Home

Arrived home on Thursday, at 5pm, another 600 mile day--we started to smell the barn when we hit Iowa. So we drove from Eugene to Sycamore in four days this time. Starting to get this travel thing down, each of us doing two two-hour shifts a day. Cully loved traveling (except for some squiggly mountain roads). Lovely sunny weather almost every where on the road, except for that 15 minute blizzard in eastern Oregon and the blowing snow in the Medicine Bow range in Wyoming, where it was also -16 when we hit the road.

You all warned us about Illinois--snow and ice everywhere here. We're missing the evergreens and the 40-50 degree weather in the northwest, not to mention the Olympic waterways and birds and winter farmers' markets and that wonderful wet, green smell of cedar and fir.  We'll adjust--slowly--but Cully doesn't like his cold, white bathroom!

Great road trip: 6,573.5 miles.

Leaving the Northwest

Out our window--sunrise on the Straits was hard to leave.

Inside our January  home, Cully ponders packing for the road.

Final sunrise in the "blue hole.'

Leaving Mt. Baker across the water

Leaving downtown Dungeness

Like father, like daughter? relaxing before leaving W. Seattle

While dutiful son-in-law and grand dog prepare dinner!

Post-foot surgery Elise welcomes us back to Eugene to wait for good weather

Where Lois and Bob prepare a gourmet family dinner.

And we all have a farewell party with the Eugene gang.

Pit stop at  Bonneville dam as we drive thru the Columbia Gorge

Oh No! Didn't we do this on the way Into Oregon?

Soon, more gorgeous vistas as we head eastward

Seriously concentrating driver.

Little America, Wyo. (some other season?)

homeward bound

The weather along I 80 finally looks good for travel, so we hit the road for home. But after driving 490 miles from Eugene today, we're still in Oregon! Ontario. Just for a few more miles--then we're into Idaho and the Snake River valley.  The Columbia River gorge was the usual stunning, and we stopped to visit the Bonneville Dam for a brief hit of one of America's big things. During a sun break at one point, a full rainbow developed running east-west along the river.  Except for a fifteen minute blizzard in eastern Oregon as we crossed a mountain pass at just 4200 feet--snow everywhere, sticking on the interstate, traffic slowed to 35 mph--the drive along the Old Oregon Trail highway was gorgeous, snow capped mountains all around, luminous and electric blue sky, pink and gold clouds as the sun set, sweeping mountain valley vistas. It's empty and beautiful out here.

Tomorrow, on to Wyoming!

Final destination

Local Produce!

Our Chariot awaits

Out the front

Lighthouse on Dungeness Spit

Still heading west

Leaving Seattle

Our Sequim location: Blue Horizon

Dungeness-Sequim

After a great holiday with family, first in Eugene, then in Seattle, we moved on to our next destination--
Sequim, WA, below the Dungeness Light on the Strait of Juan De Fuca, looking cross the water to Mt Baker and to the Canadian coast.  Here we be till the end of January.

The Route

Cross-country Christmas

Into Oregon!

First taste of winter driving

Hood River

And a welcome coffee break

Following the Voyage of Discovery

in the Columbia River Gorge

Multnomah Falls

Self West! We made it!

The long and winding road