almost-full moon came out later when the clouds cleared up a little, so it was suddenly NOT pitch black. But it was an eerie landscape just the same.][Also note: we drove just over 500 miles today, so landscapes was pretty much all we saw! But we did thoroughly enjoy the drive.]

Crater Lake

Day 17: Monday, September 12, 2011

We had a lovely day at Crater Lake today. We overslept, because Joe’s phone (with our alarm on it) ran out of battery during the night. So we were well rested when we finally got up and got going. We could see blue sky and Roxy and I had a nice walk before we pulled out of our campground. Stopped at the village store, and discovered they had showers! That is something that would have been of interest to me .

We spent most of the day going around the Rim Road of Crater Lake. Sure enough, this morning the lake was actually turning blue in the sunshine--it is really quite beautiful. We stopped at pretty much every single overlook, and the color changed depending on the moment and the sky and clouds. We ate our lunch at the Phantom Ship overlook. The Phantom Ship is actually a small island formed by a rock formation which is coming up out of the lake; it is the rim of an older volcano which was exposed when Mount Mazama imploded into the crater.
We took photos from every direction and sometimes I took photos just to avoid looking at the road itself! If you can imagine a road with exactly two lanes, no shoulder at all, and a drop-off at the edge of the lane straight down into a valley or over a cliff, you can imagine some of the spots on this Rim Road. Truly there were times I simply closed my eyes. Joe did a great job driving, though.

At about 3:30 we were ready to leave the park. I had decided earlier that the farthest we could get today was the city of Bend, OR, about 2 hours drive north of Crater Lake. The problem I had was, that from there, we were heading east, and there is NOTHING for 130 miles. And then, there’s precious little for another 130 miles or so, until the Idaho border. And THEN, I think there’s nothing TOO much until Boise. I really wanted a campground with hot showers and wifi. And I didn’t think I would find it any time soon after Bend. So that’s where we headed.

We didn’t have such an easy time finding those things in Bend, either! The first campground I called, which sounded VERY deluxe (fire pits on the patio of the clubhouse--huh?) actually told me we couldn’t come there, because Mo is too old! I’d heard of this before, but I think it’s the first time we’ve run into the problem. Then the GPS guided us to an address which our AAA book said was a state park, but turned out not to be a camping-type park, it was a city park. My Woodall’s app in my iPod was not being too helpful either. Tons of Forest Service campgrounds but not many private campgrounds. Finally the GPS gave us a park based on proximity to where we are--turns out it was listed under the town of Sisters, not Bend, which is why I hadn’t found it. So we are at a very very fancy KOA, with gardens, a lake, a manicured dog walk, patios for our picnic table and grass for the rest of our site, heated shower floors (!), and all kinds of pleasant things. Joe and I are sitting outside in our lawn chairs--he is reading, I am typing, and Roxy is enjoying lying in thelawn. It is delightful and I feel like I’m on a leisurely vacation. [PS: added at 10 pm: the shower/bathroom building is like a spa. Absolutely gorgeous and deluxe (designer sinks!?!) What a pleasure.]

Only one problem: the wifi STINKS here! I have been able to answer two letters, but I can’t get any pages on the blog to load. So I will not be updating the blog, certainly not with photos, until I don’t know when. This is completely unsatisfactory as far as I am concerned, and we will not be doing our trips this way again. It is just too frustrating. I can live without the email, but I love my blogging! [PS: At 10 pm the bandwidth opened up! I have uploaded 3 days of blogs, without photos thus far. But at least my days have been recorded for posterity!]

Tomorrow we will be heading due east via US 20, a road which runs from the Oregon coast to Boston. We will be taking it only as far (right now( as I-84 in Idaho, and from there to Craters of the Moon National Recreation Area. At least, that is the plan.

From Sea Level to the Rim of a Volcano

Day 16: Sunday, Sept. 11, 2011

Today was a day of many contrasts--the scenery and the weather. When we woke up in our campground a few 100 yards away from the seashore, it was cold and gray. Our trip to the Sea Lion Caves attraction, our first stop, was COLD! We bundled up in jeans, socks, and several layers of sweatshirts. Whatever happened to our warm sunny day from yesterday? It was buried in fog.

