We left Portland this morning and headed onto the Mt. Hood Scenic Byway. After driving through some thick fog, we finally got above it and rounded a corner onto a great view of the summit of Mt. Hood. It's over 11,000', but for some reason I thought it was bigger (over 14k'). From the ski lodge where we stopped, it didn't look that as intimidating as I'd pictured. It's a very prominent peak, however, with no other peaks nearly that high anywhere to be seen.
After leaving Mt. Hood, we headed out onto Columbia River Scenic Byway, which was a nice surprise. The river was really choppy, almost like a bay. Across the river, there were rolling, treeless hills stretching off to the distance, and walls of rock rising up on the side next to us.
We made into Washington, which was basically just miles and miles of hills as far as we could see. It was nice scenery and we made good time from there until we finally made it into Idaho.
We stopped for a few hours at Lake Coeur D'Alene to have dinner and check the place out. It's kind of like Palm Springs, except instead of being in a desert, it's near a lake. There were a lot of people hanging out at the resort that we stopped at, but it's hard to figure out what they were really doing there (chillaxing, probably).
After Coeur D'Alene, we planned to drive into Montana. But, seeing that the road was tough to drive at night, we decided to stop a little early in a town called Mullan. Unfortunately, the only hotel there was one that looked like it was straight out of Vacancy. So, we turned around and headed back to a town called Wallace. We filled up with gas at one of the three remaining stations in America that doesn't allow you to pay at the pump, and perhaps the only station in America with a camoflage-wearing family of wanderers hanging out in it.
The hotel we ended up in is actually pretty nice. Tomorrow, we'll be driving into Glacier and most likely camping there tomorrow night. Today marked the first day in the trip that I was actually getting closer to home; so, that's something.
1 comment:
I hit a gas station in the Texas panhandle that also does not allow you to pay at the pump. I wonder where the third is?
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