bobanddenisewanderlust

We were up and out of the motor home by 8:45. The weather was beautiful, with bright blue skies and no clouds. Temperatures were in the 60’s when we left, but 70’s later in the day, with minimal humidity. Perfect!! We traveled through Troutdale on the Mt. Hood Scenic Byway. The first stop would have been McMenamin Edgefield, but we decided to skip this stop as we are planning to have dinner there this evening. We continued on the road, going through deep green forest. We crossed Revenue bridge, and we joked that it must have been the bridge for the white lightning. We were wrong, turns out, this was a toll bridge, built by a family named Revenue, who set up the toll bridge and a shorter, easier route for the pioneers during their travel to the Mt. Hood River Valley. Our first stop was in Sandy. The Byway took us through the town and out to the Jonsrud Viewpoint.

The viewpoint showed us the Barrow Road driving tour which we had just taken,

to get us to Sandy. We drove back into the town of Sandy. The travel brochure spoke of the doughnuts in town, but did not tell us where they were. We spotted this building

and noticed that a lot of people were stopping there, so we went into buy a doughnut. They were very good!

We continued on, driving through the villages of Mt. Hood- Brightwood, Welches, Zigzag and Rhododendron. We were not impressed with the villages as there was nothing there except a few RV parks. We started climbing the mountain and drove through the village of Government Camp.  This village takes its name from the winter of 1849 when a small command of the US Mounted Rifles had to make camp here when their wagons became bogged down in the soggy Alpine meadows. It is now the skiers and hikers hub for the mountain. From here, we drove up the 6 miles to Mt. Hood and the National Historic Timberline Lodge. The Timberline Lodge was built by FDR in 1937 as a flagship project of the Depression Era Works Project. The temperature was 63 and people were skiing and snowboarding. Mt. Hood is open all year for skiing. Only a small part of the mountain was open and it looked pretty slushy to us!

We could not get parking close to the lodge so we continued on our way.

To this point, we had been driving on Rt. 26, we now turned left (north) onto Rt. 35, following the road to Hood River. We stopped in at one of the fruit stands, but we found it too expensive. We continue on to Panorama Point near Hood River, where we stopped for our picnic lunch. This is the view!

We drove through Hood River and took I-84 back to Troutdale Since it was only 2 PM when we arrived in Troutdale, we decided to go to McMenamin Edgefield. Bob wanted to try the beers at the Brew Pub. McMenamin Edgefield is housed in a former Poor Farm,

which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. We were not impressed with the appetizer menu, so I had an apple cider and Bob had the beer sampler. He tried a Ruby Ale (made with raspberries), Hammerhead Ale, India Pale Ale, a Porter( which had a very strong coffee flavor), the Terminator Stout, and the Seasonal Madness. He was not impressed with any of the beers. The cider was good though!

We returned to the motor home, took a quick nap, and sat out behind the motor home on the creek reading out books until dinner. We barbecued a steak for dinner. There were fireworks at the park right across the creek from us and the ‘booms’ lasted until 11:30.

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