Visiting friends
On Friday, we drove to Roseville to visit Jim’s high school friend, Tracy, and her hubby, Steve. There are lots of Steve’s in our lives! We had a lovely chat in their beautiful back yard, under the shade of a couple of redwoods and a sequoia. Tracy and Steve hope none of these very tall trees fall on their house. Steve then drove us up US50 to Lake Tahoe. The road was Oregon-like: scant shoulders and very few guard rails. Jim was glad Steve drove! Smoke from the Mosquito fire obscured the views, preventing vertigo for Jim! We had lunch at the Bridgetender Tavern in Tahoe City, then visited the Donner Memorial (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donner_Party ). Snow sometimes accumulates to 25 feet in winter, which is what happened to the party Then we drove back I-80, twisty and downhill, to Roseville. We left Steve and Tracy, having had a wonderful time!
Muir Woods
Pictures after I’ve had a chance to process them.
We’ve both always wanted to see redwoods. The Muir Woods, just north of the Golden Gate bridge, were the most accessible to us from Vacaville. Sometime, we’d like to visit the Jedediah Smith redwood forest where part of Return of the Jedi was filmed. We made a parking reservation, then used our America the Beautiful Senior Pass to pay the entry fee. We walked the Redwood Creek trail, then the Hillside trail back to the entrance. Had to buy our gew-gaws at the camp store, including a sticker for the RV and a pin for Jim’s hiking stick. Even found a spoon for our collection!
Be warned! The entry road to the Muir Woods improves the gene pool if you’re not careful. It is perhaps the most twisty road we’ve ever been on, with sheer drops off the unguarded, shoulder-less edges. On our way out, we avoided that road, heading toward Muir Beach. CA-1 is still twisty, but not as bad. Most of our travel in and out of the Muir Woods was done at 10-15 mph.
Scallops for dinner after we did some fishing at Safeway.
On our way (slowly) home
On Sept 5th, we decided to leave The Dalles a day early. There were wildfires in northern California that lay squarely on our route, and their containment was proceeding quite slowly. We plotted a route to Klamath Falls, then to Susanville CA and thence to Vacaville CA. That route swings quite wide and east around the fires.
We visited the Newberry volcanic monument in mid Oregon. This is a cinder cone surrounded by a huge lava flow, all quite cold right now. We didn’t stay long, just had a quick look. It’s worth a stop if you are in mid Oregon. Next time we will take the shuttle bus to the top of the cinder cone. An interesting aspect is that no vegetation grows on the south side of the cone due to sun and wind drying things out. There are many trees on the north side.
We got to Klamath Falls and stayed the night at the county fairgrounds, quite a nice RV stop. No scent of previous animals (see Oregon Wine Experience), even though there was straw and horse manure on the ground.
The next day we checked the fire forecast and found our route (US 97 from Klamath Falls to Weed CA) had reopened. Also, one of the people we encountered at the fairgrounds had friends who had just come up that way and said there was no trouble on the route. We called the campground in Vacaville where we were scheduled to stay and added on a day at the front end. We went down US97, through the CA agricultural check point, past Weed and down I-5 through the Trinity Mountains and past Mt Shasta. Beautiful scenery, but a very twisty interstate with a lot of up and down.
The ag checkpoint was interesting. We’d been alerted to its existence by a friend, so we dumped all remaining fruit and veg before leaving Klamath Falls. However, the inspector was quite interested in our origin point: NC. They inspected their list for Chatham County and decided we were not a gypsy moth threat. Once in Vacaville, we restocked fresh fruit and veg.
Passing through Weed was sobering. We were used to seeing burnt forests, having seen them in various places in the West and in Australia. However, the Mill Fire burned through neighborhoods in Weed, leaving nothing but char and ashes.
After that, we drove through the Sacramento valley past millions of fruit and nut trees. The lines of trees in the fields were literally miles long. This, folks, is one of the bread baskets of our huge country.
The heat in the west has been stunning. We were driving through temps of 116 F (46 C), planning to get around our stay in Vacaville by motorcycle. We re-thunk that idea! Rented a car at the Sacramento airport (SMF) and convoyed to the RV park We are in a shady spot, but temps remain hot. Only 110 F today! We stayed in air conditioning.
