Day 2 - Melinda's Take

Out West Trip

If you click on the picture above you should be able to link to all of our pictures so far.

Anyway, hi everyone! We are safely sitting in the Best Western Hotel in La Grande, OR. We only were able to travel about 450 miles today due to several challenges. The first of these challenges lit up on the dasboard of the truck at 6:00 A.M. while we were still in Seattle. The little "Fuel Filter" light caused some uneasiness, so we contacted Budget truck rental and they routed us to an International Truck dealer for repairs. The fuel filter and a couple other parts were replaced and we took off around 9:30 A.M.

As we left Seattle, the lovely weather began to affect our trip. We drove through some beautiful country with some ugly weather. Rain was followed by snow followed by rain again. The truck, however, seems to ride pretty well in the weather. We had some fairly smooth sailing through Columbia River valley. This place is gorgeous! If you look to the south as your riding east on I-84 there are beautiful mountains with snow covered trees and waterfalls. On the left we drove right along the Columbia river which is a very large river. We saw many barges (eek I HATE big boats) cruising along the river.

The terrain begins to change about 100 miles into Oregon and it becomes a bit more desert like. There are miles and miles of sage brush (tumbleweeds) and it looks much drier. However, it was never really dry during the trip today. :-)

After the desert like setting you begin to climb up into the moutains. We drove through a pass this evening that rose to 4100 feet above sea level. The weather was a bit dicey but we made it through safely.

This brings upon our second challenge of the day - snow chains. Now we don't know too much about snow chains, however, we will be taking a lesson tomorrow morning from the folks at our favorite Western tire store Les Swabb. We need to have the knowledge of how to put these on even if we don't ever have to use the chains.

We want to thank all of your for you prayers and well-wishes. I am in good hands with Randy here. He's been traveling forever! We will travel carefully and will overcome our challenges. In the meantime, we are learning alot about patience! We look forward to continuing to read your comments and well-wishes. It's encouraging after a long hard frustrating day to read nice comments, so keep em' coming!

Melinda

P.S. Below are a couple videos from todays portion of the trip. Click the play button and come along for the ride. :-)