Into the City

Saturday, September 14, 2013

There was a troop or two of boy scouts in the campground last night, and they were having a good time. They did seem to observe quiet hours, but just! They certainly didn’t sleep in. But they were having fun, and we didn’t really care if they were a little noisy.

We had breakfast at the picnic table, then got every thing cleaned up to go. We were on highway 6 between Tillamook and Portland. It was a pretty nice road following first the Wilson river and then Gales Creek. Betty wants to take this road more often so she can stop at the cheese factory for ice cream!

Not too many miles down the road we joined highway 26 and headed for Portland. We were glad we weren’t going the other direction. Road construction had them backed up for miles.

We merged onto 217 and then I5 before turning off onto I205. Then it was nine blocks to our destination, the McLoughlin House. It is listed as part of Fort Vancouver, and had some stamps we needed. Of course our route took us right past the car show happening in town, but we didn’t stop. 

As we got parked, a tour was just started, so we joined it. The story of the house was very interesting. Our guide is a vice president of the association for the house, so was very thorough in his talk. In fact, just a little long winded! But he told some good stories about it. Had some actual photos from moving the house from down the very steep hill to its current location, and a lot of history about the family that owned it. Some of the furnishings were more than 200 years old.

After the tour we went into the Barclay house next door to get our stamps. They were having a hands on craft demo, and there were several people sitting around the tables doing some fish scale embroidery. They were using shad scales which are much larger than salmon scales, and embroidering them onto fabric. One of the ladies leading out had some really nice samples of previous projects she had done.

Proceeding on up I205 to I84, we headed east out of the Columbia River Gorge and on to the little park area just below the John Day dam. We can stay the night here if we can stand the heat and the noise from the trains!