Beginning the Trip The Drive through Idaho and Oregon and to Washington

 August 16 and 17, 2020 To Washington State

I have long had a desire to visit Olympic National Park, both because I have been told and read that it has a wonderful variety of climates ranging from glaciers to a temperate rain forest, and that it has a very low visitation rate. The latter being a real positive in the age of the virus. I had scheduled the trip for this summer and had to reschedule twice, but now we were on our way.

We left from from our borrowed condo in Park City. This was our last day in that condo so we not only had to pack for the trip but we also had to clear out the condo. We finished packing up by 9:30 and drove down to our condo in SLC to unload some of our belongings and to leave one car packed with stuff in the garage. I also watered my tomato plants and picked up the mail. We left about 12:20, well be hind my hoped for departure.

We quickly got on to I-15 north and settled in for a long drive listening to podcasts, Malcolm Gladwell and Chuck Rosenberg, and satellite radio. After about 1.5 hrs we transitioned toI-84. This portion of the road seems to primarily go west, at one point it even intersects I-86 so I do not know why it has an even number. The drive was pretty boring and the landscape nondescript.

By dinner time we had exhausted our electricity and the gas gauge was getting low so we pulled off in Boise to gas up and eat dinner. I had intended to stop at a mall to eat, but its electric chargers were not working and on Sunday evening there were not many choices so we ate dinner at the Brixx Craft House. Lots of draft beers and good burgers and deserts. Not many people there and few masks.

After about an hour in the restaurant we got back onto I-84 and drove for 2.25 hours into Oregon to Baker City. We picked up an hour as we crossed into the Pacific Time Zone and it was light for most of the drive.  We climbed for a good part of the drive through Oregon through heavily wooded mountains. Stay at the Oregon Trail Motel and Restaurant where we stayed in 2018. It had not improved and I was unable to charge up the car from our room since there was another car parked outside our room. After checking in and moving into our room, I walked into downtown and again viewed the Grand Geiser Hotel, where we had also stayed and eaten during a 2019 visit. Main street was well lit and I was surprised to find that since our last visit here the city had added almost a score of animal sculptures.

                                                    Grand Geiser Hotel

The next day I discovered that the car in front of our room had left early so I moved our car to get a few electric miles. We ate a good breakfast at the motel restaurant that was part of our hotel bill. The service was very good and the breakfast was tasty and filling. After breakfast we walked around town and along the river path, and saw the animal sculptures in daylight. At the Bella Main Street Market we did some shopping and purchased some Oregon wine. I noticed that the store clerk at the market had eaten at the restaurant. She told me that the animal sculptures were a recent addition, on loan form a local artist. By the time we got back to the motel it had gotten hot and the car had charged up to 9 miles. 

                                                Sculpture outside our motel

                                                The Market giving covid advice

                                             Not much activity in Baker City in the morning 

We resumed our trip and returned to I-84. We stopped first at highway arch and then a pioneer rest stop, Deadmans Pass, which had a lot of narrative displays about the Oregon Trail pioneers. This site was midway between an three day ascent and then a steep descent to the Umatilla River

 

For the next 3 hours we drove up through green forests in Oregon and then down into the Columbia River Valley where we crossed into the State of Washington and on to I-82. There the environment almost immediately changed to dry, hot and brown. For the next hour we passed lots of vineyards,fruit orchards and hops fields. The latter are grown on 7 ft high triangular supports. The other feature of the landscape were the thousands of produce boxes stacked along the farms to be loaded and similar boxes at teh food processing plants that were scattered along the interstate. We stopped in Yakima for refueling, both gasoline and electric, an early dinner and a cash withdrawal. We walked around downtown a bit, very hot and pretty deserted and ate at the Second Street Grill. Indoor eating is prohibited due the virus, but the shaded outdoor patio made for a pleasant dinner. The car was charged up to 18 miles courtesy of a free chamber of commerce charger. It was a GE charger, one I had never seen before.

Following dinner we returned to I-82 and began a 5 hour drive to our hotel. We passed over the twin span Fred Redmon Bridge spanning the Selah Creek which when completed in 1971 was the longest concrete arch bridge in the US and won an award "for excellence in the use of concrete". It was named for the first chairman of the Washington Highway Commission. All that information was courtesy of a stop in an overlook just after we crossed the bridge.

 

We transitioned to I-90 west and passed over the Snoqualmie pass, elevation 3022 ft. which receives a lot of snow in the winter, is frequently closed due to the snow and averages over 30 accidents a year. We did not have to deal with that, but as we were descending from the pass we noticed an extremely long traffic back-up going eastbound due to road construction. We were in the middle of no where in the Cascade mountains and while it was very green and beautiful, there are no other roads in this area so the eastbound traffic just inched along for miles. On the as of yet undetermined route back we will not take this road.

East of Seattle we turned south off of I-90 and circumvented both Seattle and Tacoma. Too many virus inspired closings in those cities to visit them. We rounded the southern end of Puget Sound and as we began our trip north up the Kitsap peninsula we crossed the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. This twin span, one built in 1950 and the other in 2007, replaced the original span which was build in 1940 and 4 months collapsed under 40 mph winds due to aeroelastic flutter. That event is the subject of a much viewed film  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge_(1940)#Film_of_collapse. The State could not collect on one of its insurance policies on the bridge because its insurance agent had absconded with the premium. The only fatality was a dog, Tubby, which resisted rescue attemps and bit one of the would be rescuers. The owner of the last car on the bridge, and Tubby received a settlement of $50 for his lost car and $362 for its contents, including Tubby

 During the original bridge's short life it was the third longest suspension bridge in the US. The replacement bridge had tolls, but amazingly when the bonds were paid off the tolls were removed. Sadly after completion of the second span they were reinstated in 2007, but only for eastbound traffic so we did not pay them.

Following a winding and darkening drive north and then west on the Olympic Peninsula we arrived at our motel in Port Angeles about 9:00.