We'll Be Coming Round the Mountain When We Come

Good morning, my friends. It's our last morning on the road. The next time I write to you, I'll be firmly ensconced at my office desk at the Three Cats Ranch. We've been telling the kitties: today is the day! You can see they are chomping at the bit to get going.

It was only about an hour after we left Meridian yesterday that we crossed the border into Oregon. No more ins and outs for us this trip. We're here to stay this time around...until the next trip, of course, but that's a while off.

It's pretty country on this side of Oregon. We only get over here when we're traveling, and generally, we're going in the other direction. It looked quite a bit different traveling from east to west.

There was still a lot of snow in the mountains. The Blue Mountains have seen some bad weather, contributing to a 100-car pile-up in this same area a few weeks ago. And even though there was snow, the roads were clear and dry.

We saw a few barns along the way...most were hidden behind things. I'm often wishing I could capture a barn that simply will not come out from behind the trees.

Some of them are in beautiful settings.

And on we went...it was about 200 miles yesterday, and it will be about the same distance today.

And after thousands of miles of desert, it was good to be back among the trees.

We traveled alongside the Grand Ronde River for much of the day.

Eventually, we began seeing Ponderosa Pines. These grow in abundance in Bend, Oregon, as well. They seem to like the drier high desert climates.

Crossing over the summit of the Blue Mountains, there was a lot of snow. But that marked our highest mountain pass. Ordinarily, we'd go home through Bend, but we ended up driving around the mountains for this trip...thus, the title of this blog post.

We stopped off at a viewpoint to see the landscape on the west side of the mountains. Holey-moley...we could see a long, long way.

 

There was a plaque erected at the viewpoint. It always does my heart good knowing there are people who are willing to do this kind of work voluntarily.

When we were set up in the RV park, I spent some more time on my emergency stitching project. I'm just barely getting started.

I don't like how the words are a little hard to see. I'm going to stitch over them again with more floss to bring them out a little more. That should work, but I won't know for sure until I try.

Pendleton is built on a hillside, and we had beautiful view of the valley below. The colors were incredible in the setting sun, and that was one dramatic sky. We thought we might get rain, but none came.

Okay, so we expect to be home by early afternoon. I'm going to try to get the RV unpacked as quickly as possible, but I probably won't write again until that's done and I can get reorganized in the sewing room. You never know, though. I get words rattling around in my head, and I simply must send them out through my fingertips before my head explodes. And with all that new fabric, I wouldn't want to make a mess. So, I'll probably be back tomorrow, but I might take a day off. How's that for a definite maybe? And there's plenty to do back home. No doubt, the weeds will be there to greet us. I'm hoping to see some crocus coming up when we arrive. And I need to get back to my sewing. The next art quilt reveal is May 1st, and I haven't even settled on an idea yet. There is no prompt this time, which makes it hard to settle on something. Oh well...all in good time. 

Just now I'll be packing the laptop up for the last time. Like we tell the kitties when we shut the door to the RV: I'll see you on the other side.