Hello from Pendleton, OR
Friday evening – March 19, 2021 (First post of this travelogue)
Wow, this will be an actual travelogue with Pat and I on the road (but not in the bus). Our last joint travelogue was our camping trip in Dillon in June 2020.
We are travelling to the Seattle Area via rental car. I will be teaching two different weeks at Boeing with one week in between. More about that in a future posts.
We left Evergreen on Wednesday just after the big snowstorm. We felt it would be safest to travel I 25 north to I 80 and then head west. I had planned for each day of travel to be in the 350-380 mile range with some wiggle room in case the weather caused an issue.
Our first day of travel was quite interesting. They had just opened I 25 to Cheyenne the day before and it was obvious that the snow had really wreaked havoc with travel. Indeed, as we approached Cheyenne, there were all kinds of warning signs about the truck stops being full and fuel islands being blocked by parked semis. It was amazing that all along the highway from about 5 miles south of the I 80 interchange, trucks were parked everywhere including on the side of the interstate. It turns out they had just opened I 80 and I 25 north of Cheyenne was still closed.
Our first stop was Rock Springs, WY. While there was lots of snow on the sides of the interstate, we did not have any problems with this leg of the trip. As usual, we stayed in a Holiday Inn property.
Our next stop was Twin Falls, ID. The driving seemed much easier for this leg. That was probably a combination of less snow on the side of the road and getting used to “long distance driving”. Because we were ahead of schedule, we decided to have a sit-down lunch – the first in a year. We exited the interstate and drove to a great little town – Rupert, ID. The town was straight out of a great novel. It had a town square and a neat water tower (see both in the photo below). We ate at a friendly little local restaurant and had a great meal.
We had noted several signs showing what appeared to be a very scenic falls in the Twin Falls area – Shoshone Falls. The advertising suggested it was taller than Niagara Falls. Unfortunately the flow of the Snake River is very low this time of year and there were only small waterfalls.
Today our drive to Pendleton was great. We traversed very flat magnificent farm land and some huge rolling hills. We saw lots of dairies which supplied large cheese factories and a huge Chobani Yogurt plant. The farms fields in the area are huge. This time of year, it is hard to tell what the crops are, but it would appear that there is a lot of irrigated hay and wheat. We saw a lot of huge silage piles, but not much sign of corn fields.
When we got to our hotel our window looked to the east and rolling hills of what appeared to be winter wheat (see photo). In that photo you can see some snow capped mountains in the distance.
That is all for this post – many more to come.