Driving Banff, British Columbia to Portland, Oregon via Idaho

The mountains in Banff National Park are all sedimentary rock, and it has a very different feel than other places we’ve been this summer. It is sort of like driving around Utah with lakes and trees, though with less color.

Hector Lake, Banff Natl Park, AB

Friday morning the weather was cloudy with drizzle, and the scenery consequently much diminished. We drove into the shopping area of Lake Louise, and it was a madhouse. It seems to be the one destination for everyone who visits this park, and the first impression is of traffic and parking lots. We were there to buy a few groceries, and get some information about Kootenay National Park.

Buying a few groceries almost every day is a real difference from our sailing trip. Grocers were few and far between while sailing, so we had to make major shopping trips when we had the chance. Driving, there is always someplace to get some food, and since our food storage capacity in the van is limited, we never buy much. We are especially pressed for storage space this trip, since we have two dogs and a load of Melissa’s Alaska stuff. That makes a big difference, and we spend a lot more time shifting things around.

Another major difference between car camping and sailing is being strapped into a seat in the van. On the boat we are free to move around and do whatever we want. On deck we always are tethered to the boat. The conditions in this part of the world are too challenging to do man-overboard procedures. Sailing on the Oregon Coast, we learned that the man-overboard procedure is to simply wave goodbye, since you are very unlikely to ever see that person alive again.

On the boat, one person is always in charge, making sure that the boat is headed in the right direction, and not going to run into a drifting log or iceberg, but that only requires looking around every minute or so, letting the autopilot do its thing, or hand steering toward some landmark. When sails need to be changed, the other person helps out, but unless the conditions are especially challenging, it is a very relaxing way to travel. In the van, of course, we can’t move around at all, and the person driving has to be continuously very attentive to what is going on. Things happen very quickly.

Bow Lake, Banff Natl Park, AB

The other striking difference with the van is economic. Every day we are pouring huge quantities of expensive gasoline into the beast (especially in Canada where it is $6-$8/gal), whether the wind is favorable or not. Also, free overnight anchorages are much harder to find, while things like coffee shops are much easier to find.

Well, back in Lake Louise, we decided to forgo a look at the lake. It was obvious that it was clouded in, and also obvious that it would be packed with people taking pictures of the clouds. We flirted with the idea of taking a hike to see the Burgess Shale, but found that we should have reserved a spot a month or more ago, and that I should probably get a knee replacement first, as it is a considerable and challenging hike.

So, we drove off and headed down into Kootenay National Park. I sort of expected this to be a minor back road, but it had a huge amount of traffic, all moving very fast. Of course it was Friday of Labor Day Weekend (actually in Canada it is Labour Day Weekend), and for some unknown reason a significant fraction of Calgary was driving down this road. There was a large forest fire underway, with signs warning about smoke limiting visibility, but it was mostly pouring rain, so that was not a problem.

At the bottom of the road we encountered a significant traffic jam in the town of Radium Hot Springs, where all of this fast traffic reached a stop sign. We drove up in the hills and got a camp site, making an early end to the day. It was pretty clear that campgrounds were going to fill up quickly on this long weekend.

Radium Hot Springs, BC

By now the weather had improved considerably, and it was only a couple mile hike to Radium Hot Springs, which are part of the national park. So we added another hot spring to our experience this year, and I have to say we certainly have seen a variety. This one was sort of like going to the YMCA. There was a large building built over a rushing creek, with a shop selling ice cream and t-shirts. You entered, stood in line, and paid your admission fee at the reception desk. There were men and women’s locker rooms to change into suits, showers to clean yourself before and after, and two pools, one warm, and one somewhat cool. The latter had diving boards and slides; they both had lifeguards. The warm pool had been slightly chlorinated, and had cold water added to make it more acceptable. Of course, the temperature that is most acceptable to the majority of the population is about a warm bath, so it was not very exciting. It was also packed with people who spent their time looking at us while we looked at them. I’m afraid it wasn’t much of an adventure. There was one neat event, as I encountered two bighorn sheep rams browsing along the road near the campground. They didn’t seem to think I was much of a threat, which I suppose was correct.

Bighorn Sheep, Radium Hot Springs, BC

The literature they provide the public tells us that it is named Radium Hot Springs because it has radon in it, causing it to be slightly, but not harmfully radioactive. As a chemist I heave a deep sigh. Radium is a highly reactive metal, while radon is a noble gas. They are both radioactive; who knows what the truth is? I’ll not take this opportunity to go on a rant about chemical illiteracy, and you can be thankful for that.

