Saturday, July 21, 2007

19. Columbia Gorge

Our first change of plan happened on Monday. We stayed up pretty late Sunday night watching the Tempest, and decided not to
bust out early Monday morning. So, instead of going up to Crater Lake (which Jake wasn't that keen on seeing anyway), then
cutting diagonally across Oregon, we decided to stick to the interstates, going up I-5 then across I-82, a longer but faster route.

The route took us through Eugene, home of the University of Oregon, so we finally did Boomer some good, getting a photo of him
in front of the stadium where the Ducks play.

Skirting the edge of Portland, we then paralleled the south bank of the Columbia for most of the width of Oregon. I'm not going to try to describe the beauty of the Columbia Gorge, many others have already done it better than I could and anyway we pretty much blasted through it at 70mph without taking much time to appreciate it. But we did have an early dinner at a restaurant right on the water in Hood River. I knew that the easter half of Oregon and Washington is desert, but I was surprised at how abrupt the change is. One moment we were in a rain forest, the next we might as well have been in Nevada.

At the end of the day we crossed the Columbia into Washington. We stayed Monday night in Kennewick.

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