Oregon, Washington & Idaho

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Hi!

Well as the title suggests we’ve made our way through Oregon, Washington and Idaho. We’ll start with Oregon.

We followed the famous Route 101 up the coast and over the state line where the pacific beaches continued to get more rugged, wild and beautiful, the water just carried on getting colder and the blue sky stayed as blue as ever. Pretty nice!

Although we’d planned on stopping one night in a coastal town in south Oregon we were making such good time that we pushed on to the Oregon Sand Dunes State Park. This park is 40 miles of sand dunes that roll down into the sea to form long, pristine beaches. Well we soon discovered that walking up sand dunes is about 50 times harder than walking in any other circumstances! It was strange to be surrounded by so much hot sand in the Pacific Northwest as we had expected a more green and wet setting (see Twilight).

After a couple of days at the dunes we started to head inland towards Portland where we were to spend our first night in a proper room! And as it turns out the man who ran the hotel we stayed at studied at Lancaster uni and knew Carlisle!

Portland is a pretty nice city. Very laid back, lots of cool converted warehouses etc. and lots of cyclists, runners and bohemian types. We sampled the local microbrewery scene at one of the cities original breweries, Bridgeport brewery. The beers we tried were delicious, helped along by the cool setting in Portland’s pearl district. After a bit more wandering and exploring we headed for the food trucks that Portland is known for. For $5 we each got a burrito the size of a small baby! Definitely the bargain of the trip so far.

The next morning we checked out the lively Saturday market, which was cool but a bit pricey for us. That is the downside to visiting a western country. Instead of local crafts at the market it is local art! We finished our visit of Portland by driving up to Pittock mansion on top of a hill to see the views over the city and out to Mount Hood (which was partially hidden by cloud…). This mansion is a bit of a local sight; however, as it was probably newer than my house we didn’t deem it worth a visit.

Next was the Columbia river gorge, which divides Washington and Oregon. It was incredible and the sunsets down the gorge were spectacular. We went white water rafting on the White Salmon river in Washington, which is part of the gorge and is known for its consistent white water due to it being glacially fed. Rafting was good fun and we looked awesome in our gear! We even went over the optional 12ft Husum falls, in which the raft and its passengers were completely submerged for several long seconds.

At this point we should mention that our route has changed. Sadly we had to cut out Glacier National Park because it was just too far and we are on a capped mileage. So instead we took a route through Idaho, not really knowing much about the state or what to expect. The lonely planet guide seemed pretty enthusiastic and when we saw the words ‘hot springs’ we were convinced.

Well we are happy to say that Idaho definitely made up for not going to Glacier NP! Our first night was in a primitive campsite which had a little path leading to the most awesome hot springs! There were little pools right beside a gorgeous clear river, so that the whole site was like a natural Turkish baths with different temperature pools. We couldn’t get enough of them and not only went back down for a starlit dip but again in the morning as the sun was rising. We had them to ourselves on both occasions, pretty magical!

The next day was a long day of driving but which turned out to be very interesting. We went to the neighboring town of Stanley (40 miles away) for breakfast. Stanley was a great taste of real America, a town consisting of about 10 log cabins, one of which was a bakery and café of course. Inside it was so rustic and cosy and we were definitely the only out-of-towners; however the people were, as ever, super cheery and open. After some amazing sourdough french toast we jumped back into the van and headed down the most beautiful scenic byway, passing the jagged Sawtooth mountain range and winding alongside the Payette river. Incredibly only a few hours later we were driving through miles of flat, dusty emptiness on arrow straight roads with only haulage trucks for company. The contrasts here are just unreal!

This was also the first day that we couldn’t see the blue sky. It was pretty strange, at first we thought it was just morning mist but it sat heavy in the sky even through the afternoon. It wasn’t until a couple of days later that we were told it was smoke from the severe forest fires that have been burning throughout the majority of the western states recently.

400 miles later we crossed the state line into Montana and reached our checkpoint at West Yellowstone, excited to see the awesome Yellowstone National Park!

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Photos

Columbia River Gorge sunset
The dark cloud is smoke from the forest fire burning on nearby Mt Adam.