Columbia River, Radium Hot Springs, BC

Saturday we continued our drive south down the valley. It was a bit of a surprise on several fronts. First of all, we saw the first brown grass on the entire trip. This corresponded with the appearance of Ponderosa pine trees, also a first. It had a central Oregon feel about it, though the mountains were more craggy; it was a very attractive valley. The other major surprise was the economy. I had somehow envisioned a valley dependent upon ranching and logging, with perhaps a bit of mining thrown in. Well. It was filled with golf courses, condominiums (should that be condominia?), restaurants, bed and breakfasts, and all the accoutrements of a major tourist destination. As I said, it had a central Oregon feel about it.

Columbia River, Radium Hot Springs, BC

We tried to drive into a lakeside town called Invermere, but got into a tremendous traffic jam. Nineteen out of twenty cars were from Alberta (we are in British Columbia). Albertans are to western Canada as Californians are to the western US. There are far too many of them, and they have too much money. As a result, they drive up real estate prices, and ruin the nice spots. If you’re an American, and thus know nothing at all about Canada, Alberta is flush with oil money. You have probably heard about the tar sands, and the proposed pipelines that are in the news. Let me hasten to add that some of my best friends are filthy rich Albertans (and Californians for that matter).

Columbia Lake, BC

Continuing south we crossed a moderate sized creek flowing north that was remarkable only because the sign on the bridge said “Columbia River.” We shortly arrived at an overlook of a good sized lake, Columbia Lake, bordered by rugged mountains that is, in fact, the source of the Columbia River. It is a gorgeous lake, and a suitable beginning for such a magnificent river. The odd thing, of course, is that the river is flowing in the wrong direction. It goes several hundred miles north into the mountains of BC before making a 180 degree turn and flowing south into Washington, before becoming the border between Washington and Oregon.

Columbia Lake, BC

The geography of the rivers here is hard to figure. When the Columbia makes its turn south, it is a few miles from running into the Fraser. The Fraser is the largest river in British Columbia, and it also goes hundreds of miles north before turning south and running out to sea near Vancouver. The Kootenay, which we followed south from Banff, comes very close to Columbia Lake. In fact a man with a bulldozer could probably connect the two in a weekend of work. However, they remain separated by a mile or two of marshy land, and the Kootenay continues to flow south into Montana. It eventually turns west and flows into Idaho, and then back north returning to British Columbia, where it does, in fact, finally join the Columbia.

We drove into the good-sized town of Cranbrook where we transferred some American money to our Canadian account, obtained some food and a map of Idaho. If we had planned this trip, we would have arrived with suitable maps and information about Idaho, but I never imagined we would be in Idaho this year. Actually, as it turns out, the official highway map of Idaho is just barely suitable. It will get your from A to B, but doesn’t provide much else. I think the rise of smart phones is helping to hasten the demise of good maps. Cranbrook was a long series of strip malls and box stores that could have been anywhere in North America.

 Jeanie & Beaver Gnawed Tree, Yahk Prov Park, BC, Sep 2013

We stopped for the night just short of the border in Yahk Provincial Park. It was a pretty low key sort of place on the Moyrie River. The river was running low, and provided a nice relaxing spot for the dogs to get a water fix. Two nature events of note. First was the red squirrel who was incensed that we had camped near his tree. He chattered incessantly, and then started chewing chunks of wood out of the trunk of a cottonwood and dropping them down on us. They were good sized pieces of wood, perhaps 1 inch by 4 inches. The other was another cottonwood tree that was being worked on by beavers. It was almost 3 feet in diameter, and had been chewed 7/8ths of the way around, so that there was only about half of the original wood remaining. I wonder if a beaver has ever been killed by a falling tree?

 Sunday, September 1 we finally arrived back in the States. The border crossing was uneventful, and we managed to not mention a few items that would have been an issue. Nothing really major, just stuff like dog food and tomatoes. I caught his interest telling him we had a pepper, and after questioning we assured him that it had been cut in half. That seemed to satisfy his curiosity. We don’t take many risks in border crossings because we have Nexus cards that we don’t want to lose. These provide two benefits. One is that we can use the special express lane when driving across the border south of Vancouver. This often saves us a half hour or more of waiting. The other, and more important benefit, is that it allows us to sail across the border in our boat without going to a port of entry. We can call them on our cell phone, and get permission to enter the country. This is a huge convenience that is not worth losing for something like smuggling a few bottles of wine.

