Finally

Given our intentionally different routing this trip, it took us a while to get to Oregon. It's not that we've been avoiding it, it just didn't line up. Finally, we got to Oregon with the full intent of staying a while. (A while is NOT a mathematical construct and varies greatly depending on mood, weather, and pressure.)

As we expected, we faced a stiff headwind all the way down the Columbia River. Unlike the last time we were here, we only spotted one solitary wind surfer this time.

Since we weren't in a rush, we dawdled along a stretch of the old highway,

checking out the basalt outcroppings. When you start to realize the extent of the basalt coverage throughout Eastern Washington and Oregon, it's quite clear that things got a bit warm here, multiple times. (Some claim the basalt is nearly 6000 feet thick near Yakima.)

We pulled off in the little town of Mosier because there was supposed to be a Porche museum. Turns out the museum serves ice cream, but doesn't have any handy RV parking.

The biggest find of the trip was the Warung Mosier where we turned around. It's an Indonesian food cart, but they're only open on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and we passed through there on Monday... The fact that they had gado-gado on their menu made it doubly disappointing that we missed them.

While we missed a special meal, we did get to catch glimpses of Mt. Hood standing out in the distance.

We looped around the east and south sides of the mountain on our way to Newberg. Not only did we manage to bypass most of the Portland area traffic, but we also got to see some sites we wouldn't have seen otherwise.

We enjoyed a couple days at our favorite Oregon moochdocking location and got to see some of our friends, while the eldest was in Alaska but not catching fish.