This
year's summer holiday was a 2 week road trip from Victoria
to California...by way of Salmon Arm! The idea was to take
the coast as much as possible, enjoying the scenery at a leisurely pace
and hopefully make it down to Southern California to see my brother.
Turns out 2 weeks is not nearly long enough to make it all the way down
there if you want to enjoy the drive. Rather than rush it, we
took our time and turned back in Northern California - leaving lots of
terrain to explore some other time.
No
summer holiday is complete for us without a visit to Osoyoos, if
there's any way we can swing it! The above is our campsite right
on the lake at Nk'mip campground, still one of my favourite summer fun
campsites although it's getting kind of expensive these days.
From
Osoyoos we headed south to cross into the US at Oroville WA. I
always pay close attention to the road, as this photo shows, when I
have not driven it before.
Having
never really been to Central Washington, other than very briefly
transiting it about 18 years ago, I wasn't really sure what to expect.
Probably more or less the same as souther BC. Not so.
It was a really surprising place, and in a good way. We had
hot weather and total sun, which is no doubt the way to experience this
landscape. This was taken at the Chief Joseph Dam.
As I said, the landscape is very different from southern BC!
Roads
like this make me want to explore. Biking it would be great., but
you better pack a lot of water since it's hot and there are very few
towns.
This
and the next photos were taken at Dry Falls on the Grand Coulee.
We came across this by complete accident - just picking a road
that looked like it was a bit of a shortcut as we wound our way down to
Portland. It's over 5km wide, 120m deep and has a very
interesting story behind its formation.
Taking
the road down into the Coulee was pretty cool. I had no idea
such a large canyon existed in WA. This kind of scenery went on
for several km.
We got a tip from a local for an unmarked campsite near Yakima. Not bad - right on the river!
Hills
like this have always made we want to hike up them. At Cheryl's
suggestion, we climbed one that was across the road from our campsite
(that's the van down there). I'm really glad we did since the
view was phenomenal!
This was looking north up the river. Nice place to have a vineyard, I'd say.
Dry, treeless mountains are very cool in my opinion. Seems like you'd have endless hiking or mountain biking potential.
Glee due to the possibility of being the first person up this hill (this week, maybe).
Next
day, we followed the road south through the Yakima river valley.
Very pretty drive. So much nicer than blasting down the
interstate although much slower.
Getting close to the Oregon border. We crossed the Columbia river a couple of times, including at this bridge.
I
think we're in Oregon at this point but that's Washington across the
water. I like how there are vineyards where the slope is gradual
enough to allow for it.
Train tunnel right through a rock. Nowhere else for it to go, eh?
This
was getting close to Hood River, which seemed like it would be a very
cool place to stop and explore. It's a windsurfing/sailboarding
mecca and they were out there enjoying the strong steady winds
when we went past. But, we decided to keep moving to Portland for
the night since we have friends there that we were looking forward to
seeing.
|
