Today was mostly a driving day (528 miles), but we did visit
Palouse Falls
and bagged an Idaho
letterbox.
The hour or so drive along I-84 through the Columbia Gorge
from Troutdale to The Dalles
afforded some great last views of the region and at the same time provided a
stark contrast. The west end of the
gorge closer to Portland
is lush and green. The east end is dry
and barren -- in fact so barren that we saw the remains of forest fires dotting
the hillside above The Dalles. A helicopter with a dangling hose flew right
above us and we assume it was getting water from the river to fight the
fire. Wish we got a picture.
We continued toward the east side of Oregon and Washington and were amazed at how desolate it is
– there is hardly anything growing!
And we watched the temperature rise. Our entire summer trip hardly had any
temperatures that even hit the 80’s, but today it got up to 102 degrees. Amidst this barren, hot, landscape stands Palouse Falls (about 200ft).
In one direction it reminded us of southwest canyons, but
this area was carved more by glacial floods than slow erosion.
Our camping plan was to stay at a nearby KOA, but since we
didn’t have a reservation and wanted to escape the heat we decided to continue
on our way and see what we could find. We
stopped in beautiful Coeur D’Alene for an Idaho letterbox and
wifi, and Bill scouted out potential places to camp. We were very fortunate! When we pulled into the 13-site national
forest campground at 11:30pm there were available sites and a few were even
large enough for a trailer. This picture with our trailer in the background
shows how close we were to our route.
We expect limited connectivity for the next several days as
we’ll be at Glacier
National Park, so may not
post for a few days.
