We got up to Rowena Crest… ho da cars!!!

Good thing we weren’t stopping here now. This was outside the parking lot.

This is inside the parking lot, and that’s not even all of it. Cars were everywhere! Good thing we still hadn’t eaten and were on our way to The Dalles.

We drove down the curvy road; it was such a pretty drive, with amazing views of the Columbia River.

The rock formations were pretty cool, too.

I wondered what it had been like building this road. Did the workers notice the view or were they too intent on their jobs? I like to think that every once in awhile they paused to take it all in.

Going down the hill, we could see where we’d been before. See da road up dea?

Round and round we go… lower and lower.

Then we were on the freeway heading to The Dalles.

Cool da fish da kine, yeah?

We got to The Dalles and waited in line for about thirty minutes at Burgerville to order our hamburgers. Had I known I could, I would’ve ordered online and just used pick-up. While we were waiting, a mean-looking wahine in a big van cut the line right in front of me as I was waiting to make the turn to order. Watdaheck? But I no like beef, so I just let her go ahead. And then I let in another car that had been waiting out in the street.

Waiting in line to get our burgers. I love this neat old clock in the building across the street.

While waiting, we saw this van…I’d never seen double rear windshield wipers before. What a great idea! And yeah, I am easily amused.

We were pretty hungry, so I pulled into a parking lot so that we could eat. The road ahead was too curvy for me to manage my burger and steering at the same time, and no way Nolemana could take photos while eating, either. Then we headed back, but took a couple of side roads first. We saw this sign. Yep. Easily amused.

We ended up going to Mayer State Park for a look-see because we’d never been there before.

Wow! We never even knew this place existed!

It woulda been so great to have caught the engines of this train…it was so close!

Kids and kayakers were having a blast in the water on this sunny day.

We decided to head back up to Rowena Crest, hopeful that it wouldn’t be quite so crowded.

See up there? That’s where we’re headed.

I loved seeing the Lupine alongside the road, of course.

Arrowleaf Balsamroot was a lovely backdrop.

Try look TryLook. The winding roads reminded me of the hairpin turns on the Beartooth Highway in Montana. Which I’ll be writing about one of these days. It was one of the highlights of my life! (In case you don’t remember, TryLook is the name of our GPS…so named by Lurkah, who told me it’d tell me, “Eh Mokihana…try look! U stay going da wrong way!”

See that guy up there?

There’s the road up ahead, with Rowena Crest.

Looking across the river to the Washington side.

Looking east towards The Dalles, where we’d just come from.

Good thing there was nobody behind us so that I could stop and let Nolemana take photos.

Mt Adams

Across the river.

And here we are at Rowena Crest, greeted by the Balsamroot. A good many of the cars had left, and we found a parking place with no pilikia at all.

I’ll save the rest of our photos for next time. Now I gotta go delete more emails. I got behind the last two days. At this rate I may never finish!