Leaving the Pacific Northwest

Today, we'll be leaving the Pacific Northwest and heading down to Las Vegas.

Visiting family has been a great start to our adventure.

Our first stop, and our longest, was in Bridgeport, WA. A big, huge THANK YOU to Bill and Mel for welcoming us into their home for more than 10 days. Enjoyed many days of great conversation. It was fun to reconnect with them and all their kids.

Clarinda also enjoyed going for several runs in and around Bridgeport. Her favorite run was to the Chief Joseph Dam. You can read about it here.

A major reason for stopping in Bridgeport was to drop off our china set and free up some room in Liberty. Well, we also purchased a few items. There was still quite a bit of Tetris going on when re-loading Liberty to continue on our way.

We left Bridgeport on Thurs and headed to The Dalles, OR to stop at Jeff's sister's house to drop off a painting and some DVDs.

We drove through Chelan and stopped to take some pictures of the gorgeous lake there.

And a little video.

It was a really pretty drive the rest of the way to The Dalles - though Clarinda did doze quite a bit.

The most stunning was driving up to this view.

And crossing into Oregon was one of the prettiest state crossings - from crossing the Columbia river to seeing Mt Hood in the background.

This was also the scariest part of the drive.

The Columbia River Gorge area is known for its wind, and that's no joke! Liberty was being whipped around like a huge kite. There was one point when we were really afraid of losing Lily and Lloyd (our bikes). Have we introduced you to them yet? We'll have to do that in a future post. The wind whipped the straps of our bike rack so violently, that we were really afraid that the straps were going to disengage. We'd be sad to say good-bye to our bikes, but even more devastating would have been having to say good-bye to Liberty. We're not sure she would survive running over two bikes while driving 45-55mph.

Finally we made it to The Dalles, OR.

Unfortunately, while we had an address, we'd failed to actually look up directions. So... we pulled into a gas station right off the freeway and asked for directions. We were a little hesitant because the cashier didn't seem very confident, but the directions turned out to be perfect!

We easily found our way to Jeff's sister's house, where we stayed the night. Thanks, Trudy! Clarinda and Trudy even went for a run/walk the next morning. It was too brief of a stay but so great to see them again.

From there we went to spend a couple hours visiting with Jeff's mom.

And then back into WA to visit with Jeff's cousin, Rebecca. We sat around and chatted, helped with her son's birthday party, and chatted some more. What a fun visit!

Plus, one of the softest, most comfortable beds EVER! Her daughter is so lucky. :)

Vegas is next on our agenda. We'll be taking our time with the drive and should arrive in Vegas sometime Tuesday afternoon.

Here's our tentative route:

If you're familiar with this area, and know of any must-see stops, feel free to leave us a comment below, and we'll do our best to provide some pictures.