An interesting and surprising fact was that the total distance we have driven to get back to the US is almost exactly the same as the distance we sailed – 1836 nautical miles. Another interesting observation (at least to me) is that the distance recorded by our GPS was almost exactly the same as that on our knotmeter log. The knotmeter calculates the distance based upon our speed through the water. Due to currents, this is not the same as the distance traveled over the ground. However, on such a long trip it appears that the currents pushing us backwards were exactly cancelled by the currents pushing us forward.

For those of you who are not boaters, you must now suffer through another tutorial. A nautical mile is 15% longer than a statute mile (the normal mile we are used to), so we sailed 2111 statute miles. The nautical mile was originally defined as the distance equal to one minute of latitude. There are 60 minutes in one degree of latitude. So, for example, the southern border of Oregon is 42 degrees and the northern is 46 degrees. It is thus 240 nautical miles from one border to the other.

This definition became slightly problematic when people figured out that the earth is not a sphere. It is somewhat flattened at the poles. As a result, a minute of latitude is not the same everywhere, and they had to come up with another definition. However, for the average mariner, this difference is pretty small, and not worth worrying about. Nautical charts are produced at all sorts of different scales, but you can always figure out the distances by setting your pair of dividers equal to one minute of latitude, and then stepping it off on the chart. All charts have latitude and longitude marked along the borders. This is very convenient, and is the main reason that nautical miles are still in wide use for navigation by sea.

As a further aside, a speed of one nautical mile per hour is defined as one knot, so measuring speeds in knots makes calculations of distances in nautical miles easy. They are called knots because originally the speed was determined by throwing a device over the stern of the boat that was tied to a carefully knotted rope. You would let it stream out for a fixed amount of time (using an hour glass), and count how many knots passed through your fingers. I guess that’s enough for today, but there may be a quiz tomorrow.

Kootenai River Valley, ID

Shortly after entering Idaho we encountered the Kootenay River (the Kootenai in the US) flowing north, back to its Canadian origins. When we last saw it in Canada it was rushing south through largely uninhabited forested mountains. Here in Idaho it meandered north through a broad agricultural valley. In general, it was quite striking how much more developed Idaho is than the bordering area of British Columbia.

We drove through downtown Bonner’s Ferry and Sandpoint, both of which were very attractive. I associate Sandpoint with ultraconservative fanatics, but it seemed like a reasonable place. Perhaps they don’t get a balanced amount of publicity. The day went very well, in fact, until we neared Coeur D’Alene. Actually, it wasn’t very near Coeur d’Alene at all, but miles out of town. The city has an enormous suburban sprawl to the north, and we drove slowly through endless shopping developments. By now it was also getting pretty hot, at least for folks who have been in Alaska all summer.

Our goal was to get downtown near the lake, find a park, and eat lunch. We eventually did find a beautiful downtown park, but had a terrible time finding a place to park the car. There is a college there, which makes parking especially problematic. I remember when I was in graduate school at Berkeley, one of the chemistry faculty won the Nobel Prize. At an informal celebration, the Dean of the College said that it was nice enough to have another Nobel laureate on the faculty, but everyone knew the real significance of this award. Nobel laureates were given their own personal parking place by the university, thus opening up a spot for someone else to park.  

Eventually we succeeded in parking, and walked with the dogs over to the park with our lunch to find “No Dogs Allowed” signs everywhere. It was too hot to leave them in the car, so we sat and ate lunch on the verge, breathing in auto exhaust, and commiserating with other dog owners who passed by in disappointment. Downtown seemed to be very pleasant, but it was too late to develop a good feeling about Couer d’Alene. The waterfront was a bustle of activity, mostly related to speedboats, and Labor Day weekend was in full swing.

We were shocked at how hot it was. We came with our Alaska clothing, and are well equipped with wool socks, extra sweaters and long sleeved shirts, but a bit lacking in things like shorts. Who would have thought it would be hot in August?

After reading over some tourist material, we decided to take a scenic route down the east side of Coeur d’Alene Lake. I suppose it is scenic if you consider looking at glimpses of the pretty lake behind private homes scenic. It turned out to be a very slow, twisting road, and the property was completely private, with essentially no public access, or even places to pull over and admire the lake. This drove Toucan absolutely crazy, and he let us know about it.

