Unfamiliar Interstate; Home Again

Sun, 09 Sep 2007 23:59:59 -800

Sunday, we bade Enterprise farewell and started driving
west back to Portland via OR-82 and I-84.
Since neither of us had been on it before, we drove I-82 north into Washington
and came back to Hermiston, Oregon for lunch. Highlights of the rest of the
trip include seeing the new windmills being installed in the Columbia River
Gorge and watching the salmon trying to swim up the fish ladder at Cascade
Locks. It's quite odd watching fish trying to swim upwards against the current:
they make a few feet of progress, then get tired and get pushed most of the way
back, and occasionally a bigger fish comes crashing downcurrent, shoving the
smaller fish around the place. Trouble is, the fish expect to go upcurrent, so
making it "easy" for them by lowering the water flow confuses them and they
end up fish chowder in the dam turbines. When we got back to Portland we
hosed and scrubbed the Blazer until it was clean,
leaving a layer of topsoil all
over my driveway. Dinner was at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse in downtown, with
dessert at Pix on SE Division. 1,959.2 miles and 84 gallons of gas this year.