Memaloose State Park-Post Falls Idaho

We spent the night at Memaloose State Park, not far past Hood River. Driving through the most scenic part of the Gorge at night precluded any sightseeing (or pictures) but did alleviate that damn Gorge headwind that seems to know which way Ludwig is traveling.

The next morning after breakfast this ground squirrel made a bold move for the pantry, but was thwarted by Tater Tot. We told her, "look at the squirrel trying to get inside Ludwig!" and, hands on hips, she took a couple steps toward it and shouted "NO!" at the top of her little voice. We don't generally encourage the harassment of fauna, but it was pretty cute. She was more than a little shaken by her new-found power over nature, and ran away from the scene nearly as quickly as the squirrel.

Melissa might think that we took US 97 North toward home just because Ludwig could climb a couple new passes on the way. Well, I guess that's partly true, but I also wanted to get out of the Gorge and its incessant headwind. I didn't expect this sign or this view though, which made the shortcut more than worth it. My pictures don't do it justice, but I could see all of them listed save Mt. Rainier (last eruption in 1854; look out, Tacoma). The one in the picture is Mt. Adams. The Type III exhaust strapped up behind the wagon is courtesy tristessa (thanks, Hal).

We saw this farm along I- 82. What the heck is it, hops? Imagine the time it would take to put those fences up.

We stopped at the city park in Ritzville Washington to give Tater Tot a nice long break from her carseat. Ritzville was a the second best place (outside of Montana) we stopped on the entire trip (second to Maupin of course). The park was nice, the public bathrooms were nice, the people were nice, everything was nice. 

Luckily Tater Tot was good and tired, and slept through our completely disastrous attempt to find a campground along the lakeshore in Coeur d'Alene Idaho. We wandered all over the town in the dark for well over an hour, looking for a couple places that I'm now convinced aren't even there. Fortunately our trusty Rand McNally 2009 Road Atlas always gives the location of the nearest WalMart, the last chance campground of choice. A little backtrack on I-90 to Post Falls Idaho later, and we were nestled safely in Ludwig under the mildly annoying glow of parking lot lights.

(miles 221,116-221,523)

Pee Dee Ecks

Ludwig made it from Maupin to Portland with no trouble, not even on the "two" mountain passes (Wapinitia and Blue Box, see map at right) between. Rainy mountain weather past Mt. Hood meant we also made it without pictures either.

It had stopped by the time we drove over the Willamette, on our way to IFBWax's house, a fellow ACVWer, who'd offered us a place to stay for the night.

The next morning before we left for the zoo, Esmé's discerning eye detected an out-of-spec screw on Ludwig's AC power plug in.

Pointing out the loose screw

For good measure, she helped me tighten all of them up. Thanks, Tater Tot.

That green bus ahead of Ludwig is The Party Pickle, who the IFBWax family (blog here) clearly love and enjoy. (This is a link to Charlie Brown, their other bus I which couldn't manage to photograph well. This bus probably ranks in my top 10 all time favorite VWs I've seen in person. Hey, it is brown after all...) They let us spend the night in their guest room, where after E fell asleep we enjoyed a rare treat: cable television. Thanks for the hospitality, Party Pickle family. Incidentally, their driveway marks Ludwig's new Westernmost (known) point.

We went to Portland after the VW Jamboroo mostly because we wanted E to see the zoo (Montana doesn't have one). It was pretty decent, but then Melissa and I are spoiled by having visited the Henry-Doorly Zoo so many times, one of this country's best zoos. Ludwig waited patiently in the parking lot.

After the zoo we headed downtown to meet up with a bunch of ACVWers who regularly meet up at The Lucky Labrador on Quimby each Monday. This was just a cool bridge on the way to downtown.

A good-sized crew eventually assembled, mostly people we'd spent the weekend with. Now that he's been there, Ludwig can wear the Lucky Lab sticker Gypsie gave him last year without embarrassment.

After some pizza, we decided it was time to eat up some of the distance between Portland and Missoula, so we headed out of town.

(miles 220,991-221,116)

Pendleton-Maupin

After a nice leisurely morning at the park and lunching in downtown Pendleton, we headed toward Maupin. The big RendezVW wasn't scheduled to start until Friday, but we wanted to have some down time to settle into our campsite before the festivities really got started.

On I-84 we saw a tree farm that totally took us by surprise. None of us, Esmé included, had ever seen a tree farm like this before. It was sort of eerie how the trees were so nicely growing in rows. Some plots had massive trees, and some were only saplings. They were just so...uniform. And the farms went on and on as far as we could see over the hills south of the interstate. 

Perfectly spaced, see? I wonder how those trees are planted. By hand? How big are they when they're planted? Do the saplings require a lot of care so they don't die? Do insects ever just wipe these monocultures right out? Intellectually, I know it's reasonable, it just seems so much stranger to me than food crops we grew up seeing in Nebraska. 

The Columbia River Gorge with Mount Hood as the backdrop. So so scenic. And it's nice to see river traffic. It's sort of reminiscent of the container ships I remember seeing between the Channel Islands and Ellwood Beach coast when we lived in California.

Mitch drove the gorge this year, and we had a headwind the entire time. This Bud Light truck was the only one I was able to draft to cut the edge on that damn wind. That's Mt. Hood in the distance on the right. It last erupted in 1907. Look out, Portland.

