Western Oregon to Eastern Washington

Once again, we scheduled our transit of a major metro area (this time Portland) for a weekend morning, and didn't have much traffic at all.

Not only was traffic light, but Mt. Hood was out (as was Mt. Helens,) showing themselves against what would become a blue sky. Our route for the day was as direct as practical, meaning I-84 headed up the Columbia River Gorge.

We did take the old highway for a ways, hoping to find adequate parking so that we could take a waterfall hike, but all the trail heads were parked full.

As we approached Multnomah Falls, we spotted one place where we could park the truck and trailer, so we were able to join the hordes who had stopped to view the very popular double-drop falls. It's tall enough that by the time you get the whole thing in frame, you really don't notice all the people on the bridge above the lower falls.

There wasn't much traffic on the river. We spotted two or three small sets of barges headed up river, and a few fisherman. The wind was calm enough that the wind surfers stayed home.

Our home for the night was Plymouth Park, an Army Corp of Engineers park in the big town (don't blink!) of Plymouth. It's the Washington side of the river, immediate west of the I-82 crossing. Umatilla, Oregon anchors the south end of the bridge.

The park is about evenly split between full hook-up sites (almost all pull-through) and water/electric (30 amp) sites. The FHU sites are priced at $27 this year but the Senior Pass results in a 50% reduction. We pulled in without a reservation on a Sunday afternoon - wouldn't have been possible the previous evening. They say it almost always has space during the week and is generally full on weekends.

The next morning we continued our trek, heading northeast towards Spokane. We stopped in the small town of Connell for fuel and visited some geocaches.

There was a series of three geocaches associated with some of the public art. I especially liked this sculpture in front of the community bank. The mortgage portion of the sculpture says it's for a manure spreader. Pretty appropriate in a farming community.

There were several murals in the town. I especially liked this one, and would have loved the opportunity to see the actual combine. The combine was pulled by a team of 28 horses.

We're tucked down a narrow driveway for a couple weeks while we help on some house projects with both a 90 year old Craftsman style home and a new construction home. So nice to have family with a project list!