Date: 25 July 2001 (Wednesday)

Start: Cousin Luann’s house, Bend OR

End: Sandy Heights RV Park, Pasco WA (263 miles)

The temperature was about 55f when we got up, with not a cloud in the sky. Later in the day it got up to around 90f with 28% humidity.

We left Luann’s after saying goodbye again as she and Morgan were leaving separately for work. We decided not to do anything fancy, but just take in the Columbia River on our way to Pasco.

So we went up US-97 to the Columbia, across it, and then east on WA-14 following the north side of the Columbia.

The country around the Columbia at this point makes Bend look tropical. It’s positively dry here, with only a few sagebrush clumps here and there. You wonder where all the water in the river came from, since it sure didn’t start here. The river here is running downstream to the west.

After 15 minutes or so on highway 14, we saw a boat in the distance, coming downstream. After a bit, we identified it as a paddlewheel steamboat. We pulled over to take pictures. With the binoculars, we could read the name board, "Queen of the West". It was really a picture from the past.

Some time after that, we got into irrigation territory. It appears that putting water down will make anything grow. We passed huge circular fields of corn with the irrigation system going around in a circle spraying water on it. We passed the home grounds of Columbia Crest winery and saw lots of grapevines. We saw a group of laborers in a field of some low row crop I couldn’t make out at 55mph; they had a lot of empty sacks at the row ends, and full ones scattered up and down the field. We saw a barge and tow boat going downstream, and a fair-sized yacht also going down.

We connected with I-82 going up to Kennewick and Pasco. It was a gentle hill but it went up forever, then plopped back down into the Columbia valley, cutting off the loop where the river runs a large curve to the east. At Pasco the Columbia is flowing downstream to the south, coming down from Canada. The Yakima joins the Columbia just above Pasco, and the Snake joins it just below Pasco.

We pulled in to an RV park that looked satisfactory in Woodall’s guide and were assigned a space for the night. We parked and left the truck and trailer attached, thinking to get a quick start tomorrow morning. The park is very neat, clean, orderly. The streets are all asphalt and the spaces are concrete. It has a small indoor pool and spa. All sites have all utilities, so D is currently flipping through 50+ channels. Phone service is available at the sites, but we didn’t take it.

We walked around the place and read for a bit, then had dinner.

The TV had been noting that the Canadian performance air team, the Snowbirds, were to perform after 6:00pm tonight. The airport is just east of the RV park, so we were alerted. Just after dinner, here they came, and did a loop in a formation of seven planes over the airport. As their show progressed, we could see them forming different groups to do different stunts. At one point, they turned on their smoke-makers and drew a heart with an arrow through it in the sky.

The min/max thermometer gave the maximum today as 102f, but that’s artificially high; I mounted the sensor under the trailer (to avoid direct sunlight) and the sun is heating the concrete just under it. Nonetheless, it’s supposed to get up to 90+ tomorrow (53 tonight).

We’ll wait a bit for more cooling, then walk around the park and hit the hay.