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Published: September 17th 2020
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Woke up to a glorious morning at our Heppner campsite. The sun rise was hazy, but still beautiful. It appears the smoke has gotten worse since last night, and I fear it's going to get worse as we head West today. Our plan is to head north to Interstate 84, then join up with the Columbia River Gorge Scenic byway. After a nice breakfast, we got the RV's ready and headed out. I called the owner of the park to express our pleasure on the conditions of the place as well as the extremely nice couple managing it. She got a kick out of our story of heading into the grave yard yesterday.
We headed north out of Heppner on Rte 74, and passed through beautiful prairies and ranches.Beside cattle, there were considerable sheep as well. The smoke got thicker as we went north, and by the time we reached RTE 84 it was very poor visibility. Heading West on 84, we were paralleling the Columbia river. We could barely see the river. There were impressive mountains and buttes off our left, and again, we could hardly see them.
Arriving at The Dalles, which is the beginning of the
Columbia River Gorge Scenic byway, we were lucky if we had a 1/2 mile visibility. At that point we decided to cross the river to Washington, and head right to the RV park in Stevenson, WA. Didn't make much sense to traverse the Scenic byway if we couldn't see anything. We headed West on Rte. 14. Oh how I wish it was a clear day, as this was an very scenic route, with the river on our left, and mountains on our right. We passed through numerous tunnels carved through the mountains, as well as passing many beautiful lakes and rivers, some loaded with fishermen.
Heading into Stevenson around 1:00, we parked the rigs and went to a very nice restaurant/grill and had a big lunch. We figured that way we wouldn't have to try to figure a way to get back to town later for supper, as we were out of food. We checked in the the TimberLake RV park around 3:00 and took a quick power snooze. Our cocktail get together went considerably longer than an hour, as we had to get rid of all our wine. Also, it was getting quite cold out, so we said
goodnight, and headed in. Sandy pretty much has us packed up. We just need to stop in the morning and fill up the Propane and fuel tanks, and return the RV's in Portland. We'll be staying at the Best Western Plus there for the night, as our flight leaves Friday morning at 6:00 am. We'll do one more blog tomorrow night, and that will be it.
We would like to thank all of you that provided a comment during the past 9 days. It's nice to see if people are enjoying reading about the trip. It's also helpful to see if everyone is receiving the blog that are on our mailing list.
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Joan M. Santos
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Good Morning, I feel badly you got caught in all that smoke. Reading the blog I felt I was on those siding and steep roads. I wasn’t nervous knowing Ray was at the helm! Have a safe flight home. Thanks for sharing each day.