Near the end of the road there was a public dock with about 50 feet of lake frontage. Dogs had to be on a leash, but at least they got some water time. Later there was a Forest Service campground down a 3-mile road that provided lake access, and the dogs got a good swim. We tend to take public access for granted, and it was hard to believe that one of the premier lakes in the west had no public parks on it.

We continued the drive through the Paul Bunyan Days crowd in St Marie, and on to Heyburn State Park. It was a very confusing place with poor signage, but we did miraculously find an empty camp site (the last one). True it was next to the water spigot and the rest rooms, and had little shrubbery or privacy, but it was a place to stop, and we were definitely ready to stop. This morning Idaho seemed like a nice place; this afternoon it has lost a good deal of its shine.

Monday we awoke to light rain, so packed up and got out of there. We drove to the first small farming community called Plummer, and had breakfast at the café. It was decorated in a “we support our troops” theme, and the people there were incredibly friendly and nice. The food was dreadful.

Driving south toward Moscow we passed through country that was surprisingly reminiscent of Pennsylvania. There were many small family farms, with picturesque barns, growing mostly wheat and hay, backed by low, wooded hills (though in Pennsylvania these would be called mountains). The trees are conifers rather than deciduous, but the impression is the same. This is very different country than the sagebrush valleys of southern Idaho, or the forested mountains of central Idaho. As a matter of fact, it’s hard to understand why Idaho exists as it does. The northern part is essentially part of eastern Washington, and it is nearly impossible to travel to the southern part, except on small mountain roads. It doesn’t seem to make much sense as one political unit.

Getting closer to Moscow we entered the Palouse. This is a very interesting region that is made of loess. This is soil that has been deposited by wind. Most soils originated from some process involving water. The wind deposition means it doesn’t contain any rocks or pebbles, and it apparently makes for very good farming. This area, however, doesn’t get much precipitation, so the best crop turns out to be wheat. There is virtually no flat land; it is all gently rolling hills, and they are all covered in wheat. At his time of the year they are mostly covered in wheat stubble, since most of it has been harvested, but it makes a very attractive scene of endless rolling, golden hills.

In Moscow we made a small detour to drive through the campus of the University of Idaho. I expect that is an odd professional quirk of mine, to check out university campuses as we travel. The Idaho travel literature touts its Gothic administration building, which turns out to be decidedly Tudor I’m afraid. I know - I’m too critical. At least that’s what my family and my students always say.

Lewiston, ID and Clarkston, WA

Continuing south through the wheat eventually brought us to the rim of a deep gorge, at the bottom of which was the Snake River and the city of Lewiston, Idaho. We stopped to look at the view, and encountered the Lewis-Clark College baseball team, which had just run up to the top from downtown. This seemed to be rather excessive training for baseball, but they said it is an old team tradition to do it once a year. The head coach, who is in his second year, said he did it last year with the team, and it nearly killed him.

We descended, crossed the river to Clarkston, Washington, and had a dog break in a pleasant park along the river. The river here is actually a lake, formed by the controversial dams on the Snake River. These dams provide electricity, and allow shipping to reach inland, far from the ocean, but they also have destroyed the salmon runs in Idaho.

Joseph Canyon, OR

We continued south on what can only be described as an obscure road that connects Clarkston with Enterprise, Oregon. There’s not much call for people to make that trip, but the states do provide a road for those who do. It mostly goes through wheat and ranch country with no significant settlements. The most notable part was a 2500 foot descent to the Grande Ronde River, followed by a 2500 foot climb back out. These were pretty steep and twisty bits.

At any rate, we have succeeded in returning to Oregon, though we are about as far from Ashland as you could possibly be and still be in the state. This raises the question of how long I should keep writing this. It was supposed to follow our sailing trip to Alaska, but I decided that the ferry trips, and driving in the Yukon would continue to be of interest. A logical end point would have been our return to Nanaimo, completing the circle, but we decided not to go there. So now we’re back in Oregon, so maybe that should be the end – or should it go until we are finally home? I’m pretty certain that at some point, our daily activities will become of little interest to you. I suspect that they already have become that for many of you, but you’re probably not reading this anyway.

Well, to finish the day, Enterprise is a classic western cattle ranching town, sitting at the base of the spectacular Wallowa Mountains. We bought some food, and then went to the Terminal Gravity brewery for lunch. I suppose that this small town has a brewery suggests that it’s not the typical cattle town, but you have to consider that it is in beer-crazy Oregon. At any rate the beer and the food were great, and the place was packed with interesting people. It started to sprinkle so we went inside and sat at the bar, which always adds interest to a meal. There were tourists like us there, but it was mostly locals, many stopping off to have a growler filled, or to pick up a case of beer to get them through the rest of Labor Day.

