Lisa
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Final Stop – Thunderhead Brewing – Then Home
Fort Collins We left Fort Collins after a week’s stay. Some of our activities included: Thunderhead Brewing We decided to make it a 2-day trip home to make it easier on ourselves and the cats. Our final stop for the night on this adventure was Thunderhead Brewing, a Harvest Host in Axtell, Nebraska. It’s about…
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Crater Lake National Park — Day 1
Today we ventured to our third and final national park of this trip, Crater Lake. I couldn’t wait to see this beautiful blue lake that I had seen in so many pictures. Oregon Scenic Byways Large lava fields became apparent as we drove along a stretch of Cascade Lakes National Scenic Byway this morning. It…
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Lava Lake
Specialty Crops This part of Oregon grows specialty crops like onion seed, peppermint and carrot seed. I didn’t know that carrots are biennial which means they only flower and produce seeds every other year. If you want the seeds to plant a new crop, the first crop has to stay in the ground for two…
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Smith Rock State Park
The volcanic rock formation of Smith Rock State park is a huge attraction for rock climbers. We don’t do that crazy sport, but never-the-less, we had to take a day trip here (an easy 35 from Palisades Cove) to see what all the fuss is about. Smith Rock State Park The drive to Smith Rock…
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Trillium Lake
The area around Hood River is our first glimpse (yesterday) of farm country—lots of fruit trees and grape vines. We ran out of blueberry jam, Tony’s preferred flavor for PB&J, so our first stop today on our way to Trillium Lake was a market to purchase some locally made. We stopped along Oregon highway 35…
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July 4th in Cascade Locks
Laundry is overdue, so that was the chore for this morning. It is so nice to have a lovely laundry room at the KOA which is close to our site; it was clean and reasonably priced. After our big waterfall day yesterday, we decided to take it much easier today. Blackberry Beach To get open…
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Waterfalls Extravaganza
Having settled on a plan to see the beautiful Columbia River Gorge falls, we had to leave our campground early this morning and make our way back west to the town of Corbett, Oregon. The boarding site for the Hop-On Hop-Off Waterfall Trolley is at the town’s K-12 public school parking lot. We knew from…
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Astoria and Fort Stevens
For our second day at Fort Stevens State Park we took a morning trip to nearby Astoria and then returned back to the park to observe some military history. Astoria Riverwalk The Astoria Riverwalk is a work in progress. This is a working port area, so it will have an industrial look to it that…
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Tillamook
Today, we got a jump start on the crowds at Tillamook Creamery, and had a lovely time eating and buying more delicious crackers, in particular Rainforest Crisps, coming in two flavors at the creamery. We then headed to yet another laundromat (one night of clean bedding ruined by a barfing cat) where I learned a…
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The Devil’s Punchbowl
The Devil’s Punchbowl is at the northern end of Beverly Beach, so we planned to walk the beach to get there rather than try to park Usain in the busy area. That’s a great plan as long as you check the weather RADAR (we did), the rainstorm shows up on RADAR (it didn’t), and you…