It’s another cloudy day – 19 °F. We start out of Moses Lake, going south on
Rt. 7 to Pasco, WA., but instead of going I-395 like we took coming up, we’ll
bypass the Tri-Cities to get back to Pendleton.
We plan to stop again at the Country Mercantile to purchase some
Christmas gifts, and then hook over to Rte. 12 and drive one of the back roads
to reconnect to I-395. Again, we’re
following the Columbia River until it turns west along the Washington-Oregon
border.
We reach Pendleton by noon, where it’s warmed up to
freeing temperature, but by the time we get to Pilot Peak, it’s dropped back
down to 24 °F and it has gotten terribly foggy!
Visibility is awful! By 1:00 we
start climbing out of it as we drive over Battle Mountain Summit at 4,270 feet.
There’s more snow than before in the Ukiah-Dale Scenic
Corridor and the North Fork of the John Day River has a lot of ice on it. At 2:00 we reach Grant’s favorite old house
again, but this time, we park at the top of the driveway and he walks in to get
close-up pictures. He startled a herd of
deer grazing there. In fact, we have
seen quite a few deer today, and even had to stop to let a small herd cross the
road. We arrive in John Day by 4pm.
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| Mostly wheat fields and cattle grazing out here. |
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| Oh,and birds! |
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| Drawbridge in the distance as we cross the Columbia once again |
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| This scenery never gets old! |
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| We saw lots of these windmills along the way |
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| Back in the snow |
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| I posted these 3 similar pictures just to show how the road goes on forever in places! |
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| A "glimp" of the sun (as Ben would say, since in's less than a glimpse |
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| Pendleton |
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| Getting foggy |
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| And then it got seriously foggy! |
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| North Fork John Day River |
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| Time to clean the windows |
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| We never did figure out what these signs indicated but they were all along this Scenic Corridor |
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| Back onto the flat lands |
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| Approaching Long Creek, OR |
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| Grant walking to get close-ups of the "old house" he loves so much |
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| The herd of deer Grant started |
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| Church in Long Creek |
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| Beech Creek Summit - 4687 feet |
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| Coming into John Day |
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| Old Church next door to our motel in John Day |
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| The restaurant near our hotel. |
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