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.

7/14/2017 - Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood

Friday - Joe didn't want to leave this area without seeing the lodge on Mt. Hood, so that was our agenda today.  We took a little different road through the forest to get to Hwy 26, then drove up to Timberline Lodge.  Much to our surprise, it was in full swing, with skiing, snowboarding and hiking all going on.

 

As we walked through the first building, we spotted some pretty fancy snowboards leaning again the wall.  And we said hello to Smoky.

After we walked through the buildings, we got our tickets and rode up the ski lift to the landing.  There was another ski lift that went to the upper level where there were slalom flags set out, but we didn't have access to that.  We could watch them, and the snowboarders come flying down off those slopes.

We wore our sweatshirts up there but we didn't need them -- it was balmy.  No wind, warm, absolutely beautiful.  Lots of people flying around, and the chair lift was busy.  We found a couple of rocks in the "dry" area and watched the people for about an hour.  We were right underneath the upper chair lift, and sometimes snow would fall off the skis and it us.  I thought someone was throwing snowballs at us.

We had a great view of the valley below, even though it was a little hazy today.

 The lodge from above.

We like to ride the chair lifts during our travels and have done so a few times -- Ruidoso and Albuquerque come to mind -- but this may be the first time we have actually had to walk on snow.  And it was a little tricky.  Slippery, and our feet would hit a soft spot and we would sink down about 6 inches.  This was a fun trip and we loved watching all the activity up here. And we managed not to fall on our butts.

We saw one family get off the lift dressed for some other kind of activity.  They had on sandals and flipflops.  I don't know if they ever got past the area just off the lift.

But they dd throw a few snowballs.

We found out how good our timing was when we came back down off the lift.  A bus had arrived, and there was a long line waiting to get lift tickets.  There was just one family of 6 in front of us when we bought our tickets.

We drove back down the mountain, looking for lunch.  We went into the ski resort town of Government Camp just down the road from this lodge.  We expected this town just to be a wide spot in the road, probably a little dumpy or a ghost town.  We were wrong.  It was a ski town, with lots of businesses about skiing.  They even had a ski school going on.  Some of the buildings were chalet-style, it was very clean and touristy.  There was an alpine slide just as we came into town.  We found lunch at a taco shop, enjoyed sitting outside, then went in and out of a few of the shops, but we weren't much in the need of ski equipment or apparel.

We ended our day here and headed back to the campground.  We had decided earlier to come back to Wamic to this little pub for pizza tonight, so we stopped there and checked it out.  We found out they have a few slot machines too.  So when we came back for dinner, I won enough to cover the cost of our meal.  A rare event!  As I waited in the parking lot for Joe, I got a couple of nice shots of sunset over Mt. Hood.

We spotted two deer on the way to the restaurant, one a nice young buck, so on the way back, I was on the lookout.  I finally spotted one back in the trees.

Just down the road, we spooked another one, this one had 3 babies.  You could still see the spots on the fawns.  We only got a picture of one of the babies.  They all disappeared into the brush like magic.

As we got to the turnoff to the campground, Joe decided to go the other way and drive around the entire lake.  It was about 8:00 p.m., prime wildlife viewing time.  We saw a total of 28 deer tonight!!!  Some had bedded down, but some were still on the move.  That was exciting.  Too bad Andrew and Catalina weren't with us because some of them were out in the open.

The Brundiges ventured out on their own today -- they made the drive into The Dalles, did a little shopping there, and drove back down through part of the Fruit Loop.  They didn't go with us because we usually make too long of days, but we beat them home by about 2 hours.  But they opted out of dinner and cards -- Collins was ready to call it a day.

I did manage to avoid the 4-mile hike today.  Joe had accidentally left his credit card at the general store in Wamic this morning when he stopped for a soda, so we had to get back there before they closed.  Fortunately, they had put it aside for him.  We move over to Washington tomorrow, cross the Columbia River, so we are looking forward to that.  It will be our first time in the state of Washington, another state to check off the list. 

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