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Published: August 11th 2017
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We left the hotel this morning at 8:22 and 70 degrees and headed out on another scenic ride. And what a ride it was. I begin by apologizing that my camera just does not do justice to what we saw today. We, as people, see everything in a 180 degree landscape and the camera only catches a small portion of that. In addition, there was a lot of smoke in the air again today. But I will say, that the first 4-5 hours of this drive are what I would characterize as eye-popping scenery. In fact, my “driver” was reduced to a one-word vocabulary all morning…”WOW”. I heard that over and over again. Later in the day, he expanded his vocabulary to “look at this”. And I heard that one again and again. So, I hope that offers an idea of just how incredible the vistas were on this drive. I would recommend it to everyone. If you are up in western Idaho, this is a must.
So, we headed out on the Payette River Scenic Byway. Water follows along the path of least resistance, and so we did, as well. This road snakes its way through valleys, along the
river, between tall mountains close enough to touch. Sometimes the river was to our right, sometimes to our left. And although I am watching intently, I often missed those times when it shifted over to the other side. The walls of the mountains were orange and tan dirt, adorned with yellow grass and dotted with silver sage like jimmies on an ice cream cone. And the walls flowed in ripples, like waves on the water. We went up, hugging the mountain’s edge and we went down into the fertile valleys. And on the downslopes, there was a runaway ramp at every mile, a safety feature for the many large trucks driving this road. The hills were peppered with Douglas-fir and Pondarosa Pine, which offered the perfect adornment to the golden hills beneath them. There were times when we were driving uphill when the river was flowing down and we wondered how this could possibly be.
We drove through the Boise National Forest where the trees were dominant on the mountainsides. At times the river was full of rocks creating white water and at times the river was calm and glassy, reflecting the mountains behind. And then, suddenly, we exited
the valley and found ourselves in the bright sunshine, in great golden meadows of flowing wheat and hay that extended on flat plains for miles.
We passed through McCall where the Payette river flows into the Payette Lake, surrounded by beautiful homes sitting along the water’s edge. And the temperature changed from 70 to 81 degrees in the blink of an eye. We now were following the Salmon River which led us through Hell’s Canyon where the mountains were so high around us that we had to raise the sun visors to see them, and at times we could not see their tops.
We came upon a sign that pointed down a road to the Fire Camp and nearby was a staging area for Firefighters with a windsock and helipad. Clearly there were fires nearby, but we did not see them, only the smoke. Eventually we found ourselves on a road taking us through lush fields of golden wheat planted on big rolling round-topped hills. And the wheat and hay were planted all the way to the tops of these hills.
When we reached Lewiston, on the border of Washington, we met the Snake River once again.
And we crossed it several times as we made our way to our destination, Kennewick, WA, but not before we crossed the Columbia River, a massive river just outside of Kennewick. The Snake River ends when it flows into the Columbia River just five miles from our stop today and before we leave the area, we plan to go to see this landmark.
We landed at our hotel after a long nine hour drive. Fortunately, we gained an hour today, so we are now on Pacific time. Tomorrow, we will visit Portland and Olympia.
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