Eh. U folks stay ready foa anodda road trip advencha? I am! U like go holoholo kaʻa wit us? K’den. We go. Imua!

After the sadness of my last posts, I thought it might be a good idea to have a road trip series to help ease the grief. I love seeing all the photos we took; it’s like taking the trip all over again.

As you know, Nolemana, Kukui, and I went to Montana to see family in October, 2009, and had a wonderful time. So wonderful, in fact, that we wanted to go back again to hear more family stories before Auntie’s memory failed. So I checked with Cousins, who said we’d be welcome to stay with them. I was ecstatic! We decide to go in May, just six months after we’d been there before. This way we’d see a whole new season in Montana, too.

This time I wanted to take a different route, because that’s what road trips are all about, right? Discovering new places, seeing new things, and having new adventures. So I planned a route to get us there with our first stop in Orofino, Idaho. It’d be a long first day, but we were excited about leaving.

This is going to be an adventure with tons of photos, but what’s new? It’ll probably take me months and months to get through it all, but I hope you’ll stick around for the whole thing. We had some pretty amazing things happen!

We were ready to start at about 10:30 on May 14th. Temperature was 54 degrees. Like always, we’d hoped to get started earlier, but there was so much we had to do in order to get ready, it didn’t happen. This time, Kukui stayed with my friend Julie, who would also take care of the kitties for us and other household/work stuff. We trade off lidat when they go somewhere.

Trip counter at zero.

Musubi ready to go…

…with the cape that Clare made for him on our last Montana/Idaho advencha.

Oops. Low battery. Not good.

The Kousa Dogwood was blooming as we drove down the driveway, locking the gate behind us. (Yeah, we gave Julie a key!)

The battery on TryLook wouldn’t charge. Not good Numbah Two. So we first stopped by Best Buy to see if they could figure it out; they said we might need a new cable, but ultimately went to Cleveland Auto to see what was going on. They were really busy, but when we explained to them that we were on our way to Montana, Arlen took a quick look at it. The problem? My car just needed a new fuse. Whew. That fixed everything right away. Mahalo once again, Cleveland Auto Repair!

But we were really late getting on the road, and it was almost noon by the time we got on the road for realz. Here we are, going up the lovely Columbia River Gorge. I never consider that a road trip has begun until we’re on the road heading out of town; in town doesn’t count!

It was a lovely day for a road trip, and the Columbia River shone in the sun. Musubi loves it when his reflection gets in the photos!

Love the green all around the tunnel!

If you look carefully, you can see a barge out there on the river.

This is Mitchell Point. There used to be a tunnel going through it before the new highway was built.

Kewl, yeah? Photo courtesy of Oregon Historical Society.

They say that Oregonians can detect more shades of green than anybody else. With sights like this, it’s not surprising.

But as you know from previous trips, once we crossed to the east side of the Cascades, there wasn’t much green to be found. So clearly, Oregonians who see plenny shades of green live on the makai side of the mountains!

I always have Nolemana take rock formation photos for Izzie, who loves them.

Close-up shot. I wish that somehow I could’ve been here to see how all this was formed.

Here we’re not too far from Biggs Junction. See the barge in the river? It was 81 degrees by now and about 1:30 p.m.

I really love watching the wind turbines up on the hills; what I can’t figure out is hakum they go at different speeds when they’re so close together. Washington side of the river these ones.

Still on the Washington side of the river.

When the da kines, what do you call the “blade” things, anyway?…are going around, they kinda look like dancers, all moving in some kind of wind dance.

There’s still just a tiny bit of green showing on this side of the mountains. Kinda like fuzz. In a couple of weeks, unless it rains, it’ll be all gone.

As always, we try to get pīpī photos for AFK. We’re not always successful as we go zooming by.

Conversation:

Mokihana: “Pīpī!!! Take photo!”
Nolemana: “I’m trying!” as he frantically tries to aim the camera so that the pīpī are actually in it.

There really is a train over there. The river is now called Umatilla Lake, and we’re just past Tower Road at about Milepost 157. And the reason I know all this is because before our trip, I made all new photo log sheets with fields to enter as much information as we could. Akamai, yeah? We’re now about to head north on Highway 82. We’re entering Umatilla City, it’s 2:35, and I can’t remember where we ate lunch! Probably in Hood River, getting a Subway sammich or something.

We saw this ginormous warehouse shortly after we made the turn. This is the Umatilla Ordnance Depot.

We drove into McNary at about 2:15 p.m. I always love seeing this sheet metal fountain.

So, since GoogleMaps stay broke, here’s my version of how far we’ve come this far.

And here’s an aerial view so you can see the changing terrain. I got GMaps to work in IE, by da way.

K’den. Pau Part One. I am actually excited to be taking this road trip again through my memory.