The Sea Lion Caves is a privately owned attraction a few miles north of Florence, OR, on the scenic ocean highway CA 101. It is the largest sea cave known, and is a shelter in the winter for Steller Sea Lions. In the spring, they have their babies there, and there’s a shelf along the ocean’s edge where the pups can be seen playing and growing. Unfortunately, our timing was not good for this one--it is obviously not cold enough for sea lions to want shelter, and it’s not the right time for them to have babies. I suspect that when it is really warm out, they can be found basking on the haul-out area at the ocean’s edge, just as they were all over the rocks and wharves yesterday in Newport. But today was really cold, and no sane creature would be resting out by the seashore.



The thing was, there were only four actually inside the cave, either. I have no idea where all the other sea lions could have been today--maybe still in Newport? The cave was actually pretty awesome and huge, but only those four sea lions were out on the rock in the middle of the watery part of the cave. The cave also had a short video telling about how it was found, its history since the 1930s as a tourist attraction, and all about the life cycle of Steller Sea Lions (named for the guy who did the research on them.) There is a view out one of the exits (there are three) toward Heceta Head Lighthouse, and I got a photo of it just as the light, the brightest on the Oregon coast, turned toward us. It makes the fogginess of the day quite plain.

So it was all interesting, but a little disappointing. I said to Joe as we were leaving, “Do you think maybe those were four animatron sea lions specially made just in case all the real ones were away?” And he said, he was wondering the exact same thing! We are both so cynical! I did take photos of them with my zoom, and I saw movement, but of course it *could* have been fake, LOL!

We continued down the coast a little farther, going first through Florence. There we got gas (the lowest price we’ve seen recently--$3.67) and a few groceries. Then we continued on, passing some of the Oregon Sand Dunes National Recreation Area. We knew we were there when suddenly I realized that just behind the row of single trees lining the road, was a sand dune about as high as a 2-story house! Then just ahead we saw one at the side of the road, just beginning to encroach, and it too was 2 stories high. We stopped a park day use area for lunch and walked up to an overlook. We could see that between us and the beach were a lot of large sand dunes (there was a young couple attempting to slide down the nearest dune using something like a snowboard.) We were at the sand dunes along Lake Michigan a few years ago, and this was very much the same thing. I don’t know of anyplace on the east coast that has dunes like this--ours are much smaller and more manageable!

We arrived at the town of Reedsport, and that is where we finally turned left and headed east again. I felt kind of sorry--as I said last night, it’s never as much fun going east as west. But we were driving along the scenic Umpqua River for miles, and it was gorgeous. In addition, the foggy cold overcast-ness went away as soon as we drove over the first hill--and there was the sun. We stopped at a pull-out and looked down at the river, to see several groups of people swimming. It looked like a lot of fun.
By this time, the weather had gotten quite warm, and the idea of swimming was definitely appealing. But instead we kept going. We followed the Umpqua in its valley, and then the Northern Umpqua. The latter was very reminiscent of the river along the Lolo Pass--very tumbling, with lots of rocks and cascades, and deep green pine trees lining the road which wound along the river. We stopped for gas and changed into shorts, as the folks at the station assured us that it was “very hot”, much hotter than usual.

As we got higher into the mountains, however, the air got cooler again, this time in that wonderful mountain-y way. At about 6:30ish, we arrived at the gates of Crater Lake National Park, waved our America The Beautiful pass at the ranger, and drove in. We had been smelling smoke for about 20 minutes before, and after we came into the park and had more scenic views, we could see that there was a fire off in the distance to the west. The sky was cloudy, but I don’t think it was truly overcast--without the fire in the distance, it would have been a beautiful late afternoon. But the smoke smell and a brownish smoky haze was very noticeable. Sure enough, when we got to the rim road of Crater Lake, and stopped at the first stop, we were somewhat surprised to see that the famous blue of the lake was not to be seen--the crater seemed to be filled with smoke, and the color was a sort of dull gray-blue. We could see how awesome the crater is, but the color was simply not there.
This being the case, I told Joey not to stop at the subsequent rim overlooks, and to continue on to Mazama Village, the only campground in the park. I’d been counting on getting a space here, because I don’t see any other obvious places to stay outside the park. Luck was with us, and we did find a nice space here in Loop C. Like the sites we had in Yellowstone and the one last night, there are no hookups, so we are dry camping again. No big deal, really, and we are fine here. We just had a delicious dinner of chicken wings on our new grill (which we’ve used every night since we got it), corn on the cob from the farm market we stopped at on our way to the beach, and salad. We are not suffering in the food department, for those of you who wondered! We’ve had steak, chicken with black bean sauce, hamburgers, thai curry chicken, spaghetti with meat sauce, and chicken burritos, to name a few of Joe’s dinner creations.

