Saturday, September 15, 2015

A month on the road, wow!  

As we pulled in to our Cascade Locks KOA in Cascade Locks, OR, I was reminded of the story told from the pulpit at Twin Oaks Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, MO:  "What did the monkey say when he got his tail caught in the lawnmower?  IT WON'T BE LONG NOW!"  Within a week, we will be at the end of our Lewis and Clark Trail journey in Fort Clatsop at the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon.

SUMMARY

So at the end of our 5th full week, ... we've

• driven 6,154 miles
• camped at 19 Campgrounds
• crossed 25 States
• crossed 37 Rivers
• seen total of 86 bird species (6 unidentified, unconfirmed)

TODAY

We left the Columbia Sun RV camp at 9:15am and drove along the southern route on Rt84 to eventually camp at Cascade Locks, OR along the Historic Columbia River Highway.  Lewis and Clark were logging 60-80 miles per day now down the Columbia and with every passing day, getting more and more excited to get to the Pacific.

We're small compared to the wind turbines, but ...

We passed at least 2-3 dams along Columbia River and could understand how the river changed when large parts of it became lakes.  

...we're tiny compared to the 1+ mile width of the Columbia
River and the tiny trucks and cars we see across the river
on Rt 14 on the Washington state side.  We avoided that
"scenic route" because we were told it's two lane (no problem),
winds a lot and is tight against the hills (hmmm)
So we took Rt 84, two lane highway in Ora-gun.

Columbia Gorge Discovery Center and Museum, Wasco, OR

We stopped In Wasco, OR at the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center and Museum.  A very nice museum along the Columbia River off Rt84 which has good summaries and L&C displays and rich Indian history.  

Stephen Ambrose and other authors suggest that the boys of the
Corps of Discovery were eating about "9 pounds of meat per day,
per man."

It's very sad to see the old videos at museums like this when they interview old Indian men and women about "the years past", especially how at the Gorge, their culture and life cycles of harvesting Salmon and Steelhead fish was forever changed with dams.  

Jefferson had a way of "slipping expenses
past the financial people." He budgeted, and
Congress approved, $2,500 for the Expedition, but gave Lewis permission to write "letters of credit" to any vendors, beginning in Philadelphia, PA in 1803 and ending in Washington, DC. This was a "best kept
secret" of Thomas Jefferson.

Another shock;  very windy again today, with whitecaps on the Columbia River as we drove west, directly into the wind.  There were quite a few fishing boats on the river, all drifting east.

Tomorrow, we will investigate a local church, see some sights, more sights on Monday, and then leave Tuesday towards the final stretch to Cape Disappointment in WA and Fort Clatsop in OR, where the Corps wintered 1805-1806.

.