The last day and a half of our trip was a blur. From Sweet Home we raced along Highways 20 and 22 to Detroit, Oregon. We'd planned on taking NF-46 north from Detroit (through the high cascades) but a local insisted that the road was impassable.

Determined not to repeat our adventures on NF-11, we continued west on the 22 into the Willamette Valley and the little town of Sublimity. From Sublimity we headed north, to Silverton, through some of the most beautifully pastoral countryside we'd ever seen...rolling hills and green fields stretching from one horizon to the other.



The Willamette Valley...

Silverton was a sparkling little town, and Shauna fell in love with it as we sped down main street(it bums me out that we had to blow through so quickly). She still fantasizes about buying a house and living there someday. Not a bad daydream...we plan on taking a trip to check out the area next spring.



The Willamette Valley outside of Silverton...

From Silverton, we took a circuitous route north, through the Willamette Valley and up the western flank of Mt. Hood. The Sky had turned gray, and the summit was shrouded in clouds as we ascended. The sky cleared for just long enough near the top to snap a couple photos of the snow covered peak before moving on.


Mt. Hood...

We spent the last night of our trip in Hood River; an ultra-quaint little Victorian town on the banks of the Columbia River. The scenery from our room was completely ridiculous with views of the Columbia River Gorge and Mt. Adams out one window, and panoramas of Mt Hood out another.

The next morning we a raced down the Gorge, stopping only briefly at Multnomah Falls en route to Portland International. The falls and The Gorge were both amazing, and we would have taken a lot more photos if we hadn't been trying to catch a plane. We had seen so many spectacular places in so few days that we might have started to become desensitized to it all.


Multnomah Falls...

I'll admit to being a bit sad as I handed the keys to the Escape off to the parking attendant at the airport. We'd practically lived in the thing for 11 days. It had gotten us safely through some fairly hairy spots, and it had held up to everything that the road could throw at it. Hats off to ya' little Ford.

After checking our bags and wading through airport security, we had a few moments to finally decompress, reflect on what we'd seen and done before boarding. The Pacific Northwest had exceeded our expectations so thoroughly. From the Hood Canal, to Sekiu, to the Hoh rainforest and Kalaloch. From Astoria and Ecola State Park, to Cape Mears and The Willamette Valley. It was all so damn cool! And despite having seen so much I felt like we had barely scratched the surface. Though we were tired, ready for our own beds, we were busy planning our return trip before we had ever even left.