2015 Road Trip: Part 34 (OR-WA)

Oregon to Washington
Day 50
6.2.15

Like the day before, it was damp and mostly overcast on day 50 of the trip.  Now that Emma was traveling with me, we had to figure out some kind of shelter involving tarps and rope and other fun things since she had not come out to Oregon with a tent.  We'll call this Version 0.9, or perhaps just the beta test version.  There was a conflict of interests while building this shelter the night before.  See, Emma was after functionality, and I was after aesthetic perfection.  One side ended up being uneven which caused a wrinkle in the tarp.  I found this unacceptable and the loops along the top rope needed to be fully repositioned.  I won't mention how long this took.  But most importantly, no ropes were cut in the process.

Shelter version 0.9

The plan for the day was to head north along US-101 into Washington, though beyond that, any plans were vague at best.  I had been hoping for a sunny day at least some time along the coast, but today was not going to be that day.  We stopped at some place along the shore and enjoyed a walk by the waves.

Pacific Ocean and Sand

As you likely saw in the last road trip post, the west coast has bumpin' bridges compared to what I've seen in the east.  The best of which was the bridge that crosses into Washington across the Columbia River.  It is the widest bridge on the river, and also the most westerly.  We could see it for miles.

Columbia River

Once on the bridge, it was quite similar (in material and construction at least) to the Piscatiqua River bridge in Maine along I-95.  Unlike that bridge however, this one had a tall segment for letting warships pass, for example, and then a long causeway for the rest of it.

We had high hopes of it perhaps clearing a bit as the day went on.  We had picked a camping spot right in between Mt. Rainier and Mt. Saint Helens.  As it turns out, we saw neither of those mountains, despite Rainier being over 14 thousand feet.  The clouds seem to win every time.

Our camping spot was however very nice, even with no views of tall mountains.  It appeared to be an old paved farming area, grown in with grass in some places.  There were some mossy concrete bits here and there as remnants of foundations.  There was a strange cow across the road that was making noises I didn't know cows could make.  I honestly thought it was a guy yelping for attention.  Eventually the cow did settle down for the night, luckily before we did.

I failed to get a picture of Shelter 1.0 at this site, but this was a much better design that involved some additional tent stakes and some uber-reflecty orange P-cord.  Expect an immaculate shelter setup in a future post...

Day 50 added 402 miles to the journey, bringing the grand total to 10,038.  My trip finally made it into 5 digit numbers.

Day 50: 402 miles.