Tuesday’s drive

it was TUESDAY that I made this trip, WEDNESDAY when I posted the pics

(earlier mis-dated)

It wasn’t that long a drive, actually.  One of the gimmicks in my car’s trip computer is an elapsed timer that times how long the key is on "run".  5 hours and 9 minutes from the time I set out, and something over 200 miles – not all that far, really, but the scenary I saw made it seem that much more of a road trip.

For one thing, I’ve never seen these fishing platforms here in real life before:

*

 

*

 

*

The Deschutes River canyon here is a wonderful sight:

*

 

*

 

*

*

 

*

 

*

I studied geology in college – Oregon is a great place to do that:

*

 

*

 

*

There are a couple types of lava here – Oregon has a long history, as the leading edge of the North American plate, of volcanic activity.  The Columbia plateau, part of which I drove over on both sides of the river, was formed from sheets of liquid basalt that flowed from cracks in the earth in central Oregon many times over.  These sheets spread for hundreds of miles and I can see layers on layers here – pretty neat stuff to not be around for, eh?

*

 

*

 

*

*

 

*

 

*

Driving west from US 97 on OR 216, there was no hint of what I’d see:

Portland is one of the great grain ports of the US – wheat grown in central and eastern Oregon, eastern Washington, and Idaho is shipped do

wn the Columbia and transferred to ships and sent all over the world.

*

 

*

 

*

I’ve been to Stonehenge at least five times that I can think of… but this was only the second time that I had a digital camera, which may help explain why it is that I ended up with so many pictures.  In 2000, when I drove to Stonehenge after my college graduation, I just had a 35 mm point and shoot Nikon and have only a few pics from that trip….

*

 

*

 

*

The view through the stones here is like, totally different than the view from the real Stonehenge!

*

 

*

 

*

Of course, it was nice from the beginning, to drive out from under the gray gloom that spread over western Oregon:

It was a good drive.

*****