So anyway, I am hoping that the wind will blow in a different direction tomorrow, and we will see blue in the crater on our drive around the rim. And at some point we’ll probably peel off east again, toward Idaho.

Real Tourists in Newport, OR

Day 15: Sept 10, 2011

Today we acted like real tourists, and it was a wonderful day! We woke up in our parking lot of an RV “park” at the Newport Marina. We couldn’t fault the location, only the ambience. But I did have a nice view of the Yaquina Bay Bridge from my bedroom window, and that got me up and out, because I wanted to take a photo with the fog still hiding part of the bridge. Luckily, it was all clearing off, and the day was bright, sunny, and warm but not too hot. The cold and foggy weather of yesterday afternoon had lifted, thank goodness!

When we left the Marina, we went over the bridge again, back to the center of Newport, to go to a kite store we’d passed the night before. Joe loves kites, and I love the bright whirligigs that look so nice in gardens. We spent about 20 or so minutes there, picking out a few things, and Joe bought a simple triangle-shaped box kite which came all ready to fly. Right away, we drove down to the historic Nye Beach section of Newport. There is a small city park there, and a Vietnam Memorial to peace, but what drew us was the wide, mostly deserted, beach. Almost the only things to see besides us was the Yaquina Lighthouse a little way up the beach, which was invisible in the fog last night, and some guys on the beach nearby, setting up what looked like a chuppah made from long natural branches. When we saw them make an aisle lined with rocks from the beach, and set up a few plastic chairs, we were sure it was going to be a wedding.

But we didn’t spend much time watching them, because Joe went right to work putting the kite together. Then we had a great time on the beach, flying the kite and just feeling that great beachy breeze. On our way out, passing the aisle of rocks, I said to one of the men there, “It looks like you are having wedding!” and he said I was right. So I added, “That looks like a chuppah”, and he said, “That’s exactly what it is.” Then he added that they were having “a combination of a lot of different cultures” represented in their wedding ceremony; so I don’t even know if anyone involved is actually Jewish--a wedding in the middle of the day on Saturday already means it wasn’t exactly kosher . But it looked like it would be lovely, given the location.

After the beach, we drove Mo to the other side of Newport, to the historic bayfront area. We were dismayed at first because it was very crowded and parked up, and there were absolutely no places to park an RV--in fact we didn’t even see any parking lots per se, just a lot of street parking. But Joe said, “Let’s go around again”, so we repeated our loop, and we got SOOOO lucky--there was an empty space, and the car behind it was just getting out of HIS space, leaving a double curbside space. I jumped out and guided Joe to parallel park Mo’s 27 feet into the space just perfectly. Most amazing of all: there was a line of cars waiting behind us, and NO ONE HONKED! I don’t think I’ve heard a car honk in the entire time we’ve been in Oregon, come to think of it. People are a LOT more mellow here. I don’t think we’re in New Jersey anymore, Toto!

It was about 12:30 pm when we parked, and we moseyed along the wharf looking at everything. We were at the farthest end, next to the real fishing boats. We saw a lot of stacks of fishing traps and stuff like that. But it also turned out that the area was being used for a special “Wild Seafood Weekend”, with a tasting competition and tents set up selling various kinds of seafood. We did not pay $25 to partake in the tasting, but it was interesting. From there we kept moving along and got to the more touristy parts. First the boardwalk connecting the commercial area to the shops, which was lined with vendors--we got some thai basil almonds, and some pickled garlic cloves, and admired various other food and craft items.

