We spent the weekend at the KOA outside of Albany. It was time for full hookups and laundry! We were able to get some prescriptions refilled, stock up on some more food, and generally just enjoyed staying “home”. We had hoped to go directly to the Bend area, but the weather was just too iffy.
Sunday we headed north on I-5 back towards Portland, Sandy, and Mount Hood to get a less strenuous climb over the mountains. We don’t have traction devices for the motorhome, and the ODOT website said we needed them to drive Santiam Pass on Hwy 20 towards Bend. It wasn’t a bad drive, and the views of Mt. Hood were again spectacular. We decided to stay in Redmond, north of Bend a few miles, at the Deschutes Fairgrounds. Very nice full hookup sites with long concrete spaces, a small patch of grass, and extra pad for the car, all for $35 a night. My back has been acting up again, and I was in real pain, so we planned on just hanging around the motorhome again. Warmth and lots of acetaminophen have been helping, so we decided to drive the McKenzie and Santiam Passes Byway after a lovely brunch at the local Pancake House (yeah for Dutch baby baked pancakes!).
The Road climbs out of Sisters to give some great views.
Toward Santiam Pass we took a detour to Camp Sherman, a lovely little community of (mostly) summer homes along the Metolius River, a National and state scenic river.
After crossing into the west side of the Cascades at Santiam Pass, we were back into the dark, cold, and pretty dreary rain forest. It did have a few redeeming features though.
I really do appreciate the rain forest, but I am very tired of feeling closed in with greenery everywhere. Luckily the forest did open up as we headed back east.
The lava flows neat McKenzie Pass were amazing. Kevin describes them as having the appearance of a huge plow being used in wet ground, leaving grooves and big clumps of rock. It is astonishingly rugged, and some are very recent. This flow is estimated to be only 2000 years old, but a few trees were trying to take hold.
The foreground of this picture is lava, the middle ground the remnants of a huge fire in 2003, and then Mount Washington rises up again. Impressive!
Tomorrow we plan on driving the Cascade Lakes Byway and going to some museums and interpretive centers.