7/13/2017 - Columbia River

Thursday - Today's agenda started with a drive over to Maupin for a sightseeing trip on the Deschutes River Access Road.  We decided to find breakfast along the way and lucked out at The Oasis Cafe right at the turn-off to the river road.  Just before that, we saw our first deer of the day, right in town.  (We did see one deer yesterday, it jumped out onto the road in front of us.)   Outside the cafe I spotted an inflatible I thought I should have for our lake back at the campground.

We had about a 12-mile drive right along this beautiful, rushing river.  We stopped at one pull-off and walked down to the water, right past a bunch of blackberry briars.

At another pull-off, we could see another river joined this one, and there was a railroad bridge over the new river.  The current got a little faster from here on.

Our next stop was at the raft landing area, and we saw a couple of trucks pulling empty trailers sitting there, waiting on rafters.  We had not seen any rafters, so we decided to turn around and drive back a ways to see if they were coming.  We had passed a lady set up to take photos of the rafters as they passed by, so we stopped back by her chair and I talked to her, while Joe talked to a bus driver on his way to pick up the rafters.  He told us they should be coming along any minute, and sure enough, here they came, only one boat with the captain and 4 passengers.

Joe had just about decided we were going to do this tomorrow, and I had just about talked myself into it, when he ultimately decided to save our first white-water rafting trip for later on this trip.  I think he thought this was too tame a river, while I knew I wouldn't get in a boat on one any wilder, so we will see how this develops as we continue our travels.

The bus driver told us just past the get-out was some falls that prevented the rafters from going any further, so we drove on down to them.  I think he said these falls made this a Class 6, but I'm not sure about that.

Continuing on across the bridge and up the other side of the river, we stopped at the fish ladder, always of interest to us.  I don't think this is the season yet, but it appears they track the steelhead, chinook, sockeye and coho coming upstream to spawn.

This part of the river is on tribal land, and we saw platforms across the river that we didn't know the purpose.  Evenually, Joe saw nets hanging from them and decided they probably were for dip-netting like they do in Alaska.

We left the river behind, saw our second deer of the day.  It crossed the road in front of us and went into a ravine.  We looked and looked but could not find it in the brush, even though we knew it had not climbed the hill.  They can really hide!  Our next stop was the White River Falls State Park.  The falls here were just a short walk from the parking lot, but the mosquitos ate us alive as we came back to the car.

There is an old, abandoned power plant down on the river that Joe thought we might walk down to, but after looking at it from above, he decided it was not worth the effort.  There were people swimming down below in the calm water, which looked mighty refreshing.

Shortly after leaving this park, we saw our next deer.  We spotted one fairly close to the road, but I didn't have a good shot so Joe backed up a little.  Then a second deer ran up the hill, then a third.  I don't know if they were bedded down right by the road, or where they came from, but it was fun seeing them.

We finally got to Hwy 197 and continued north to The Dalles.  We got our first glimpse of the mighty Columbia River as we drove through town.  We had lunch here, fueled, and headed west on Hwy 30 along this river.  Between our road and the river are a railroad track and Interstate 84, so we were not exactly right beside the river, but we did get some good views.   Our road was crooked, and had some steep climbs, which provided us with a good viewpoint.  That little "seam"up the hill in this picture below is our road as it winds to the top.

We did see a train below too.

At this next viewpoint, there was an island where, a long time ago, Indians were "buried."

We saw several wind-surfers out on the river, and sail-boarders.  No boats though, except a barge just as we turned south back to Hood River.

We came back down 35 to finish our Fruit Loop drive, stopping off at a few more shops.  The first, in addition to fruit, was a winery and had a beautiful flower garden in the back.  This was #2, the Gorge White House Fruit Stand & Winery.   You could pick your own flowers, as well as blueberries, which were ripe.

They had their tomatoes tied up to pig wire, which we thought was interesting.  It left a row down the middle to walk through.

 I loved these red flowers, but I forgot to ask their name.

 I thought this sign was pretty appropriate, and I think I saw Joe eat two blueberries from the bush in the above picture that he didn't pay for!

We moved on down the road to the next stop, #9, Packer Orchards and Bakery.  We did buy some cookies here, and blueberries, and a little jar of strawberry peach jam.  We backtracked to one we had stopped at yesterday, then finished up with the Fruit Loop.  Heading back to the RV, we found a house for Dixie, already decorated with frogs for her.

Our last stop was the Tamanawas Falls Trailhead, which Joe had noticed yesterday because of all the cars parked here.  He thought everyone was fishing, but no, there was the river, and the falls.  But the hike to the falls is about 2 miles each way, so we decided it was too late in the day to attempt that.  He thinks we might come back to to do that tomorrow, but the more I think about those 4 miles, the less inclined I am to take that on. 

