Oregon Trail: Oregon!

It's Monday the 25th and the final day of our adventure in moving from Virginia to Oregon. It's been a lot of fun and its been tiring living in a cramped car and an endless stream of hotel rooms with two dogs. Grace doesn't seem to mind the life, head hung out of the car window and snoozing in the sunshine in between, but it's been tough on Charlie, he who hates to travel. He hasn't eaten well but he has managed OK despite his anxiety. It has seemed like a small victory each time we have been able to persuade him to eat.

Final Day on the Road
Why is Chuck Getting Breakfast in Bed?

Finally in the Pacific Time Zone after crossing into Oregon—how weird is it that this is home now?—we would make our final push to Yamhill in the Willamette Valley, 28 miles as the crow flies (and an hour in the car) southwest of downtown Portland. We're aiming to meander along the Columbia River, bypass Portland traffic, and arrive in Yamhill late afternoon. But first, coffee in Baker City before hitting the road. One of the great things about the PacNW is coffee, good coffee, everywhere. The roadsides are littered with tiny little drive-up coffee shacks.

Tiny Coffee Shop in Baker City, Quintessential Oregon

Northeastern Oregon is really cool high mountain desert of a type that I have never seen before. The mountains are really tall, pretty rugged, and totally treeless, quite the alien landscape for a guy from Virginia. Across in Washington state, it looks exactly the same. Google "Blue Mountains" if you've never seen this kind of otherworldly landscape. Further west, the mountains get more rugged and covered in what looks to be ponderosa pine for the most part.

Between La Grande and Pendleton on I-84 sits Deadman's Pass at 3631 feet in the mountains. We climbed more than 2,000 feet on some steep grades with a bunch of double-hairpin turns. It was unnerving to be on the outside of a logging truck going through some of these beastly curves. This section of I-84 follows the old Oregon Trail wagon road, a fitting place for us to be on this trip. There must be a lot of accidents involving trucks (likely brake overheating and failure). On the western downgrades, we saw one sign restricting truck speed to 18 mph.

At the pass, we stopped at the rest stop and to go to the scenic overview. The scenic overview is down a frontage road along the interstate and then along a dirt track winding through the woods for a ways. It is open range here and cattle were everywhere.

Off-The-Beaten-Path Scenic Overloook

The Columbia River even at this point hundreds of miles from the ocean is a serious river with tugboats pushing barges and here and there, buoys and floats for gill nets. We saw a lot of gill nets deployed; I'm not sure of the salmon seasons here, but this seems very late to me and the fish are likely to be a little thin from their trip up the river.

The Columbia River Gorge is spectacular and to see it closer and at slower speed, we got off I-84 at The Dalles and took the scenic US 30 through the hillsides covered in grasses and Oregon white oaks interspersed with huge ponderosa pines. We climbed the very twisty road up to Rowena Crest where we had great views of the river and Washington state across the river.

The Road Less Traveled

The Rowena Crest Viewpoint

The Columbia River and Washington State

Barge on the River

Brown Dog Loves the View

Black-tailed Doe

US-30 winds down through beautiful oak savannah, farms, and orchard land into the tiny town of Mosier where we picked up I-84 for a couple of moments until we exited at Hood River.

One Last River View

We left the Gorge at the town of Hood River and followed the Hood River up to Mount Hood which we never got to see fully for the abundant cloud cover. We got some teasing glimpses of it here and there, but nothing worth stopping for especially since it had started raining about the time we left Hood River.

On the back side of Mt. Hood, we picked up US 26 and headed back for the Portland area to pick up 99-W into the valley. Traffic on 99-W was terrible and that is all I will say about that. We were so frazzled by the traffic that we stopped at Chehalem Valley Brewing in Newberg on the way to the house in Yamhill, another 15 minutes down the road.

Final Road Beer

And there you have it. It was a long eleven days and we got to see some of the most spectacular scenery that this country has to offer. Now on with our new lives in Oregon.