March 4, 2016 We took a day trip up to Sisters Oregon, in the Cascade Mountains. Had a nice time and got a few good photos.

 

We left Thompson's Mills in Shedd, Oregon on March 27th and headed for Puyallup, Washington for a week. Before we left, we took a trip to Silver Falls State Park, northeast of Salem. One of the hosts we work with at Thompson's Mills is going to host at Silver Falls for a couple of months starting next week and wanted to take a trip up there to see where it was and how to get there, so she wouldn't have any problems getting into her site. While we were there, we drove through the park on the main road and took a short hike to the southern falls. We got a few pictures and had a great time.

 

 

We left Puyallup Sunday, March 3rd and drove to Memaloose State Park on the Columbia River, just west of The Dalles, Oregon. We stayed for three nights. On Monday, we drove back west, to see the Multnomah Falls. We hiked almost two miles, up around the main falls and stopped to see Horsetail Falls. It was a little drizzly but not bad. We got wetter from the spume from the falls than we did from the drizzle.

 

Wednesday, March 6th we headed for Farewell Bend State Park near Ontario, Oregon. We've stayed there a number of times before. Friday we took a day ride to Hell's Canyon. It was a very interesting and beautiful drive, though we would have liked to see it before they put the three dams in, whose reservoirs now cover what were probably some other spectacular sights. At the end of the road (from the south) you end up at Hell's Canyon dam, where you can finally see the natural river and canyon..

 

We saw a mountain goat resting on top of a ledge, overlooking the river while there.

 

One the way back out of the canyon, we stopped to check out some water falls coming down the canyon wall, across the river. The first photo shows the overall scene, the others are of the details that are hard to see in the first photo.

 

 

To the left of those were two more.

Saturday we headed into Idaho and stopped in Declo for one night.

Sunday we made our way to our final destination of Gardiner, Montana, just outside the north entrance to Yellowstone. We drove through Yellowstone to get there. The drive was nice because at this time of the year most of the park can only be accessed by employees and hikers or bikers. We saw no more than a half dozen other cars during the drive but we saw dozens of bikers and a few hikers. We saw quite a few bison, many walking down the road. Most of them were only a couple, to a few, years old. We also saw, what we believe is the first baby bison born (red dog) this season. It was just stumbling to its feet, with the help of its mom, when we drove by. We weren't allowed to stop along the road, so we couldn't get the best photo, but we did get a long shot of it. You can see the baby just in front of the mama's nose in the photo below.