Driving, driving. Did you know that many more interesting things happen when traveling by bicycle than by car? It was a pretty uneventful day today. I did talk with a family at breakfast about my trip. The mom was pretty interested. They were on their way to Lake Chelan in Washington for a week's vacation. I've heard that it is really beautiful there. Then I hit the road and continued heading east through the Columbia River Gorge. I stopped at Hood River to check out the town. It appeared to be a windsurfers hangout. Then I drove a short way up the road heading to Mount Hood. I had to see if I could get a picture of it. I did, both with and without the digital zoom on the camera. When I look at the camera's LCD, the pictures without the digital zoom show the mountain fading into the sky. It will be interesting to see if they are decent pictures when I look at them on a larger screen.
As I left Hood River I noticed another high Cascade peak to the north in Washington. I don't know which mountain that was - but maybe one of my Portland readers (Greg?) can tell me which mountain that is! (8/19: Thanks Greg for filling in the mountain's name for me. That was Mount Adams that I saw.
I had one surprising cyclist sighting today. As I was heading west on I-84, I saw a couple on a tandem heading east on the westbound shoulder of the road. It is OK to ride a bike on I-84, but I was shocked that they were riding against traffic. That's definitely not acting like a vehicle, which is what the vehicle code in all 50 states calls for when you're riding a bike - but even more than that, it's scary and dangerous. Riding against traffic on a little road freaks me out. On an interstate it would be even worse...
It was another day of beautiful scenery. The Columbia River Gorge became greener as more trees appeared on the sides of the valley. Then as I got close to Portland and turned south I was driving in a flat area with mountains visible both to the east and the west.
When I arrived in Eugene I headed for the airport to return the rental car. Forgot to mention yesterday that Hertz tried to give me a Lincoln Town Car. I had made a reservation for a full-sized car to be sure that everything would fit in the car - but the Lincoln was not something I wanted to drive. Too big, too much like a boat, and definitely not my style! They only had one other car that they would release for a one-day rental, a Mazda classified as a mid-sized car. Luckily everything fit! I attracted a bit of attention this afternoon when I pulled the folded bike out of the trunk and put it back into it's real bicycle shape. That's a good magic act. I took a look at the map of Eugene, and then confirmed that the road that I thought I should take was the right one. I had a nice ride into town with a bit of a push from a tailwind.
I rode past a number of hotels, then decided that I wasn't in the mood for the funky places, so I splurged and checked into the Hilton downtown. I think that the fact that I don't want to deal with the little hotels any more is wrapped up in my decision to be done...
I walked around, then had a good dinner at a restaurant that bills itself as having Indian and Greek food. Luckily I really wanted Greek food because Sunday nights the menu is Greek only.
I'll be in Eugene for the next two days, and I'll be flying home on a red-eye Tuesday night. Wow.