Joe was hungry, so we stopped in the first seafood restaurant we came to. I had chowder in a sourdough bread bowl, and Joe had a cup of chowder and an oyster po’ boy sandwich. The food was really yummy, and most entertaining was the view right outside our window--the wharf with all the sea lions basking in the sun, barking at each other, and otherwise putting on a good show for the tourists. We were so happy to see them, especially since last night, we were SURE we heard sea lions, and walked way to the edge of the marina trying to find the source of the sound. We didn’t realize the barking was coming from across the bay. It turns out that besides the wharf, there is a rock just off the shore which is simply COVERED with sea lions. Anyway, we thought they were adorable and really enjoyed them.
After lunch, we continued our stroll like “real tourists”. I had my camera and sunglasses slung around my neck, and I am sure I looked the part. We found some little things to buy (mostly gifts), and treated ourselves to something in the candy store before finally heading back to Mo. It was so relaxing and distracting for me, I didn’t spend one second worrying about our timetable, or where we’d be sleeping tonight. It was really just what I needed. Lots of interesting little shops, and lots of peoplewatching.

We finally got back to Mo and started driving south at around 4pm. Joe almost immediately got too tired to drive--it seems that browsing in shops tires him out faster than almost anything else! So I took the wheel for the 40 or so miles we drove along Highway 101. That included a number of pullouts to stop and admire the view and take photos--after all, that’s why we came here! It’s too bad that my photos are not great--that is because it was late afternoon, and the glare from the sun in the west made it hard to get any fantastic shots. At our last stop, Joe looked down and pointed out two seals (or sea lions, maybe) swimming along near the beach. We saw lighthouses and gorgeous rocks and it was all like I expected it to be. Beautiful, and not really like east coast beaches at all. On the other hand, you don’t have to be insane to actually swim in east coast water--the water here is freezing.
Since Joe was so exhausted, and since we had no camping reservations, we decided to start looking for a campground. It being Saturday night, we were probably taking a risk, but it turned out fine. The first state park we came to was full, but we had a list of several US Forest Service campgrounds before we would quite reach Florence, which was my goal for the night. So we are now camped in Alden Campground, run by the USFS. It is woodsy and the sites are set up very well, so no one is next to us. A huge difference from the campground last night, for sure! (And half the price, too.) There aren’t any services like the state parks, but we don’t need much--we have our own electricity and bathroom. It’s not even 9:30 as I finish this, and Joe’s already sound asleep. I guess a guy can only take so much shopping!

It’s hard to believe, but today was the midway point of our vacation. It seems like we’ve been gone a very long time, and we still have two whole weeks to go! On the other hand, it is never as much fun driving east as it is driving west. At some point tomorrow, we will have to take a left turn and head home. But we’ll go south a little farther first, and stretch it out as long as we can.

We Arrive At The Left Coast

Day 14: Friday, Sept. 9, 2011

I’m writing this from the laundry room at the RV “park” where we are staying tonight in Newport, Oregon. Today we officially made it to the other side of the country, and I have photos of the Pacific Ocean to prove it. However, the wifi is almost nonexistent in the laundry room, and painfully slow from Mo’s parking spot, which is why this blog and the previous two do not have photos. At a rate of 5 minutes/photo (I am serious), it takes close to an hour to upload some of these blogs, and I am just sick of it. Lewis and Clark notwhithstanding, they could write in a diary and be done with it! Depending on electronics just stinks sometimes.

Leaving out the blogging woes, however, today was another good day. We spent last night in Champoeg State Park, a little bit southwest of Portland. We have been so impressed with the state parks out here--the sites are spacious and green, the parks are well maintained, the bathrooms are tiled and have hot showers, the sites come with electricity and water, and all in all, the only thing they don’t have which a private campground has is wifi. And as you’ve heard, the wifi is not all it is cracked up to be sometimes.

We left Champoeg pretty early, because we wanted to get to McMinneville, about 15 miles away, as close to 9am as possible. That was when the Evergreen Aviation Museum opened. The museum has three large buildings, all of which are built like glass-enclosed airplane hangars. The first one we went to had the history of the space programs of both the US and the USSR, with all kinds of artifacts, displays, etc. of the space “race”, beginning in 1957. It was a little bit like a trip down memory lane for Joe and me, because of course we remember so vividly what those first space shots were like, and how we watched them with our classes in school on small tv sets as the rockets took off. The building also has a lot of planes, including example of different spy planes and other aircraft used by the armed forces.

