One of my most-looked-forward-to stops was the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon. The highlight of the visit was getting to see Howard Hughes’ H-4 Hercules aircraft, most commonly known as the “Spruce Goose.”
Wikipedia has a good summary of the aircraft and how it ended up in Oregon for anyone who is interested.
Remarkably, this is probably one of the clearest photos I got of the actual coast of Oregon. Taken near the Cape Mears Lighthouse. Fortunately, this pretty much matches what I thought the coast would look like, so I wasn’t too disappointed. Although I will be happy to try again on a future visit!
You never know what you will come across while exploring some random back road. No idea what the story behind this boat is, but it was sitting alongside a gravel driveway a quarter mile or so from a really nice lake.
Smoke gets in a few other places too, yikes!
Several folks have expressed concerns about our well being, and I thought it would be best to assure you that we are carrying on quite well, thank you very much. I haven’t posted for a couple of days, but we’ve actually been quite busy. I’ll catch up with some Postcards shortly but wanted to give this short update.
While we were in Cannon Beach, Oregon, the smoke moved in with quite a vengeance. And it stayed with it throughout our visit to McMinnville in the Willamette Valley. But other than keeping us from seeing a lot of the beautiful Oregonian scenery, it hasn’t slowed us down much. Tonight (Sunday 9/13) we are in Bend, Oregon. While still in the smoke a bit, we aren’t anywhere near the flames. Rest assured that while we probably passed within 25-30 miles of some of the fires, there is really little danger here unless you are actually close to the fire. The rest is mostly an aggravating, stinky fog, and pretty easy to fix with the right white balance setting in Lightroom! 😉
Monday 9/14 we head to Elko, Nevada where the forecast is for sunny skies, with perhaps a little sun but temperatures in the low 90s during the day. We can put our long pants and sweaters away for a few days!
We left Cannon Beach Friday morning but I am getting closer to “real time” with my posts! We encountered a lot of fog along the coast but got into a lot of smoke as we headed back inland toward the Willamette Valley.
There are some places you can go where the secret to making decent photographs is simply being willing to stop the car. The Palouse region of eastern Washington state was such a place for me.
I tend to steer clear of photographic icons for the simple reason that it is hard to do anything original there. That plus the fact that standing at an overlook with a bunch of other photographers isn’t my idea of a good time. But on this road trip we are concentrating on doing our own thing.
We only had two nights devoted to the Palouse, staying in the town of Pullman, WA. When we arrived at our hotel we were informed that a group of National Guard personnel were due to arrive the following day to assist with testing of University of Washington students because the campus – surprise, surprise – had become a hotbed of Covid cases. Swell – so much for distancing.
We limited our public stops in Pullman to two mostly empty restaurants and a grocery store. We drove the first evening on mostly deserted back roads, got the car filthy dirty but saw some nice scenery. The second day we awoke to the forecasted high winds and dust storms, so that limited our activities that day. But in 200+ miles of driving around the area we went from places we weren’t willing to get out of the car to places that were clear as a bell, just windy as heck.
One of the meccas for photographers is Steptoe Butte, a high spot overlooking the undulating valleys. We had planned to go there but nixed the idea due to the high winds and dust. So instead we did the sensible thing and sought out a small local restaurant with excellent food and wine. The photos can wait for a return visit!
I think I did a pretty decent job of finding “my own” version of the Palouse region. I have hundreds more shots but this is a sample of my initial favorites.
I’m not sure how it compares to Glen Canyon size-wise, but it was among the tallest I’ve seen. There is a truck parked in front of the red building that will give some scale. You have to go there on purpose – the dam itself is about 50 miles off of I-90 and the lake extends into northern Wyoming. You can’t (easily) get to the southern end from the northern except via boat.
We caught this scene while passing through the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area in North central Wyoming a few days ago!
I’m a few days behind in processing photos – we are currently in Pullman, Washington. This one will hopefully whet the appetite until I can get closer to caught up.
Weird weather day in store today – after beautiful skies and warm yesterday, they are talking high winds and blowing dust with high of only 70. Sending it Monte’s way, it sounds like!