Tater Tot enjoyed listening to Here Come the ABCs by They Might Be Giants on this trip. She still sings parts of "Go for G!" even though we haven't listened to the album again since we've been back from the trip. I think we also spent a fair amount of time singing some songs from the Missoula Public Library's Tiny Tales.

Doesn't it look like Ludwig is parked way out in front of everyone else? He was. I was somewhat...encouraging...about having a perfectly level spot since I knew we'd be sleeping in Ludwig for 3 nights. 

(miles 220,824-220,991)

Missoula-Pendleton

(We're (finally?) getting around to posts about our trip to the Deschutes River RendezVW in Maupin Oregon over Father's Day weekend.)

After the success of the wagon at Beavertail Hill, we thought it'd be a good idea to take it along on our second trip to Maupin. I'll bet we lost nearly a mile per gallon with that thing up there. Maybe next year we'll tow it?

At mile 123 on US 12 in Idaho we stopped for a break and found all these butterflies (Tiger and Zebra Swallowtails) sucking water from the wet gravel. Tater Tot was kind of impressed, impressed enough to count them ("noin-ty, noin-ty", the way she counts everything). She thought it was interesting how close she could get to them, but was easily distracted by rocks and ants. She did not like it when I got the butterflies to climb onto my fingers.

Still hanging out with the butterflies and ants

We took Alpowa Summit from the West last time and I didn't think much of it. This time, from the East, Ludwig found it more laborious. A bit shy of the top Tater Tot wanted a break, and I think Ludwig was thankful.

By the time we got to Pendleton it was late late late. I guess I didn't figure in all the Tater breaks and the extreme winding-ness (sample here) of US 12 through Idaho, and it ended up taking eleven hours from Missoula. There were a couple construction delays which cost us too. It ended up being the longest travel day of TT's life, and she took it really well.

Pendleton is home to Maura and Scott, who graciously lent us their guest room for the night. The next morning Maura showed us around the town, including a really nice playground that TT went nuts for. Back at their place Maura read Tater Tot some books in Ludwig.

Mitch's birthday present to me this year was yarn shopping during our trip. (Although yarn and knitting aren't the main topics of this blog, enough knitters read this that I'm including this part of the trip here anyway.) We thought surely Pendleton Oregon, home of Pendleton Woolen Mills, was a good bet for a local yarn shop gold mine. Wrong, wrong, wrong. There were no yarn shops in Pendleton. A sad day for yarn shopping, and even more sad for Maura, knitter extroidanaire. The quest for yarn continued on...

(miles 220,455-220,824)

Back to Missoula

As people were leaving the RendezVW under North-central Oregon's sunny skies, Colin (about whom more is forthcoming) and I finished some unfinished business on Ludwig.

Ludwig's front brakes are self-adjusting, but the rears need periodic adjusting. We gave them a few twists and went over several other undercarriage-related things. Most important for our olfactory and mental health though was (finally!) the taming of the gasoline fumes inside Ludwig's cabin. We'll worry less about little E back there now. Late in the afternoon we bid Colin and some stragglers farewell and headed back up US 197.


I really like volcanoes for some reason. I think it's because I so vividly remember the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens when I was in kiddie-garten and was very impressed by my dad's explanation of it. To my delight (as I hadn't thought about it before the trip), we got some nice long vistas of several of Cascadia's stratovolcanoes: Mt. Hood, of course, but also Mt. Jefferson (not pictured), Mt. Adams (above, at left), and, waaay off, that self-destructive old lady St. Helens (no pictures turned out). It's weird how the landscape out there is kind of a roughly rolling table occasionally punctuated by these menacing giants, compared to around here where mountains come in nicely ordered ranges.

The sun was starting to fail as we took this family portrait along the Columbia just South of the Oregon/Washington border. We drove through Walla Walla and environs in the dark, so no pictures of wineries or the Palouse; sorry!


One of Melissa's high school chums is a current resident of Orofino Idaho, so we planned to break camp (okay, to park) at her house for the night. The next day she showed us around, and our tour included a stroll along the Clearwater River's North Fork. This unassuming locale is the home of Dworshak Dam (above center), the third highest dam in the U.S., 22nd highest in the world, and the highest straight-axis dam in the Western Hemisphere. If we'd had more time, I'd've taken us to the visitor center to get a closer look at the dam itself (I'm a big fan of dams too). Next time.


East of Orofino, US 12 plunges into the rocky heart of Idaho along the constant churn of the Lochsa River. A lot of kayaking/whitewater rafting/lunacy occurs in this ice-cold rill.


Melissa remarked that the whitewater seemed to continue pretty much unabated. The winding road had no shortage of cars with kayaks strapped to their roofs either.

We stopped along the Lochsa ("LOCK-saw") for another family portrait. We really count ourselves lucky that Esmé is so tolerant of our hauling her all around Creation in noisy old Ludwig.

Eventually the winding wound us up to the top of the road and the Lolo Pass visitor's center, a familiar sight to regular readers of this blog. We stopped to take the nature hike, but were once again stymied by snow.

All in all it was as trouble-free and pleasant an adventure as we could've hoped for. Hopefully we can make it again next year.

(miles 217,371-218,409)

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)