Trip # 3 - Dams 4 & 5

I headed out on an early sprinkly Friday morning for RMC to meet Gary Paul who was to be my riding partner for this trip along with Tug who we would meet at Hawks Prairie. We were concerned about the weather going over White Pass, so we elected to ride around via I-5 & Portland. How do you spell riding 250 miles in varying degrees of rain? Answer: Our route. The rain was heaviest between the Toutle River and Woodland where we refueled.

In order to miss the WA14 construction I routed us via I-84 where we finally rode out of most of the rain by Cascade Locks. We re-crossed the Columbia River at Hood River, rode up WA 14 to Dallesport where I found a photo location at the end of the pavement near the sewage treatment facility.



I then routed us along Hoctor Road through a nice Wind Farm to old WA8.

I've always liked these next two scenes:





Continuing on we reached our night's destination in Pendleton. The following day we did a 350 mile ride that I had laid out for the group I was riding with. If you would like to view pictures of that ride, go to the following link:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/28wwo6x Essentially it was a ride that left Pendleton headed south on US395, west on OR74/207 (nice technical twisties) to Condon, south on OR19 via Fossil and Spray to US26 and west to John Day. Then we rode north on US395 back to Pendleton.

Today, Sunday, Gary and I decided to tag the Mill Creek Dam in Walla Walla since it was only 40 miles away. I had originally considered running to the Swan Falls dam and then picking up the two eastern Oregon Dams on the way back, but because of the very variable weather conditions, decided to cut my ride short and just get the Mill Creek Dam.

It was a nice ride there and the setting for the dam is so close to civilization. It, however, was very, very windy and I had to tape my Damtour placard to the windshield.



Leaving Walla Walla, we selected a route up WA24 along the east side of the Columbia River.

Lunch was in Mattawa at La Parrilla where Gary Paul gave it a 2 thumbs up (he's a Mexican food fan).



Here's a picture of the Vantage Bridge where it wasn't even windy.



The rest of the ride over Snoqualmie Pass was a mixture of wet & dry (mostly dry).

It was a nice 3 days of riding 1,085 miles. 5 Dams down and 15 to go.