My phone battery died here, so we just got a couple pictures on my cell phone, then called it a day.  We still had about 40 miles to go to the campground. I just copied and pasted this one but it didn't come out that well, so I'll stop there.



Tomorrow is our last full day here, moving on into Washington on Saturday.  Joy called checking in on us and informed us they were picking melons about 100 miles east of us, over by Hermiston.  That is about 20 miles from Pendleton, so that could be a drive.  Or there is the white-water rafting.  Or Joe's 4-mile hike to the waterfalls and back.  Also, he's interested in driving up to the Ski Lodge at Mt. Hood.  So we need to narrow down those choices and have a good final day here. 

Collins and Marilyn took it easy today so I think they are planning some kind of trip tomorrow -- but probably not with us, since we don't seem to know when to quit.  The weather was wonderful again today, mostly in the 70s here, but a little warmer over by Columbia River.  We are going to go see Joy and Rich on Sunday so we should be able to make some plans for Washington.

7/12/2017 - Part One of the Fruit Loop

Wednesday - We all headed out of the campground about 10:30 to begin our drive of the Oregon Fruit Loop.  The directions Joe got were a little misleading and we had a hard time finding our way out of the campground and to the right highway, but we finally did -- after a couple of turnarounds.  Shortly down the road, we came upon a herd of horses (domestic) right beside the road, behind a fence.  I missed taking a picture and didn't see them on our way back.  But we did see some more geese.

We headed west on State Road 48, then north on Hwy 35.  We went through Wamic so apparently that was not one of the little towns we drove through yesterday on the way in to the campground.  After about an hour, we made our first stop -- a walk-stop instead of a rest-stop, so Collins could stretch his legs.  There were some wild flowers along here.

 We wondered if this was lavendar (above) but Marilyn thought it might be lupine.  We saw lavendar later, so this is definitely not.

Everybody walked.  We also saw a little river, probably the East Fork of the Hood River, and some art work under the overpass here.

We took 35 North to the turnoff to Parkdale, which is where we picked up the Fruit Loop.  As we entered town, we passed some lavendar growing in front of a house, and some other flowers along a bank.

We actually turned around to come back to this little town for lunch, which was very good, at Apple Valley BBQ. While we were eating, we watched a lady carrying in stack of boxes.  Marilyn asked what they were, and they were boxes of pies!  Marilyn then asked where they came from, and she replied, from their country store on up the road a little ways in Hood River.  So we put that on our agenda for a stop.

 We just about circled Mt. Hood today.  We kept seeing it, but Joe said "that mountain keeps moving.  You never know which window you are going to see it out of."  And that was certainly true.  I even lost it a few times, but it showed back up.

We "shopped" Parkdale, then drove to our first Fruit Loop destination, #15 on the map, Kiyokawa Family Orchards & Fruit Stand.  Unfortunately, they are only open weekends right now, so that was a bust.  But along the way, we passed a neat statute of a big old draft horse and a little girl.

We saw cherry trees along here, as well as pear and apple trees, and some grape arbors.  The cherries seem to be ready to pick, and we did get some later on.  Blueberries are also ripe here, and Marilyn bought some of them, and some Marionberries.

Our next stop was #17, Lavendar Valley.  This was a very pretty stop, and I even bought a small picture here.

She had some cute painted rocks on her windowsill -- I thought I could do something like that!

Life is good -- surrounded by purple

And here's that mountain again.

The picture I bought, it's probably a 4 x 6, or maybe 5 x 7, is a lavender field in the foreground and the mountain in the background.  I hoped just to be able to walk out and take my own picture, but at the very least I would have had to walk to the far end of the lavender field.  And I think the trees would have blocked the mountain.  It was probably taken across the road when that field was in bloom.  So I went back inside and bought her picture for $5.00.

We headed on up the road, our next stop was Browning Blueberries but it was "U-Pick," and none of us wanted to do that so we didn't stop.  Then we stopped at The Old Trunk, an antique and junk shop (#20).  This is where Marilyn bought her blueberries.  They had a really neat landscape of the mountain at night, on a saw blade, that I would have liked to come away with, but I didn't even ask the price.  We had one more stop to make, #21, Apple Valley Country Store and Bakery, where the lunch lady got her pies from.  But it was a disappointment.  Few pies, highly priced; 2 blueberry scones that Marilyn considered but was afraid they might have been yesterday's; and I think some cinnamon rolls, as well as jams and jellies and some pie filling in jars.  We expected a lot more baked goods.   However, Joe did get an ice cream cone here, that was really good (he shared a couple of bites with me).  It was Marionberry, very good.

