After days and days of rain, the sun came out and blessed another new beginning or re-beginning for us. As we exited I-205 in Portland, OR onto I-84 toward The Dalles (rhymes with owls), we finally felt we were really full-timing again. The Dalles is a cute town in The Columbia River Gorge that may was named for the French word meaning sluice, a reference to the narrow passage between the large basalt columns in the river. This is now covered by the lake behind the Dalles Dam.
For those of you who don't know, we sold our scenic house on Wednesday. We did it for a number of reasons, but the exciting part for us was that we could return to full-time living in our RV while we still are healthy and see many of the places that we missed the last time.
I am sure that I have published a photo similar to this one before, but it is an iconic view as we drive into The Gorge. Note the lush trees everywhere on this western side of The Cascades.
We passed the Sandy River. One of the views from our former house is the mouth of this river, a favorite of fishermen.
The Dalles Dam is one of fourteen dams on the Columbia River. They have a beauty of their own, but are very controversial among Native Americans and environmentalists. They provide our region and even California with clean electricity, provide irrigation water, and control flooding from snowmelt in The Cascades, so their destruction would devastate the economy, no matter how much we might desire to return to the way the river was.
This is the back of The Dalles Dam. We are on the east side of The Cascades. There are no more forests because we are in the rain shadow of the mountains.
This grain elevator services the wheat farmers, whose farms are in the high desert behind these hills. The majority of wheat grown in Washington is exported to Asia. Barges carry the wheat to the ports further down river greatly reducing transportation costs.
We are driving on the Oregon side of The Columbia River, looking across at the Washington side. This photo shows a rare town with a wind farm above.
This photo shows the brush of the this part of The Gorge. It looks like nothing could thrive here except cattle, but wildlife is more diverse here than might be imagined. The greatest environmental threat here is non-native noxious weeds.
But, this is becoming wine country. For wine aficionados, this is on the edge of the Canoe Ridge District.
The McNary Dam is close to Tri-Cities (Richland, Kennewick, and Pasco), WA on I-82.
Just north of McNary are these crops that are irrigated in circles. Major crops in this area are potatoes, onions, wheat, sweet and field corn, and, of course, wine grapes. Just outside our park was a field of concord grapes and several apple orchards.
A mine in the side of a hill shows that hearty pioneers were determined to find a way to make a living in the high desert of Washington
Here is a field of terraced alfalfa. Much of this will also be exported.
Irrigation from the waters of The Columbia make fruit trees a viable crop in this desolate place. Above is the Horse Heaven Hills. A few miles from here, we stopped for the night at 2:30 pm in a park just a few miles southwest of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation where the fissionable material for "Fat Man", the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, was made. Ted did a lot of noxious weed work there. Neither Ted nor the reservation glow in the dark. It got so hot here that our TV turned itself off. What a change from the rain and chilly weather of Portland/Vancouver.
We are headed for Rapid City, SD to establish residence. As many of you know, the state of Washington considers anyone not living in a "bricks and sticks" place, homeless, and ineligible to vote (It's a long story). South Dakota, like Washington, has no income tax. South Dakota welcomes RVers to become residents because of their sparse population. They even have businesses that help RVers do this in a day. We will get our driver's licenses, license plates, and voter registration. We will have a South Dakota address and postal box. However, we have reinstated our Vancouver personal mailbox service for the majority of our snail mail because we will be in the Portland/Vancouver area many holidays. We pay bills electronically, so snail mail is mainly for welcomed greetings from friends and family. Junk mail is discarded by the service. Both services will send our first class mail to us when we email them where.
