It’s a long way from Santa Rosa to Leavenworth. 842 miles/1355 kilometers to be exact. After disembarking from Grandpa Greg’s house last Friday we made our way north with a few stops along the way, attempting to limit our daily mileage to no more than 300 miles/480 kilometers. The limit was imposed in an attempt to avoid mayhem in the back seat, but to be honest the kids were exceptionally capable travelers during the first few days of hammering out some long slogs on the road.
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On day one we motored through Nor Cal with relative ease, the drive spent with a mix of some crazy Mad Libs sessions, many electronic Simon Says games (thanks Amy!), a ton of renditions of hangman, coupled with some beautiful views of Mount Shasta as we charged north from Redding. We spent our first official night on the road at Shafter Campground in Klamath National Forest just south of the California/Oregon border. I don’t think I’ve ever camped in California during summer with a campground to ourselves, but there’s a first time for everything and it happened to be at Shafter on day one. It’s a beautiful forested spot alongside a meandering creek about 15 minutes off Highway 97 near Macleod, you’d never know it’s there as there’s no signage on 97 in Butte Valley near the turn off, but if you’re ever on your way up/down 97 and need a place to camp this is the spot. Max and I practiced his casting action in the creek as the sun set (no luck, although we had a few chasers…) while the girls enjoyed the campfire, couldn’t have asked for a better start to our adventures.
We were up and at ’em early from Shafter, rolling our of the campsite before 8AM with sights set for Memaloose State Park at the Oregon/Washington border near Hood River. It was another long day of driving, tough to motor through Bend without hitting the MTB trails but we had places to go and people to see, no time for lollygagging on the singletrack below Mount Bachelor. More hangman, more Mad Libs as we slogged north along Highway 97 through eastern Oregon. Paul Simon and Michael Jackson helped the hours pass, as did frequent requests of Flume tracks from Max and the occasional Taylor Swift a capella solo from Lisa.
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Memaloose State Park is not somewhere I’d recommend spending a weekend, but it’s one of the few campgrounds along the Columbia River Gorge so we shacked up for the night there on our way between California and Washington. A year ago on our trip through Bend, Northern Oregon and The Southern Cascades we stumbled upon some Native American fishermen selling freshly smoked salmon in the Columbia River Gorge on our way through Cascade Locks. A year ago at $30 a pound/$66 a kilogram we only bought a sliver, but after tasting the fish later that day we were deeply sorry we didn’t buy more. This time around we drove the 40 minutes round trip in the rain from our campsite at Memaloose to Cascade Locks to catch the same Native American family selling smoked chinook and bought biggest piece we could spy. From there it was back to Hood River, which is home to more breweries than one can poke a stick at. Ferment Brewing was our brewhouse of choice on Saturday, beers and burgers always go down well even if you’re forced to eat outside in the freezing ass cold (thanks COVID…).
From Memaloose we popped north over the Oregon/Washington border to be greeted immediately by a fruit stand peddling apricots and plum-sized Washington cherries, something we’d been keeping an eye out as we traversed the orchards of Hood River just south of the border. Max was stoked. We crossed over a desolate stretch of the Native American Yakama Nation before crossing into the rich orchard farmland around Toppenish. 220 miles/354 kilometers for the day took us to our resting place at Eightmile Campground alongside the raging torrent of the Icicle River in the mountains east of Leavenworth. A lot of driving for three days!
