The Trip West Part 3

The last bit of the trip was the most exciting. We split the 21 hours of driving between Denver and Portland up into 3 legs, making each of them far shorter than those in the beginning of our trip. We had already completed the 9 hour trip from Denver to Jackson, WY, so the remaining two days were cake.

The morning we left the Tetons was beautiful. Coming in, the mountains had been obscured by snow. On the way out, however, the skies were clear, and the views were amazing.


Idaho was largely pretty boring, but we did stop at a couple of nice rest areas with overlooks, where I was able to snap a few photos. The only other nice bit of Idaho was the constant presence of prarie dogs in the median. And I saw a pheasant. A really gorgeous, brightly colored pheasant, popping its head out of the ditch on the side of the road.



We stopped for the night in Baker City, OR, a little town in eastern Oregon that was apparently quite well to do during the gold rush, but not so much anymore. Eastern Oregon was beautiful in a way completely unlike western Oregon. As soon as you crossed the border into Oregon, the hills grew very tall, but the lack of plant life remained the same.


The next morning we set out for Portland. We planned the last leg of the drive to be only 5 hours, leaving us plenty of time to enjoy the Columbia River Valley. The majority of Oregon on I-84 is pretty dull, but once you reach the Columbia River Gorge Scenic area, that rapidly changes. The walls to the gorge grow steep and tall, and you can watch as you exit the rain shadow of the cascades and large plants begin to flourish.

We got off I-84 for a while and drove on scenic route 30 instead. The picture in my first post is from an overlook on route 30. We stopped at Multnomah Falls and the Bonneville Dam and Fish Hatchery (I'll update on those later), and then headed in to Portland.



The trip, in total, was around 3,300 miles, about 48 hours of driving, and took us (with our breaks in Woodbridge and Denver) 9 days.

Not too shabby. And we'll likely be doing it again in August. The weather will be nicer then, and I am looking forward to the opportunity to camp my way back across the country.