It’s 6:30 AM on Tuesday at the Marriott Town Place in Richland, Washington. Here’s what happened since last post:
We left at 8:30 AM Monday morning on a six hour drive (not including stops) to Richland where we are now. Basically, east to Salem, north to Portland (I-5) and east to Richland (mostly I-84 along the Columbia River. A couple of years back we did the big sites including Vista House and Multnomah Falls which are pretty close to Portland, so we skipped that portion of historic route 30. You can revisit that post here.
.We made a stop at Mitchell Point overlook for some pictures. Then we crossed from the Oregon side of the very wide Columbia to the Washington side over a bridge at Hood River. Scary bridge! Very narrow. The whole length is made up of those corrugated see-thru steel plates. Elaine was petrified. $2.00 toll, too. No pictures on the bridge.
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Then we drove for a bit on the Washington side and stopped at a great picnic area for our lunch. Great for most of the lunch until the bees started coming and we retreated to Blue.
We crossed back to the Oregon side at a proper bridge and made a brief stop at the Dalles Dam.
Finally we left I-84 and headed north to Richland. This is serious farming country, not what you think of when you think of Washington and Oregon. The highlight of this portion was passing through Irrigon, Orgeon just for the enjoyment of saying the name.
We arrived in Richland and checked in at the Marriott TownPlace Suites. We had a very nice dinner with a great view at Anthony’s at Columbia Point (which was right across the street).
After breakfast we will be heading north once again to Leavenworth, WA. More about that when we get there,
Nice, still such goregeous weather.