Joseph, OR

We drove a few miles south to Joseph. This is another ranching town of about a thousand people, but it has been transformed in a rather surprising fashion. It has become a center for bronze casting, and is filled with galleries and shops. There are bronze sculptures on display all over town. All of the bronze for the World War II Memorial in Washington DC was cast here. We were last here 25 years ago, and the transformation of the town is truly astonishing.

 Sculpture, Joseph, OR

Toucan & Schooner, Joseph, OR, Sep 2013

We drove along the impressive glacial moraine of Wallowa Lake, and found a quiet camp site in the mostly empty state park. The sense of relief that Labor Day was over was almost palpable among the employees. We went down to the lake with the dogs where we chased sticks, and played in the sand. We will stay here again tomorrow to take a break from this continuous travel.

West Fork Wallowa River, OR

After breakfast on Tuesday we decided to go on a short hike into the Eagle Cap Wilderness. We figured it would be good to do this early to avoid the heat of the day and any possible afternoon thunderstorms. The first part of the trail was one we had last hiked in 1988 at the beginning of a two-week backpacking trip with our good friends the Chambers. We had two eight year olds, two 11 year olds and one 8 month old child with us, and it brought back a lot of nice memories.

We were only planning a hike of two or three miles, and took off without much preparation. About one third of the way there we encountered an unexpected event – the morning thunderstorm. It soon became clear that we would be soaking wet whether we turned back or continued on, so we continued. We had made absolutely no preparation for this eventuality, hiking along with no parkas in our cotton clothing.

Trail to BC Falls, Wallowa Mts, OR

After a while we began remembering various stories that involved hypothermia. A common theme was killing your horse or sled dog, and crawling into the warm carcass to save your life. We rather wished we still had our St. Bernard Brandy, instead of the rather small looking current set of dogs. I thought how surprised people would be when they found our bodies. “They had decades of experience hiking and camping in the wilderness. How could they have been so careless? I suppose their dementia was worse than we thought.”

Well, we eventually made it to the waterfall which was our goal, and it looked like any of a hundred waterfalls we have seen over the years. Definitely not worth dying for. On the return the trail had become a series of pools connected by rushing streams, and we were soaked to the skin. By the time we returned to the trailhead, the rain had ceased, and warm sunlight began to appear. There were no afternoon thunderstorms.

Changing into dry clothes was the obvious next step, except that we were wearing the last of our clean dry clothes. The others were all bundled up for the laundry, which we planned to do in town during the afternoon thunderstorms. So we managed a partial clothes change, returned to camp and ran Jean’s hair dryer to dry both hair and, to some extent, clothing.

Lunch in a warm building seemed like a good idea, and we went to the town brewery. That’s right, Joseph, which is half the size of tiny Enterprise, also has its own brewery. Oregon is an odd place in some respects, but more often than not you can find a brewery in any town of reasonable size. Reasonable size is measured in thousands, not millions.

View from Dundas' House, Joseph, OR

After getting the laundry started, we stopped by a gift shop that is owned by friends from Ashland who moved here 15 or 20 years ago. We talked a long time, and eventually went back to their home for dinner. They live atop a moraine overlooking Joseph, with the horizon filled with high mountains. It was good to see them, and a nice change of pace for us.

View from Mt Howard, Wallowa Mtns, OR

Wednesday morning we took advantage of the sunny and dry weather to take a ride up the Mt Howard tram. When we were here backpacking 25 years ago, we saw the tram as an intrusion on the otherwise unspoiled mountains, and couldn’t imagine why anyone would pay all that money to go up there with a crowd of people. Well, we did it, and it was great. It was after Labor Day, so there was no real crowd, the trails at the top provided wonderful views into the wilderness, and well done informative signs about the subalpine ecosystem. Sacrificing the top of one mountain so the average person can have this experience is probably overall a good thing.

Wallowa Lake from Mt Howard, Wallowa Mtns, OR

This got us off to a late start, but we don’t have to be at Derek’s in Wilsonville until Friday, so it was no problem. We could have gone to Portland in one long day on the interstate, but that’s not our style. So we drove over to LaGrande, and then took the back road through the Blue Mountains to Ukiah, and south to Mt Vernon, on the John Day River, where we spent the night. This is pretty empty ranching and forest country, and involved a lot of ups and downs, as we cut across the grain of the land. We encountered the North Fork, Middle Fork and Main stems of the John Day River. We also encountered a number of thunderstorms, including one in the middle of the night.

