October 02, 2007- Road Trip Day 4

Driving up the Oregon coast in a constant drizzle, we cut over to Corvallis, then Albany, where we rejoined Interstate 5 north to Portland. Trying to avoid past mistakes when driving here, we used the I-205 bypass to join I-84, the Columbia Gorge Freeway. Our first stop was beautiful Multnomah Falls, which we totally missed, flying down the road in the rain.

We stopped at the Bonneville Dam, which was interesting, since it is federal facility, so the guard, a pleasant woman about my age told us about where the visitor center was, where to park, and "please open you vehicle for inspection" We popped open the lift gate, and she rummaged around a little, and then smiled and gave consent for us to proceed. Interesting. Off course nobody stopped me from taking pictures of anything, so I guess if I was only on a reconnaissance mission, no foul. Very beautiful scenery.

Continuing on, we headed to Hood River, where we finally were able to sample some Full Sail ale straight from the brew house..yummm. And the food...my lunch was great..

We headed across the Columbia River and followed the river on the Washington side, and eventually (100 miles) later, found our way to Kennewick. What interested us about Kennewick was (1) we had never been there and (2) new houses sell for 130 to 170 thousand, so we might want to retire here. About a mile from the hotel is an subdivision, where the home lots are minimum 1/4 acre, and the houses range from 170 to 230,000. This is about 1/2 to 1/3 as much as they are in northern part of California, and off the scale cheap compared to the Sacramento or San Francisco area...which is why we won't be staying in California for long.

We drove around some more, and decided the reason the houses are so relatively inexpensive is probably there is no big demand to live here...it is surrounded by high desert farm land, and Portland or Seattle are several hours away. Maybe not, but that's what we came up with.

Tomorrow we head into the Cascades, hoping to spend time checking out Leavenworth, a "Bavarian" town that looks more Bavarian than any town in Bavaria I visited when in Germany. On our way we are going to check out Washington states only operating nuclear power station, 10 miles from here. We used to have nuclear power plant in Eureka, but it was taken out of operation years ago..

Thinking about where we want to relocate to, we looked at some houses on the beach yesterday, and even though they were much more expensive than these Kennewick houses, I think we would rather live on the ocean (or close to it) than way over in the middle of the desert, but that's us. i know lots of people that love the desert, and I like visiting there, but living there? Not me.

see ya tomorrow...