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I call it a half-day since 6 hours of it was sitting on a plane – Adrienne in First Class (she unknowingly and unwantingly got upgraded because of her Elite status!) and David back with the commoners. Flight was fine, got into PDX a bit before 1pm local time. Took a while to get our rental car (asked for a compact and the smallest they had was a Chevy Malibu – so far a pretty nice riding car), and then got on the road. Rather than taking the quickest route to Goldendale (via 84 along the Columbia River), David suggested we take a scenic route along US26 through Mount Hood. On the outskirts of Portland we happened (ok, maybe planned…) to find a Burgerville – the Portland equivalent to Beef-a-Roo – where lunch/dinner (was so filling!) was acquired. Should you visit, know the 10 onion ring basket gives you more than 10 onion rings! Food was very good, and then we were on our way to the Mountain. We stopped by Goverment Camp, OR (basically the peak of Mt. Hood) and did a 3-mile round trip hike to Mirror Lake. Also stopped by the famous Timberline Lodge (exterior scenes of The Shining were filmed there).  Continued to take “back” roads to Goldendale – I was really blown away by the beauty of Rt. 44 between US35 and US197 – you’re literally driving down the mountain and view the change in scenery from Mountain to farm valley (just west of Dufur is beautiful!) to the Plateau area on the other side of the Cascade Mountain Range. There are now literally hundreds of electricity-generating windmills on the hills along the Columbia River outside of Goldendale – these things must have a 30-foot or greater wingspan. It’s quite mesmerizing to watch them slowly flow through the wind… hard to keep your eyes on the road! It is interesting how much they’ve changed the landscape in the course of two years (when I was last here – for Christmas two years ago – there just a couple windmills). I’ll grab some photos sometime hopefully – I think I’ll just keep updating the photo gallery below, so enjoy for now!

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