7/15/2017 - Crossing into Washington State

Saturday - Time to get on the move again, although we did not plan on an early start.  Actually, Collins had a strange smell in his car yesterday, burnt oil that turned out to be transmission fluid, so mechanic Joe took a look this morning, got out the manual, and went for a drive with Collins to diagnose the problem.  They stopped at a garage in Wamic and the serviceman there called the dealer and they ended up making him an appointment at a dealer in The Dalles.  So Marilyn drove the car, we got hooked up to ours, and we headed into The Dalles.  We left the campground about 11:15, came past the blueberry-picking machine that we had seen the other day but it still wasn't in action, although there were a couple of farmers out in the blueberry patch.  (Joe really wanted to see on of these picking the blueberries, he would also like to see a cherry picker in action.)

As we headed up 197, we passed a large alpaca farm that we had seen the other day.  When we were on this road then, I spotted two of the white alpacas climbing the mountain and I thought they were mountain sheep or mountain goats, but as we came around the corner and saw a whole bunch of white alpacas, I figured out I was wrong.  There were probably close to 200 spread out over several fields right here.

We drove past acres and acres of rolling wheat fields, really a pretty landscape.  It would be awesome to see a bunch of combines come over the hill cutting the wheat but we must be a little early (although some of the fields had been cut).

Just as we came into view of The Dalles and the Columbia River, we passed a field of grape vines and some kind of fruit trees.  There is a lot of farming here, a lot of fruit, several wineries and breweries (we saw a field of hops last week), and of course a lot of hay and wheat.

We found the dealership and connected with Marilyn and Collins.  A Cousins restaurant happened to be next door, so we had lunch there before we left town.  There was a nice bench with wagon wheel arms/legs on the porch.  Collins told me if I gave him my wagon wheels, he could make one of these.  I'll have to think about that -- might be a good idea.

As we got on the interstate, I got a picture of the guardrails on the overpass -- pretty turquoise salmon.

The river was white-capping, and we had fought strong wind gusts all the way from the campground.  But the river had a lot of activity on it, I spotted a small ski boat, and we saw the wind surfing, and kite sailing (not sure what they call that).

Collins had parked in front of us at the car dealership, so he got to lead the way today.  He left their car there, hopefully it will be done (flushing the transmission and the radiator) Monday afternoon.

We saw a couple of barges being pushed along by a tug boat but I missed that picture.  We had seen this barge the other day so I took a picture of it today.  The interstate is closer to the river than Hwy 30 that we drove Thursday.

We crossed the river at the very narrow toll bridge at Hood River, and entered the state of Washington for the very first time about 1:55 p.m.

There was even more activity on the river here, and we think the mountain in the background is Mt. St. Helens (we thought it might be Mt. Ranier, but Collins thought it was St. Helens).

We are now on Washington state hwy 14, which took us through a series of tunnels.  Brought back memories of the overpasses in New York City.  It was good to have Collins in front of us, clearing the way and testing the clearance.

 This train was across the river from us, but just a little later, we had a train coming at us on our side of the river.

When I had called around for reservations for this area, most places were full because of the regatta on the river.  I think we saw the beginning of the regatta today.

Here comes that train.  If it had been going our way, Collins could have raced it.

We arrived at our campground about 2:35, to learn that they had a water pipe burst at one of the campsites and there was no water available in the park.  We went ahead and got set up since we both had some water in our tanks.  The manager was on his way to get a backhoe, which he did.  We can get by for a few days without water, but I'm sure there are people in the park without holding tanks.  I got up early this morning and did our laundry, so I don't even have to worry about that for a few days.  As of this writing (10:20 p.m.), to our knowledge, they don't have the problem solved   We could see them working on it during our evening card game, so we hope they have success soon.