The Bargeway Pub
Probably my favorite place to have lunch in The Dalles is the Bargeway Pub. Situated right on the Columbia River near a grain loading facility, the Pub serves fantastic fish tacos, burgers and calamari, to mention only the items we’ve eaten. They feature live music and great vistas. Me and fellow golfers frequently come here for lunch after walking 18 holes. And Deb likes it, too!
The Pub has about thirty tipples on tap. I like the Sunriver Vicious Mosquito IPA. Deb found the CiderBoys honeycrisp expression very much to her taste!
Washougal loop
There’s a Pendleton woolen mill in the city of Washougal, Washington, so we decided to visit. We got there by crossing The Bridge of the Gods at Cascade Locks, then heading west on WA-14, a twisty riverside road. Deb’s work schedule didn’t let us go when the mill was giving tours, but we wandered through the mill store and enjoyed all the beautiful things for sale. Didn’t buy anything, though.
After that, we went to the 54-40 Brewery (click the link for an explanation) for great burgers and drinks. Deb had the saison, and I drank the Half-cocked IPA.
Afterward, we returned home mostly on east WA-14, passing by very big scree fields and through the towns of White Salmon and Lyle. The road has many tunnels cut through the mountains, and active railroad tracks.
We crossed back to Oregon at The Dalles dam bridge.
Crater Lake
We decided to cut across Oregon on our way back to The Dalles to see Crater Lake. It’s a collapsed caldera and the deepest lake in the USA (1900 feet or so). There are no streams in or out, so evaporation is counterbalanced by snowfall, which was still on the ground in a couple of places. Like many things in Oregon, there aren’t safety fences to keep people from sliding into the lake and dying, so stand back!
On the way out, we went clockwise around the rim to exit the park in the north. The scenery is stunning, and the roads are narrow with steep falloffs. Seems Oregon doesn’t go in for things like road shoulders and safety rails.
Oregon Wine Experience
The OWE is a charity event of the Asante Foundation, which helps out in the domain of medical care. OWE features many Oregon wineries, some so small that only a few hundred cases a year are produced. They taste the wine in a big tent with some bites supplied by local chefs. This year we really only saw southwest Oregon wineries, with a couple of exceptions.
We drove to the OWE from Eugene to Medford, with the road becoming much hillier as we went through Grants Pass. Once there, we parked in a huge field and went under some tents that clearly had livestock in them a week or so ago. We could still smell the evidence of that, but it didn’t detract from our tastings. Deb chased chardonnay and rose, whereas I was almost exclusively tasting Tempranillo and Syrah. It was a hot day, over 100 degrees, so the shade and the electric fans were welcome.
Down to Eugene
We stopped in Eugene OR on our way to Medford for the Oregon Wine Experience (see separate post). Not much to say except that the Willamette Valley is flat. It gradually comes through the vee of the Cascade mountains and coastal range. Highway miles through farming country.
Dufur and the valley
In an earlier post I mentioned the gorgeous view of Mt Hood across the Dufur valley. On 8/19, we came back to Dufur primarily to take a picture of the valley. It was a bit hazy, but still impressive.
We also toured the old-timey museum in Dufur, mostly with dry-land farming implements and stuff from the early 20th century. We took better pictures of the two most important buildings, the Kramer Market (since 1905) and the Balch Hotel (since 1907), both of which are still in operation.
Dutch Flat loop
On Sunday, we decided to get out for breakfast. Had same at a place in town, then decided to see where Dry Hollow Road goes. We found it goes out through orchard (cherry mostly), then into farmland. After a while it turns to gravel. Hey, we were in a rental car, and you can do anything in those! We still had enough GPS to know where we were, so we proceeded. Turned roughly north onto Dutch Flat road. We stopped at two grain storage bins, seeing both Mt Hood (near enough) and Mt Adams (far away).
We passed a combine operation, as the wheat harvest is still in full swing.
Then we wended our way back over about 15 miles of gravel road. Skyline Road is just that: high on the plateau and right at the edge of steep falloffs. I drove in the middle of the road, and even in the left lane to hug the hillside. The land had clearly been range land, shown by all the decrepit barbed wire fencing. What wasn’t fallow range land was in wheat … thousands on thousands of acres. After skinnying our way back down the road, we got back into The Dalles. Top speed on those back roads was 20 mph!
