Monday, September 14, 2009
Day 10
To avoid bumper to bumper traffic, we head to the Port of Tacoma at 9:45 AM. Fortunately for us, the truck is there. We head back to Olympia to get our luggage and re-pack the truck. At 12:30, we are on the road and crossed the Columbia River by 1:45 PM. We stopped for a picnic lunch at Promotory Lake in Estacada, OR. Instead of going down I 5, we decide to go down the Cascade Range, driving through the Mt. Hood, Willamette, and Deschuttes National Forests and the Santiam Pass (Elv. 4817). The gorgeous scenery, particularly the winding, Clackamas River, was well worth the extra miles. We would love to trade some of our scrawny Alaskan spruce for some of Oregon’s immense trees. We arrive in Bend at 6:30 PM after driving 335 miles today. We opt for a hotel instead of camping and a Chinese dinner. Tomorrow, we will spend some time seeing Bend before hitting the road.