Oregon East to West

  Those Gas Stations from the past:

 (Publishing a little earlier,  for tomorrow, we are a little beat.)

For Wednesday’s drive:

We started just inside the border of Oregon, on I-84. The scenery was long roads, farms, still a lot of wheat, hay and potatoes:

 

But the land became barren hills and more rugged, the Big hills became mountains.

 

Look at that home tucked way back under that mountain.

There were long runs, up to 6 miles, down a 6% grade. These pictures do not show how steep the hills were.

Something I love is looking at the abandoned homes and trying to imagine the lives there in earlier years:

Something unique here in the west the giant Wind Mills. Here is a blade being transported, it is about 100 feet long.

 

 AS we went West and the mountains grew, all of a sudden they were covered with trees

 Our biggest treat was driving beside the Columbia river. The river separates Oregon and Washington states for many miles and is absolutely beautiful.

 

Across the Columbia is Wahsington state where those wind mills are.

To our left was usually vertical rock cliffs.

A train track ran between us and the water at times.

One of the several dams along the Columbia.

 Note this TRAIN tunnel cut through that rock. There are several of these.

One surprise was the huge mountain that jumped in front of our road in the distance, at least 80-100 miles away. In just a few minutes Sherry and I recognized it. We had once climbed up to the first glacier; it was the beautiful and majestic Mt. Rainer in Washington State. (Times Like this I would like to have a good camera, this is a little Kodak)

 

Then we drove into Portland;

 

 

 

AND headed south to Salem, the capitol of Oregon. Where we plan to spend a few days with JJ’s other son Corey.  Corey is now a truck driver.

We had never driven East to west in Oregon before. Our trips before have been North to South.  Both drives are super.

Nite Shipslog