From trees to dry grassland

June 10 2021 We moved 232 miles today.

Like I said in my last post it’s an interesting challenge getting onto I-84, from Milo McIver State Park where we stayed for 3 nights. You need to zigzag west towards Portland (into the edge of Portland), then there is some construction at the on ramp so we needed to go further west a couple of miles following the truck route to the expressway, I was beginning to think we might never find the expressway.

Wow, over the course of a few miles we went from tall trees and green mountains to a WINDY, dry brown grassland where the only green areas are in the few irrigated fields. The only view I had of the top of Mount Hood was in my rearview mirror this morning. We never did see the top while exploring the area, it was always in the clouds.

Most of the drive was along the Columbia River and we saw a few parachuter surfers on the river as we drove, barges going up and down river.  Looks like fun but it was so windy I am not sure how they stayed on their boards.

More below

June 11 2021

Last night we stayed at the Free Wild Horse Casino in Pendleton Oregon.  There were a lot of RV’s here over night, what surprised us was the number of cars visiting the casino. The closer parking lot must have been full because they started parking in the RV area.

This morning, yesterday actually, we decided to head west again for the weekend, so with fingers crossed that we could find a spot we pulled out this morning around 7:45 am for a 134 of empty roads and miles and miles of up and down mountain roads, full of curves, the Ford V10 sure got a work out today as we crossed 4 mountains all over 4,000 ft and 1 at almost 5,000 ft exactly, before descending into the town of Mount Vernon OR. We were going to stay in the town of John Day, at a county park,  but when we called after arriving they were full, so we are staying at a State Park (Clyde Holiday) again, it’s a really nice park with manicured grassy sites and paves parking pads, that’s the good, the bad is this time of year the misquotes are terrible! We knew that might be an issue from the reviews but beggars can’t be choosey. FYI there are several other places around to stay that we didn’t call.

Our drive this morning started out as brown grassland then at the top of the first pass there were trees, lots of trees and everything was green again. Until we leveled out in the valley at around 3000 ft, now it’s a combination of lightly treed hillsides and brown grass.

Oh yea, I almost forgot to mention this. Twice this morning I passed up the opportunity of hitting some deer, the first time they were standing in the road and got out of the way in plenty of time, the second time they were slowly crossing the road, I had to let off the gas while going up a steep incline, to go between them, that time I was not going fast enough to hurt anything more than then deer’s pride.

The End