Chapter 26

The final day of our trip. Today was really just a driving day, but we did add a little interest.

We woke up to a smoky morning and an air quality alert. Funny thing, this may have been the best motel of our trip! It definitely was the best motel breakfast (and we both agreed on that).

We drove through the dry hills of eastern Oregon and the Blue Mountains. I saw pictures where they looked green and mountainous, but it was too smoky to see much. Things are much worse further west though, as there is a terrible fire near the Bonneville Dam and another one near Cle Elum.

We really just made one stop today: Oregon Trail ruts near Echo, Oregon. We drove a few miles from the freeway to the very small town of Echo, another few miles to sign for "Oregon Trail", and then a couple miles down a dirt road. At the end was a parking area and a covered display, provided by the BLM, as well as a paved path the mile or so out to the ruts. We even had a companion for this walk! He walked all the way out and all the way back with us. It is possible that there was an overlook with a sign at the top of the hill, but I was not about to walk off trial through the grass in sandals and shorts -- too many warning signs about snakes, scorpions and ticks!

We drove past Yakima, the Palm Springs of Washington.

We had lunch in Ellensburg, where we arrived at the park at the same time as an unmarked sheriff car. The two sheriffs hopped out and immediately started going through the garbage cans. They unwrapped a bundle, and found a gun! They assured us that we were safe, though.

We drove home over smoky Snoqualmie Pass, and into Seattle. We arrived home not too long after 3:00, though there was already commute traffic.

I asked Nora to send a photo. She reports "It's frosh week so we are doing tons of things around the city in neon orange shirts and doing cheers and stuff. It's just the architecture people with orange. We are the art and design students and we get literally the worst color ever."

Some things that helped us make it. I left my tea cup in the motel Red Wing, Minnesota. I used Nora's until we dropped her off, and then used this Tim's cup. I used it twice a day for 9 days, and it's still whole! Also, these Trader Joe's snacks. We had so many inadequate breakfasts, that we were often hungry by 10:00. These snacks really helped.

And finally, our awesome car! People told us we should reconsider taking this trip with a 20 year old car. People told us we should we wary of taking this trip with a car with 180,000+ miles on it. It never hesitated to start, and performed admirably in 100+ heat, driving rain, thunderstorms, big city traffic, and everything else we encountered.

Starting mileage: 182,820
Ending mileage: 190,471

That's 7651 miles!

End of blog.