From here, we headed back home.  As we came through Odell, we past several fruit processing plants.  I caught a photo of some stacks of shipping crates.  Fruit and nuts appeared to be a big industry here.

Just before we got back to our campground, we came upon another interesting sight -- you just never know what you are going to see when you travel the countryside.  There were signs on the road, "Pedestrians on Roadway," which seemed odd to me -- why not just ask them to get off the roadway instead of putting up a sign. 

Anyway, we did come upon them, although they were down a side road.  I thought maybe they were a band of gyspies, but Joe thought they were "pilgrims."  Anyway, it was an oddity.

I think we wore Collins out today.  We got back to camp about 5:00, and never saw him come out of his RV again.  Joe and I walked down to the lake and around the campground a little, just had snacks for dinner since we had a big lunch.

Mazie called Marilyn while we were on our drive.  They had made it to Bordertown Casino and RV Resort, just inside the Nevada state line on 395.  She said she had not slept well last night, woke up with a headache, but otherwise she was ok, and her blood pressure was coming down.  She also reported fires in Reno (which they are near), which had closed down I-80.  Not good.

Tomorrow Joe wants to drive back to the White Rivers Falls east over on 197, and we still have the north half of the Fruit Loop to finish, if not from here, then from our next stop.  This is really pretty country, and the temperature stayed in the 70s all day, even though our elevation is only about 1,300 feet.  Mt. Hood must be keeping us cool.

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7/11/2017 - Moving On Without the Johnsons

Tuesday - The Johnsons came over early this morning and announced their very difficult decision to head back home to get Mazie checked out by her own doctors, following the ER doctor's advice.  Mazie was especially upset to have to leave our trip, but I think we all agreed that it was probably the right decision.  They were on the road before 9:00 a.m., heading back to Chiloquin to the campground we stayed at for 13 days.

This campground, and the town of Prineville, were both wonderful, and we have enjoyed our days here.

Horse racing starts here on Wednesday and we saw some of the horse trailers beginning to arrive yesterday.  I wish that would have started before we left -- it would have been practically at our back door. 

Joe and I ran into the grocery store this morning, then we and the Brundiges got hooked up, fueled, and were on the road just after 11:00.  Check-in at our next campground isn't until 3:00 so we were not in a hurry.  We drove 93 miles, through some beautiful country, and got off the road about 2:45.  As we left the Prineville area, we drove past a huge carrot field.  Marilyn had found out they grow carrots for seed here, and these plants appeared to be in full bloom.

We stopped in the town of Madras at a junk shop that Collins had visited on Sunday.  They grow lavendar in this area but we didn't recognize any lavendar fields.  As we left the junk shop, we saw a gaggle of geese across the highway.

As we drove through the hills and valleys of North Central Oregon, we saw beautiful fields of hay -- they grow a lot of hay in Oregon -- and we had great views of our mountains -- Jefferson and Washington.  We finally came in sight of Mt. Hood, way off in the distance.  All of these mountains still have a lot of snow on top.  

 We stopped at a rest stop just outside of Maupin for lunch.  The weather was so nice we ate outside at a picnic table, then took a walk before getting back on the road.

There are some pretty deep canyons between the hills and valleys, and cattle usually dot the hillsides.  They raise a lot of cattle in Oregon.

Coming into Tygh Valley, we crossed the Deschutes River again.  This was a pretty crooked road, but great views.

As we are coming off the hill, we see Collins above us.

The town of Tygh Valley was small but quite pretty, with at least one mural and hanging baskets of flowers along the street.  We saw some rafts on the river -- they do white-water rafting along the river here.

We had a pretty steep pull out of this town, then another up/down for the next town, Wamic, an even smaller town.  We passed a blueberry field just before we got to our campground.  Our campground is really off the beaten path, but we finally got here -- saw two deer on the way in -- and got checked in.  Our sites are not very level, but there is a nice lake right here, with a dock and a beach area.

They have cabins and boats for rent, and a decent restaurant.  We think we are about 40 miles from the Dalles and the Columbia Gorge, but this was the closest campground we could find that had any vacancies.  There is some kind of boating event on the Columbia River this weekend, which was the source of our problem with reservations.  It appears that most of Oregon has weekend events of some kind that get people out and moving around, whether it is a quilt show, a bicycle marathon, a regatta, motorcycle events, etc.  Roxanne said it seems like everyone is coming to Central Oregon this summer, and she would like to have just one weekend without so many visitors in town.  We are seeing evidence of this as we travel through.

We are here for 4 nights, so we will see what we can discover in this area.