Hello, Oregon!

We had another huge drive from Boise to Portland. While nearing Portland, we realised S had already driven about 2,100 miles on this trip! Another amusing thing was that Boise is very close to the boundary between Idaho and Oregon, but crossing over into Oregon, we returned to the Pacific time zone. It was a good thing I hadn't bothered to change the time on my watch. We seem to have reached the last leg rather soon.

There were some farms in Oregon which had curiously rolled sheets of grass up in spiral shapes, possibly to form hay. 

There were places with gusty winds, trying to push the car (a little). No surprise, then, that we saw windmills at several places.

As we were driving along westward towards Portland, at some point, we noticed that a river began to wind along the landscape, right next to the freeway. In the light, it appeared like millions of sparkling diamonds on a blue shimmering silk. 

There were also places where the river flowed through gorges. And a small park near a dam, where we could wet our feet.

There were more views near a forest, including some of a snow-capped mountain (Mount Hood) almost like a ghost mountain in the background. There were also train tracks very close to the edge of the hills, right next to the river. We later found that this was the Columbia River, at places called Mt. Hood River. This is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region. In fact, it felt like we were back on US-1, driving next to the Pacific Ocean, at places.   

At the end of this scenic drive, we reached Portland. Portland is, among other things, famous for food carts, or food sold out of trucks. We located a famous Indian food cart, Bombay Chaat House with quite a history, and had a nice snack there, packing a meal for dinner.

We also got stuck in a lot of traffic, before finally reaching our hotel room. Our Portland exploration will commence tomorrow!