Our Road Trips

8/28/2014

Moving day again, as we start our eastward trek. This won't be a long move, but the topography sure will be different. The Oregon coast has been a fun visit, but it is time to move on...eastward ho?

The route our GPS has chosen proves to be both a challenge & fun at the same time. It seems our choice of location along the coast for our motor home is pretty hard to get to, but that is OK, the location was great. As we move east, we travel through Portland, a city we wish we had time to explore. Driving through at noon on a Wednesday should be easy, but we end up tied up in traffic through the city, so we are sort of glad to see it in the rear-view mirrors. Then we rejoin the Columbia Gorge, the real reason for this route. We have never seen it and it has been one of the goals for this trip, so we look forward to exploring it.
Driving along, we see Mt Hood, several huge dams, people using the Columbia for recreation, fishing and other uses, and the reason most of these folks are here, enjoying the beauty of the area. The folks around here have also discovered renewable resources at its best, hydroelectric and wind power used for electric generation is in place in multiple locations. Reading about the history of the areas development is as interesting a story as you want to read...discovered in the 1700s, and changed drastically by dam construction, has made this a vibrant shipping and production center...both on the river and the multiple train systems that move products along the river on both sides. We marvel at how many trains we see, both on the Oregon & Washington side of the mighty Columbia. And the dams have raised the elevation of the water enough to make waterfalls disappear, making navigation a significantly better choice for shipping up river. It has made places like Lewiston, Idaho a seaport...amazing. It is an interesting place to explore.

We arrived at our chosen camp ground in mid afternoon on the John Day River, 27 miles east of The Dalles and just upstream of the John Day Dam on the Columbia. We are again at an Army Corps of Engineers location, a beautiful location on a river that actually has its own exit off I-84...quiet, peaceful, but at the same time very nicely located. We like these locations, but there is seldom phone service or Wi-Fi, so we do without. The price is right too...costs us around $30 for 3 nights. We highly recommend these if you are looking for campsites. But they fill up, so reservations are recommended too. This one was full every night.

Steve & Barb Larson