Continued..........We went on a day trip while in Portland to one of our favorite places, Mt. Hood. It was great to goof around there and go up to the lodge, but we were too lazy to hike. Unfortunately, most of my pics came out like this
We then went over to the Hood River area and the skies were clear with little wind, which I think is kinda rare there. Lots of folks SUP and windsurfing. It's a beautiful valley
When I walked back to the van after that shot, someone had beat me to the driver's seat. At this point in the trip I was about ready to let her have it.
We did the all-too-popular waterfall stops headed back towards Portland, and if you aren't familiar with this area some of the biggest and best are in the Columbia River Gorge, including Multnomah Falls
After a couple of days of drying out and catching up we were ready to hit the road. First destination: The Lego Store in Portland. My kids are junkies and we don't have a store nearby. The van got eerily quiet for awhile after this stop. Apparently it's like Aluminess or Sportsmobile for some other people. We didn't really have time to even get started on the Seattle area, so we pointed Rusty towards Mount Ranier to do some scouting for a future trip when we will spend a lot more time. Mount Ranier NP was really quiet when we were there, not sure if that's normal for this time of year. My enthusiasm for taking pics was waning a bit, but I got a few decent shots
We stayed at Cougar Rock CG in the park and it was very nice. Huge peaks and cliffs all around you and pretty deep in an evergreen forest. No pics unfortunately. From there we headed East. We had a pretty nice lunch stop on the east side of the park
Hwy 410 headed East from Mt. Ranier along the American River is quite beautiful. There were lots of good looking boondock spots where we would've loved to stop for awhile. We were running out of time though, and had reservations at Glacier NP. We drove over to Coeur d'Alene and had the best Philly I've ever had at a roadside stand called the Best Sandwich Shack. Check em out on Trip Advisor or something. It was amazing. We stayed at a rather unremarkable State Park but it had a shower so we stopped. The next day we were seeking some backroads over to Glacier so we went North up around Lake Pend Orielle and took 200 across the Kanisku Nat'l Forest towards Kalispell. Keep in mind that many roads in Montana aren't paved even though the map would make you think they would be. Glad I was in the SMB. We crossed the range up to Hwy 2 on a very long, as in 30-40 miles, and very flat gravel road. It was a blast doing some rally racing running 50+ the whole time and creating a monumental wake of dust. I wasn't really sure how much dust we were throwing until we came head-to-head with a log truck going about 50 too. I think it scared her more than me, but to answer the dust question......alot.
More to come.............
VivaLaVida
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