Oregon - Day 19 - to Pendleton

Emigrant Springs State Heritage Area, near Pendleton

Thursday, 19 May 2022

today's route

We drove back through Hood River and on to The Dalles, which I think is one of the few towns in the country with a name starting with "the."  I believe this name came from the French trappers who were the first Europeans through the area, "dalles" being French for rapids, I think.  It's pronounced to rhyme with "gals," as in "Buffalo gals."

I drove through their "historic downtown" which included the Sunshine Mill Winery in town.  A nice name.  Also passed The Dalles Dam, where I saw water pouring out of the gates on the downhill side and the water all churned up in that area.

As you can see on the map, the road followed the Columbia River for a lot of miles.  It's an enormous river.  It's the 4th largest river by discharge amount in North America, following the Mississippi (U.S.), the St. Lawrence (mostly Canada), and the Mackenzie (Canada).  Because of all its dams, it's considered one of the world's greatest sources of hydroelectric power and produces about a third of all such power in the US.  All those wonderful dams cause a real problem for the fish that live in the river, but I'll spare you the arguments on that subject.

I was interested to note that the land forms were really different on the Oregon side vs. the Washington side of the river.  For miles I saw craggy cliffs in Oregon but smooth grassy hills in WA.  There were white caps in the river from the wind.

I saw a railroad bridge that crossed the river with one of those vertical-lift sections like I saw in Astoria.

I crossed the mouth of the Deschutes River as it flowed into the Columbia.  To me that said I was officially in eastern Oregon, because the Deschutes drains the streams on the east side of the Cascade Mountains.  It's a major tributary of the Columbia, and what I saw at the mouth made that clear - a whole lot of water was flowing along.

I saw a large wind farm ranged along the hills in Washington, and though there's plenty of wind hitting me on the Oregon side, I didn't see any turbines over here.

I saw a kite-boarder in the river.  Actually I don't know what it's called, but the guy was on a board like a surfboard and had hold of a long narrow kite that flew sideways - the long side was stretched across the river instead of lengthwise parallel with the river's flow.

At the town of Rufus, I passed the John Day Dam where, once again, water was thundering out of the gates, with spray higher than the dam - I could see it for miles down the road.

I'd already seen several features named for John Day and knew there were a lot more coming up.  I counted at least a river, a dam, a town and national fossil beds named for this guy, so I finally looked him up.  And I have to say he may be the most fêted non-entities in the country, though to be fair he does have an interesting and varied personal history.  This article I found is easy to read and tells me I undercounted the places named for him.   https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/day-john

I saw lots of purple lupins on the OR hillsides.

The WA side suddenly stopped being smooth hills and now had more abrupt edges at the river.  And now I saw wind farms along both sides.

I saw almost as many WA license plates as I did OR's.

And finally the road climbed high above the river (we'd been running down near its bank) and soon it was out of sight.  I missed it when it was gone.

I'd moved into farming country and started seeing cows.  Also apparently there's a Tillamook facility over here because I saw a sign saying they were hiring - and offered birthdays off.

I passed a large sign saying: WARNING - Blowing Dust Area Next 40 Miles.  Not a reassuring sign.

I had plenty of time to think (I ran out of a public radio station and wasn't in the mood for either country/western or religion) and realized these big western states take so much time just to travel around them that I no longer have time to stop at museums or to see oddball sights.  The wide open spaces are really nice but it's not as cozy out here as back east.

I passed a sign offering "Melons - locally grown" and lots of planted croplands.

I passed an exit for the city of Echo, which seems to be a national historic site.  There've been European-Americans living around here since the 1850s, making it old by western US standards.  It was a crossroads for Indian trails as well as an offshoot of the Oregon Trail.  Today it's basically a farming town.

At milepost 202 I saw another one of those bowling pins sticking out of a round roof like I saw - where was it - in eastern OR?  Painted all white and no sign - including no sign of humans around - at all.

Then we came to Pendleton, which is another of Oregon's places I've wanted to visit.  The Welcome to Pendleton sign was surrounded by solar panels.  

My husband loved Pendleton shirts and wore them constantly.  It was always an easy Christmas present to get for the man who could get anything he wanted, mostly.  Besides, their quality was so good I was curious about what they had.  Of course, this was back in the days before the internet existed - and I still say there's a lot to be said for those times.

Pendleton Woolen Mills

I hadn't realized they offered tours of the factory until I walked in the doors of the visitor shop and saw a sign about them.  Too bad I hadn't known, because by the time I got there, they didn't have an opening available until 3:00 (it was just after 1:00), which was clearly not going to work.  But they had a wide selection in the store of the various goods they offer.

I was surprised to find that many of their items were made of cotton.  I can't wear wool so I was afraid I wouldn't be able to find anything, but I found a nice t-shirt that was on sale.  Their prices were fairly high, but I can't say they were exorbitant, considering the very high quality of the products. They really make nice things.  I saw shirts of all kinds, jackets, sweaters, blankets - including the famous Pendleton blankets.

This is the classic pattern.

And a lot of things were on sale, including a stack of blankets that had some kind of manufacturing defect - they had a sign telling exactly what the defect was for each. 

It was one time I wished I lived in an actual house and had an actual life (and an actual paycheck) so I could buy something.

From town we crossed the Umatilla River and drove south for another 45 minutes, entering and leaving the Umatilla Indian Reservation.

Tonight's campground was at a state heritage area, and there was a historic marker at the entrance to tell me what the heritage was.

And here we were at Emigrant Springs.  And it started to snow just as we got here.  It wasn't really cold enough but the snow still stuck to the dogs and my jacket and the ground a little bit, melting almost immediately.  Still, I worried a bit about what the road might be like if we came to higher elevations in the morning.