At 11 we left that building and went to see a 3-D IMAX movie on the conception and planning of Boeing’s 787. The movie was really cool. And then the final building, another huge hangar, with the centerpiece of the aviation section: Howard Hughes’s “flying boat”, known commonly as the Spruce Goose. There was a terrific video to watch before we went up to look inside the huge plane. It took up most of the hangar--it’s wingspan is more than 300 feet, bigger than a football field! The planes underneath its wings, including a B-3 jet, were just dwarfed by it. The entire building was devoted to civilian planes for the most part, including the earliest ones, examples of unique small planes, etc. There was also a section on “smokejumpers”, the BLM group which fights forest fires with small planes. There were a few other military planes too, including the only one I recognized--the Sopwith Camel, Snoopy’s ride vs. the Red Baron. By about 12:30, we had had enough airplanes, although we hadn’t seen most of the videos that accompanied many of the exhibits. If you like planes, this museum is fantastic. We really enjoyed it a lot.

We had some lunch in the parking lot, and then we headed toward the beach, stopping along the way at a farmstand for some fresh veggies. It was really hot yesterday and today, and I thought of calling ahead to see what the campground situation was like. The lady at the state park near Newport told me that they were full already. So I looked up my resources and found this place, at a marina in Newport. Having booked a site, we continued on with no worries. I was fantasizing about getting ice cream at the beach when we arrived.

The joke was on us, however…. As we got to the beach, we could feel the air coming into Mo was much cooler than it had been, and when the Pacific Ocean came into sight…. Well, it did NOT come into sight! It was covered with fog. We stopped at the first good place we came to, a state park (there are dozens of state-managed parks and lookout points along the Oregon coast), we changed into long pants and put on sweatshirts! Then the three of us walked down to the beach to prove we’d arrived. But we did not stay long--the wind was blowing and it was just plain COLD. I soon stopped thinking about ice cream and began fantasizing about stopping for a bowl of chowder to warm us up.

We continued slowly down the coast, and discovered that many of the viewpoints were socked in with fog. We got out at Depoe Bay, but although we could see the rocks and the ocean pounding them directly below us, there was nothing but white to see when we looked out from the road. It was the same story at Foulweather Point.

Then we stopped at the Devil’s Caldron, another spot with a view, and discovered that the fog had lifted here and we had a nice view for a little bit, down the beach. It all seemed to depend a lot on our altitude. The fog was rolling over the coastline in some places, and not really visible in other spots. This is what they call "some fog in coastal areas."

So at last we got to Newport, and went over an awesome bridge before we got to our campground. As I said, it can’t compare with the state parks where we’ve been staying. But it was in the right place. I have a few particular things to do along the coast tomorrow, and I’m sure we will both enjoy exploring. The parts of the coastline we have seen, have certainly been beautiful. But it sure is ironic to drive 3500+ miles to see a coastline which is largely invisible!

Driven to Extremes

Day 13: Sept. 8, 2011

We started our day early, grabbing some showers at the very nice facilities at the Wallowa Lake State Park in Joseph, OR, and getting on the road by about 8:30 a.m. We drove almost two hours on the Hells Canyon Scenic Loop until we reached I-84. There we found yet another Walmart, and made a very quick stop to see if they had a small gas grill (we’d thrown our old broken one away a few days ago.) We did find what we were looking for, so the stop was worthwhile. And then we got onto the interstate for the first time in 3 since Monday.

The road was uncrowded and the scenery was surprising--it was quite hilly, but that lovely hay-colored yellow pretty much everywhere, with a lot of farms and rangeland. In fact, it was a lot like the scenery in Washington the day before. We sort of pictured Oregon a little greener. I told Joey it will be greener further south. It was also hotter than normal today--in the 90s rather than the 80s (which after Yellowstone feels too hot anyway…we’ve been cooler in Montana and Idaho until now.)

