Oregon to Wyoming

For a little over a week now, Chris and I have been working our way eastward, following the Lewis and Clark trail, at least as far as Montana. It’s been an amazing adventure, and I have added 4 new states that I had never been to before – Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

We headed east out of Portland, working our ways through the Columbia Gorge – which is some stunning scenery. We stopped and saw and played in waterfalls – even some (Multnomah Falls) that could easily have passed as a set for Lord of the Rings.

We overnighted 3 nights along the gorge – two of them at John Day Dam on the Washington side of the gorge. It’s an Army Corp of Engineers campground – and free. I have come to believe, after staying in a variety of campgrounds – that the free ones tend to be the most amazing in terms of scenery and privacy. We had a stunning private landing, watching ships pass our campsite. And we had an awesome internet connection to boot – making it a great place to use to catch up on work.

From there, we stopped to see Stonehenge. No, not that Stonehenge. This is scale replica of what Stonehenge might have looked like before it decayed, that was built as a war memorial near Maryhill, Washington. Or you could go by my story.. I’m a genie and I restored Stonehenge back to its original condition with a blink.

We briefly crossed back in Oregon before heading into southeastern Washington, stopping in Walla Walla and overnighting at a small state campground. This area of the country is so vastly different than the gorge – fields of caramel and chocolate, reminding me of a marble cake.

And then we were onwards into Idaho, passing through the Clearwater National Forest, which we overnighted in. I had only one image of Idaho in my head – which was fields of potatoes. So the mountains and forests really amazed me. And I didn’t see a single potato.. however, we did find a drive-up soft serve ice cream shack before entering the forest. I love nomadic serendipity.

After a night deep in the forests of Idaho, we crossed into Montana. We worked our way across the western part of the state, overnighting outside of Missoula and then Butte. We actually paid for a commercial campground with hook-ups outside of Butte – as we broke a battery cable while in the Clearwater Forest that we repaired in Missoula, so the batteries were not getting recharged. For the first time since June, we had to actually plug in to top off our batteries (we usually get our power from our solar panel and while driving).

All topped off and rested, we started our trek southward towards Yellowstone as snow flurries started to sprinkle the tops of the surrounding mountains. We overnighted on the way at Harrison Lake – a campground that I had little information to go by to find. Really quite beautiful to wake up to in the morning – particularly watching a flock of birds fly overhead.

And then it was south down 287, passing through Ennis and enjoying an antique soda fountain for lunch (real vanilla creme soda… yum). We were stopped along the route by a herd of cows being wrangled by cowgirls in the street.

This afternoon, we crossed into Wyoming and the western entrance into Yellowstone National Park. This afternoon we have seen so much wildlife.. elk, buffalo, bear, ostrich and even a fox. (There was a warning notice in our entry package into the park that read “Warning: Many visitors have been gored by buffalo”.. gulp.. we’re not in Disney!)

We made our way north to the Mammoth Hot Springs village, and found plenty of camp spots available – and an astonishing high speed data cellular connection. This evening we climbed the terrace around a hot spring deposit site, and the found the grill in the village and enjoyed a nice hot cup of hot cocoa. I never anticipated that camping in Yellowstone would be so luxurious.

We may just stay in Yellowstone a couple days and explore around.