Day 1 – Eastern Oregon
November 7th, 2008 Posted in 2008 Alaska trip2008-06-14, Saturday
Redding, CA (07:20am) to Pasco, WA
The weather is great for the (real) first day of the trip. After trying to wipe off the bugs from driving thru I-5 last night (and failed) we head north towards Oregon. Mt. Shasta is clearly visible under the blue sky, something we don’t see very often driving thru this area in wintertime. We stopped at a few vista points to take pictures of the mountain and the bug covered truck. This is going to be hard to clean…
We took 97 north towards eastern Oregon, this is new to me as I dont think I’ve ever been to this part of Oregon before. We had lunch at one of the rest stop, picnic table, trees and birds, and lots of mosquitoes! Lunch is tuna salad in tortilla wrap, tasty and quick. We also stopped by DQ and got a blizzard in the afternoon.
We drive past Newberry National Volcanic Monument’s Lava Lands visitor center and decided to check it out. It’s just right next to the road and they take our park pass so we didnt have to feel bad about paying full park fees and stayed for only half an hour. There’s a road up to the top of the Lava Butte with very good views. I can see why they want to setup a fire lookout here!
Continuing north we saw Mt. Adams and probably Mt. Hood, we are not good at identifying landmarks anyway. At one of the rest stop we have some Cheetos and shortly after that some of them dont agree with David’s tummy. By the time we got to Columbia river it’s dinner time so we stopped at a McDonald to get me some dinner before following the river east.
When we got to Kennewick, WA we had our first supply trip to a local (giant) walmart: David got some apples and we picked up a bottle of Windex to replace the useless window wipes.
We stayed at Pasco, WA for the night.
Distance today: 529.4 miles.
FJ spotted: 1xTitanium (silver), 1xBlack Diamond (black), 1x Voodoo Blue (blue), 2x Sandstorm (tan), 1x Sun Fusion (yellow) and 1x 2007 SE (black with black roof).