Onward to the Deschutes River RendezVW

This past weekend was our second attempt camping with a baby, and boy, what a doozy: four days, 1039 miles, and four states. Mitch was pretty terrified that either E or Ludwig would have some sort of intractable breakdown. But Melissa was confident it would go well since Colin (wandering VW guru extraordinaire, see future post for details) had just gone over Ludwig with Mitch and deemed him worthy, while Esmé is always satisfied if she's able to eat, sleep, and not wallow in her own filth. We're happy to say that it went off with nary a hitch.

We began our voyage on a Thursday evening after Mitch got off work, and ended the day's travels in Smelterville Idaho.
As is our style when we are just making an overnight pit stop, we opted for the free WalMart parking lot "campground", where there's always bathrooms, hot water and plenty of security camera surveillance.

Lake Coeur d'Alene is pictured above. Idaho is probably one of the most underappreciated states as far as scenery is concerned. While filling Ludwig's tank in Couer d'Alene a woman (moving to Seattle from Cincinnati) approached the bus asking us if we'd ever been there before. After we replied to her that we had in fact been here before, she told us she knew nothing of "this place". We assumed she meant she didn't know about Couer d'Alene specifically, but eventually her account of how she was impressed with the stunning views very clearly implied that she didn't know this part of the country (i.e., the entire Pacific Northwest) existed. Weird.

The wide open horizons as a backdrop to the coal cars along US 395 in Southeastern Washington left us thinking how similar the landscape was to the Sandhills in our beloved Nebraska.

The Columbia River, the only truly mighty river in the American West besides the Colorado, was surprisingly wide, probably because it's dammed along nearly its entire length. This pretty blue bridge spans it at Pasco Washington.

This is a barge plying the Columbia along the Washington/Oregon border. Some little towns along the river are actually seaports. We even saw barges floating grain up and down the river. That was a new sight to see, for a couple of flatlanders who are more accustomed to seeing grain elevators load grain on to trains and trucks rather than boats.

The terrain along Washington State Hwy 14 was pretty scenic, even though the wind gusts up the Columbia River Gorge made for an extremely tiring and slow drive in a bread loaf like Ludwig.

Now in Oregon, Mount Hood towered menacingly ahead of us. At our first Oregonian gas stop, we learned that Oregon (and New Jersey) are the only two states smart enough to realize that the masses are much, much too stupid to be entrusted with the task of pumping their own gasoline. A clerk informed us that this is because otherwise people accidentally blow themselves up left and right. Having never before heard of this apparently widespread phenomenon, we were thankful that the Nanny State in Oregon (and New Jersey) was forward-thinking enough to keep us, and everyone else, safe from ourselves. Unfortunately gas cost about 15 cents more across the Oregon border, and it also took about 10 times as long to get the tank filled since most of the time was spent waiting for the attendant to come take the gas nozzle out of the tank--apparently we were too unskilled to even perform that simplest of acts. Mitch is still buzzing that he had to tell one Oregonian attendant to not top off the tank, actually one of the biggest sins of gas-pumping and something you'd think would be a motivating reason to criminalize self-service. But, we digress.

The Dalles Dam has a fish ladder around either side, so salmon can make it to their spawning grounds. The outflow of this dam looked pretty impressive.

Our destination, Maupin Oregon, lies picturesquely straddling the Deschutes River. These houses and osprey nest were just down the river from the RendezVW where Ludwig mingled with 55 other VWs, all but one being a bus....(to be continued)