So, we drove. We drove for a long time, stopping only for lunch. It was several hours before the scenery changed--about the same time as when we got to the Columbia River. I felt quite like Lewis & Clark, appreciating the river so much. I only wish we could have ridden down it rather than having to continue driving. But then across the river, what we saw was totally barren hills, and after that, cliffs which looked as if they were formed by an ancient sea. It wasn’t what we expected, and we wished we had more time to stop and learn about the geology of the area.
My hope today was to stop someplace along the Columbia River, in the area of the scenic highway which stretches from just east of Portland to The Dalles, roughly 80 miles. We managed to arrive at the Bonneville Dam and Fish Hatchery just before 4:30, and they close at 5:00. It was really cool driving across a “road” on the front of the dam to reach the visitor’s center.
We rushed into the dam’s visitor’s center, and I asked the man at the counter, “What should we see? We only have 30 minutes until you close!” He directed us down the elevator to the first floor, so we could see the fish ladder.

The Bonneville Dam is blocking the river where millions of salmon used to spawn. In order to allow them to continue to reach their spawning grounds, they built a fish ladder into the dam so the fish can swim upstream past the dam. There are windows which allow the visitors to watch the fish go past. There’s also a small room adjacent to the windows were someone sits to count the fish. They keep track of all of them so they know how the dam is affecting the fish population.

We only had 30 minutes, but we watched the fish go up the rapids which are sent through the fish ladder from not only the inside of the building (under water, so to speak), but from the top outside.

We chose the best time to come to visit to see the salmon returning to spawn--they have been doing this since mid-August or so. The rest of the year, I guess there are not as many fish anywhere near the ladder. We were outside watching them leap up the steps, when they announced that the building was closing. So we had to rush out pretty fast. I did have time to take a photo of the spillway adjacent to the dam area. We figured we’d have to learn more about the dam itself, how it was built, etc. from the brochure we got when we arrived, since we didn’t have time to look at all the exhibits in the building.

Happily, the fish hatchery was open until 7, so we went there next. That was totally fascinating. Having already seen the salmon swimming upstream past the dam, we could even more appreciate the hatching process nearby. We saw a video of the entire process of raising salmon (in this case--that is the fish raised at Bonneville) and how they artificially inseminate the eggs (that part was pretty graphic!), nurture the eggs until they are fingerlings, and finally how they send them from the hatchery into the river and hence to the ocean. In 4-5 years, they will return to the hatchery to spawn. Unlike the salmon we saw at the dam, who were heading up the Columbia River, these salmon literally return to the fish hatchery itself.

We saw the returnees once we left the visitors center when the film was over. There are salmon runs outside with stairs again, which allow the salmon to come up into the hatchery. We watched them leap up over the stairs barring their way.
They swim upstream to a collection area; when there are enough of them, they are actually lifted up into the hatchery where they are caught and the insemination process begins. We watched them in the trough where they were collecting, and it was fascinating. There were spilloffs of water running into the trough, and the salmon were leaping out of the water trying to get “up stream”. Some of them leapt really high--they are so amazing!

One salmon actually managed to leap onto the cement between two containment areas, and we watced it flap around for about 5-10 seconds until he flopped back into the water. I was so upset for him (or her) that I forgot to take a photo!

We also saw the rooms where the fish eggs are incubated and the fingerlings fed and raised; those rooms were all empty, though. Then we went to see “Herman the Sturgeon”, who lives with several other sturgeon in a pool. The sturgeon are tremendous fish but quite unattractive--they look very like dinosaurs. This is not so surprising, since they evolved during the Jurassic period and haven’t changed since then.

We had a great time at the fish hatchery. After that, we decided to continue driving toward the beach. Joe did a great job taking Mo through downtown Portland, from I-84 to I-5 and finally back to a local road, and then to another Oregon state park, this one about a 30 minute drive from Portland along the Willamette River. It is so hard to compare the drive through the heart of the city with the stark empty hills where we started our day--that’s where my title comes from. We drove from the extreme semi-barrenness and lonesome roads of Wallowa County to the crowded mid-city traffic of Portland. I am quite sure Joe loves the barren loneliness the best!