Thursday we drove to John Day, and then south up to the top of the pass, where we took off west on a county road to see a part of Oregon that we had never visited. The first half, through Izee and Suplee was quite attractive with a number of prosperous ranches in the creek bottoms. The South Fork of the John Day was especially nice, with the nicest ranch called Inshallah – an unusual name for this part of the world. The most interesting thing about both Izee and Suplee was that they didn’t exist. They are there on the map, but when you get there, there is absolutely nothing – not even a ruined building or two. There are some nearby ranches, but the towns have disappeared completely. This caused us some concern, as we began to doubt whether we were on the right road. The roads on the map all have numbers, but there are no numbers on the roads themselves. I think they figure if you’re driving these roads, you must live here, and must know where you are.

Paulina, OR

After Suplee, the scenery became more typical of Eastern Oregon, with sagebrush and juniper trees covering hilly country. We arrived at the town of Paulina, and found that it did exist. It even had a school, and a general store/post office/bar. We bought some sodas and candy bars at the store, and ate them sitting on the front porch. A three-year old named Ashley rode over on his bike, and told us that we couldn’t get out of town the way our car was pointed, but would have to turn around and go back the way we came. When I asked him why, he replied that “you can’t cross that line.” Talking with his father, we learned that Ashley wasn’t allowed to cross that line on his bike, so he figured that must apply to everyone. 

We also talked with a man who owned a local ranch. He said that they had considered buying Inshallah, but it was too far from town. The one they bought is only a one hour drive to Prineville. This is not a one hour drive to the big box stores or shopping malls; this is a one hour drive to the first store of any sort that is not a general store.

The other store that is closer we found in the town of Post. Post is slightly famous as the geographic center of Oregon, and the town consists of one general store that also serves food. There are no other buildings at all.

Continuing our drive down the Crooked River, which was almost dry from all the irrigation water drawn from it to water pastures, we finally made it to Prineville. It was much larger than we had remembered. When you are storing your digital photos and information “in the cloud,” you are really storing it in places like Prineville. It has low electricity rates due to the Columbia River hydro system, and is a relatively cold climate, reducing the cost of cooling all those computers.

We went to a local park on the river for lunch, and were approached by an elderly man, who told us that he had two Chesapeake Retrievers in his truck, one of them didn’t like other dogs, and he wasn’t sure he could control the dog when he let it out. He allowed as how “it’s a free country,” and we could stay there with our dogs if we wanted, but he just wanted us know. He had a bumper sticker “I don’t believe the liberal media.” Well, we tied up our dogs to a post, and ate lunch. When he took his dogs to the river there was no incident. Interesting people you meet when traveling.

Driving west to Redmond, we were once again surprised at how much it had grown. We also got a bit lost on the new roads that aren’t shown on our old road atlas. This area of central Oregon is high desert with excellent access to the mountains, lakes and rivers. It has really boomed in the past few decades.

We encountered a huge thunderstorm on the road to Sisters, and had to pull off and wait for it to pass, as the wind, rain and hail made driving somewhat problematic. You shouldn’t be surprised to hear that we found that Sisters had really grown since we were last here. We stopped to check out campgrounds at Suttle Lake, near Santiam Pass. The campgrounds were great, but it was wet, windy and cold. Driving some more seemed a better choice.

North Santiam River, Niagara, OR

We finally settled into a campsite on the bank of the North Santiam River. It was still wet, but no wind, and quite a bit warmer, as we had dropped down about 3000 feet. It is nice to be back in Oregon and once again see some really big trees. Oregon has cut down most of its old growth forest, just like British Columbia, but Oregon has done a much better job of disguising it. They have maintained scenic corridors along most of the main highways, so you get the impression that you are driving through ancient forests. Well, you are, but they are pretty skinny. There was only one other family in the entire campground.

Friday we drove to our son Derek’s house in Wilsonville, south of Portland, and this is probably a good time to stop writing this seemingly endless travelogue. We’re back in country with which most of you are familiar, and the details of visiting family are not of much interest, unless I’m going to turn them into a compelling novel, which is not likely. You won’t be surprised to hear that our 10-month old grandson Rowan has grown – much like Central Oregon.