Pacific Northwest – Day 3

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Rainbow Motel in Bend, Oregon

You might be thinking that this photo was taken while we were checking in, but you’d be wrong; we were checking out. Not in the middle of the night either, it’s just that we have a lot of miles to cover, and sleep is not going to deliver us to our destination. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know the argument that it’s not the destination that’s important but the journey, but if we are sleeping, then we are not on the journey, are we? We spent the night in Bend, Oregon and while many motels use the price on the sign as bait, this one delivered, and we only paid $30 for a room.

Blue mountains in the early dawn, better known as Middle Sister (left), Black Hump (center but small), and North Sister (right).

Pink mountains as the morning arrives for the Three Sisters.

Crystal clear peak of Mount Washington in the light of the early sun.

Maybe the frost will melt off as the radiant heat of our local star reaches down from the mountain peaks and touches the lower surfaces of our planet.

I suppose that in a state that sits astride the Ring of Fire, it should not come as a surprise that the earth is boiling just below the surface, but still, I can’t help but stare upon the spectacle of the land belching steam that portends greater things happening below beyond our gaze.

We got off the road for a moment to find a view of Timothy Lake off National Forest Road 57.

Caroline Wise standing in a mountain stream below Mount Hood, Oregon

And then it was on to Mount Hood for a better view of the mountain when we spotted this stream where, of course, Caroline would have to doff her shoes once again to stand in one of America’s waterways.

Caroline Wise and John Wise at the Washington State Line

Add another state to the number we have visited as we step into Washington for the first time.

This is why we are happily married; we are both suckers for bridges. That’s right; nothing else binds us together quite like our fascination with these water-and-canyon-crossing human-engineered pathways. Love is a great bridge; just think about it for a second.

Mt. St. Helens, Oregon

It is pretty exciting, almost intimidating in some way actually, to visit a volcano that has been explosively active within our lifetimes. Mount St. Helens blew up back on May 18, 1980, and lowered the peak of this mountain by 1,300 feet. The violence the eruption unleashed was responsible for the death of 57 people caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Mt. St. Helens, Oregon

Twenty-two years later, the force of the blast is still on display, with trees stripped bare and lifeless from being pyrolyzed in the intense heat.

Mt. St. Helens, Oregon

Spirit Lake is filled with thousands of logs from the more than a million trees that were blasted down following the eruption of Mount St. Helens. The force of the volcano nearly drained the lake, creating waves up to 600 feet tall (183 meters) that crashed into a nearby ridge before settling back into its basin pulling a bunch of trees with it. The lake has been left as is following this calamity for scientists to study the impact of this once-in-a-lifetime event.

Passed this beautiful work of art on the S’Klallam Tribal Center in Jamestown on our way to our motel in Sequim, Washington, on the Olympic Peninsula.

California via Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Oregon – Day 3

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

This is the kind of perfect day that cements a sense of what a place is like allowing us to easily fall in love with it. So many times, Caroline and I have been so fortunate to head into an experience uncertain of what we’d find, only to end up delighted with what we encountered. We crossed from Oregon into Washington for our first visit to this state today, crossing at Biggs Junction, Oregon. How can we be this lucky to see Mount Hood in the distance while looking down the Columbia River?

Our drive west keeps us snug up against the north bank of the Columbia. The reason we are over here (besides the fact that we like collecting visits to new places on the map): Interstate 84 on the Oregon side is a divided highway, meaning there will only be a few places we might be able to pull over for a photo while on this side we can stop anywhere there’s a shoulder. If traffic is light, we can even stop right in the middle of the street and jump out for a down-the-middle-of-the-road shot.

While between us, only Caroline can say she’s ever been to Bingen, Germany, which sits on the Rhine River downstream from Wiesbaden, we can now brag that we’ve been to Bingen, Washington, the sister city of its older sibling in Germany. The Loafers Old World Bakery here is instantly one of our favorite bakeries we’ve ever been to in America. We especially enjoyed their granola.

We crossed the Columbia to visit Hood River, Oregon, because there was a bridge there, but we wouldn’t stay long. I wish we’d had time to stop in at the International Museum of Carousel Art, though.

Back the way we came over the Columbia River to the slower Washington side.

And back to Oregon on Bridge of the Gods. Yes, that really is its name. We are heading over to the Bonneville Dam.

Wow, a salmon ladder and an actual salmon in the wild, another first for us. Of course, we’d prefer that their natural habitat was being maintained, but the damage of damming our waterways has been done, and while not perfect, at least there’s some level of effort being made to allow the fish to keep this stretch of the river alive and healthy.

Not as easy to see the salmon swimming up the ladder from out here, but you get to see what it looks like from above, which salmon never will. During the salmon season this place gets busy, we hear.

To reach Multnomah Falls, we have to remain on the Oregon side of the river as the next bridge isn’t found until we get to Portland on the Oregon side or Vancouver on the Washington side. While in the area, we visited Horsetail and Wahkeena Falls. Beauty overdoses were had by one and all.

Don’t forget to see the little details while gawking at the giant awe-inspiring waterfalls that might otherwise steal all of your attention.

This was the last view I saw before I went over the edge in a barrel; just kidding.

We had no idea how rare this view was at the time, and while it may be difficult to make out details in such a small version of the image (I have a much larger panorama on my hard drive), to the left is a little white bump called Mt. Rainier, towards the middle, is Mt. St. Helens, and on the far right is Mt. Hood.

Just north of Garibaldi, Oregon, and up the road a hair from Pirates Cove Restaurant, is this pullout looking out on Tillamook Bay.

We are heading south towards California as we have quite the drive home if we are to make it back to Phoenix, Arizona, by Monday night. Still, though, we take time to visit beaches that look promising for a romantic walk along the shore.

Looking north while we hike out to the Cape Meares Lighthouse.

We probably couldn’t have timed this any better on arriving at the Cape Meares Lighthouse at sunset.

Looking south from the lighthouse and wishing we had a few more days out here on the coast.

Three Arch Rocks National Wildlife Refuge as seen from Oceanside beach near Maxwell Point. Moving south, we dawdled with stops everywhere we saw another small glint of sunset, but it turned out this was our best shot of the late day. It was after 10:00 p.m. when we finally got into Florence, Oregon, for an overnight stay at the Le Chateau Inn.