The Oregon Trail Day 3

Day 3- 750 miles up lots of hills and against the wind, which ruined the good gas mileage we were getting. Boo. But day 3 was really good for scenery. We went from Ogden, Utah to Portland via Boise and the Columbia River Gorge.

Utah in the morning was beautiful- snowy mountains, sunshine, the great salt lake. A tumbleweed got stuck in the grill of my car! Boise wasn't all that exciting looking, so we just kept driving. Then we got to the Idaho/Oregon border where we saw the OreIda headquarters... which makes sense, but I never really thought about the name.

Oregon was super pretty the whole way through. Of the 10 states we were in, that is the only one we could really say that about. It had desert-like area in the East, then we came to a huge overlook (the picture on the title of this blog) before driving at a steep grade down for a long time (this area is called dead man's pass or something, and they have these little drives that go straight up- this is in the event that a truck's (or car's, I guess) breaks go out-- that way they can drive straight up rather than off the side of a mountain.), then there were grape farms, then we eventually hit forest, then we hit the Columbia River Gorge, which was awesome, and our pictures don't really do it justice. We saw waterfalls, and a dam and mossy cliffs. The weather in Oregon changed every few minutes during the drive here, and that hasn't really changed since getting to Portland. On the trip it went from being sunny to snowing and hailing a little before reverting back to being sunny. This time of year in Portland, it's common for half of the day to be rainy and the other half perfect.

We drove into Portland while it was still light out. We found the neighborhood we lived in and were pleased at how nice it was-lots of trees and other plants, nice little houses. Then we came to a house that, unlike the other houses, had no grass, but did have pirate flags in the windows- our new home. We met our roommates, unpacked some stuff, went out for hot wings and got lost driving around downtown.

We had little to no car trouble on the way out here, no fender benders, decent weather. We didn't lose anything, get anything stolen, get kidnapped, or get too lost at any point. We didn't even want to kill each other after spending 3 days in a car together.

Picture Descriptions:
Please enlarge the scenic ones! Especially the panoramic one!
These are grouped by subject, but not chronological.
1. Oregon is really pretty.
2.-7. The area of and around the giant overlook/ "dead man's pass"
8.-10. Columbia River Gorge, inc. the dam
11. The last leg of the trip
12.-18. Welcome to Portland!, inc. partial skyline, the convention center, the first public transit spotting(!), the basketball stadium
19.-24. Idaho
25. There's a tumbleweed in my grill!