We’ve been on the road again. Monica & David returned from Norway on Monday afternoon. Tony picked them up at the airport in Yakima and then we fixed dinner and enjoyed hearing the details of their travels. David showed us all the pictures they had taken and we were up until after 11:00. We left new friends yesterday, driving from Yakima, southwest to the Columbia River Gorge. We are staying at Columbia Hills Historical State Park. There are petroglyphs on the rocks here in the campground. You can just drive up to them. Much easier to get to than the ones in Thermopolis! It is a really small campground on Horsethief Lake, which is a lake off of the Columbia River. We rode around the area yesterday. The biggest town is The Dalles, on the Oregon side of the river. The interstate runs parallel to the Columbia River on the Oregon side and a state highway runs parallel on the Washington side. We have to take the interstate in Oregon because we can’t fit through the tunnels just up the road. Coming from Yakima, the land was still high desert. We were driving along, and then, POP, a huge snow-capped mountain appeared in the distance.
We thought it might be Mt. St. Helen. We kept getting glimpses of “a” mountain, thinking it was a view from different sides. When we ate dinner in The Dalles, our waiter told us that there were two mountains/volcanoes within viewing distance – Mt. Baker and Mt. Hood. While riding around after dinner, we came to a pullout with information panels that said “East high desert meets West maritime forest”. We had a panoramic view, with the river down in the gorge, of the desert land giving way to lush, green forest – finally trees again. Good-bye sagebrush. In this small campground, the couple parked next to us are from South Carolina and the wife was a Durden and had lived in Portal, GA. Small world. The family on the other side of us has a daughter with MS with almost identical symptoms to me. They told us she had been taking a new, yearly injection that helped control the symptoms and that it had worked really well for her. David, who we housesat for, is a general physician. He told us that Washington state has the highest percentage of people with MS living in it. Don’t know if it is because of the climate and they have moved here. But Washington is supposed to be one of the top states in cutting edge medicine for MS. And we had our diesel pumped for us last night – it is a law in Oregon (1 of 2 states in the US) that they have an attendant pump gas/diesel for you. You cannot pump your own. I felt like I was back in Statesboro in the 70’s, pulling up to Harold Deloach’s Chevron station and telling them to “fill it up”. I have never liked pumping gas. We will (hopefully) see the Pacific Ocean for the first time tomorrow – heading to Rockaway Beach, Oregon before going to our next housesit in Ocean Shores, Washington. Our adventure continues. Thank you, Lord, for keeping us safe and fulfilling my dream of traveling the US. You have brought so many new friends into our lives. Monica and I sat and talked “God talk” yesterday before we left. I could have stayed and talked for several more hours. His creation is so beautiful. Everywhere we go, there is so much diversity and He just keeps surprising us. So, so thankful for a loving, protecting Father. More pictures of the mountains – not sure which one is which, the gorge, and the dam with the locks on it for moving the ships up the river.
We are going walking later this evening around the park and back to petroglyphs. We may go to fireworks tonight in the next biggest town on the river, so will maybe post some more pictures later.
GA Gypsies - Fulltiming 