About 5:15 p.m., the idea of driving from Santa Rosa to Kalispell didn’t seem nearly as good as it had earlier in the day. Most of the day had been easy and beautiful, especially the drive from Redding to Bend, sunshine and clear blue skies, evergreen forests and stark dry landscapes, all newly seen on a road — US 97 — that I’d never taken.
But as the sun fell on this shortest day of year, fatigue set in. The sky darkened, clouds rendering the snowy peaks to the west eerily dim, almost surreal, hovering in dusky reddish-gray light over the valley. And to get to The Dalles — where I’m writing this — I had to split off of US 97, and take a spur, US 197, which in a broad view on Google Maps looked to be the same kind of road.
Not quite. For if you look at the topo view here, you’ll see that 97 runs through the flats, while 197 bounds over ranges and down into two canyons, one a deep cut made by the Deschutes River at Maupin, the other a lesser drop at Tygh Valley, before going up and down a number of small ranges before falling into the Columbia River valley. Not the way best way to end a long day of driving, narrow hairpin 25-mph turns in now complete darkness.
But here’s the thing … it was the most memorable part of the day. That and the huge pile of congealed lava, seemingly coming out of nowhere, near Bend (how had I never heard of this?). It’s one of the great things about travel, that sometimes the most difficult situations are the most memorable.
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