more pictures of trip from Chicago, IL to Portland, OR

Ok. So, this is a time jump backwards as I found a sunrise picture from the previous day. This was taken somewhere near Rugby, North Dakota. Very little sleep really does play tricks with one's memory...so it may have been before that. Definitely not after.

This next picture is the sunrise on the "3rd day" I have that in quotes because I left at 3pm in Chicago. So, this is technically the 3rd day. This was taken after a decent night's sleep. Possibly 4 hours. This was near Pasco, Washington. Just after this the train starts traveling along the Columbia River.

Beginning the trek through the Columbia Gorge area....A long time ago a glacier carved out this gorge. Much closer to present day Lewis and Clark traveled through the river. The water was much rougher (as there are dams in place now). But, it is a cool piece of history to travel the route. In a later post I have a picture where Lewis and Clark came across the Pacific.

One of Oregon's and Washington's main industries...lumber. This is a LOT o Wood. And these logs are BIG.

Mt. Hood off in the distance. My great uncle has a cabin up at Mt. Hood. Unfortunately, it was unavailable to visit. He rents it out for various events. I guess there will be an upcoming movie with Jennifer Aniston (unconfirmed except by him) that was recently shot there. Kinda neat.

This was just a neat picture...at least I thought so. Once again, I apologize for the glare from the plastic windows in the Amtrak observation deck.

The Portland, OR train station...yay. In the next post I will post pictures of The Trail of the 10 Waterfalls and also climbing Mt. St Helens.

Pictures on the way to Oregon

First, all of these photos were taken with my iPhone. So, they aren't the 10 MegaPixel pictures that are super clear....but good enough I think.

Some of you may know my itinerary, some may not. So, I've already posted some pictures from my trip to Penn State. Unfortunately, I didn't really take many pictures of my trip to Dayton, OH. But, it was mostly business as I was working on getting one of my tenants out of my condo and a new one back into the condo. So, the pictures that follow are from my travels via Amtrak from Chicago, Il to Portland, OR. Then some pictures while in Oregon. After that, I made my way to Albaquerque, NM (did I spell that right?) via a stopover in Los Angeles, CA. Then home. My summer travels took me through 18 different states this summer. Thats a lot of states....

Many of these pictures you will see in the coming posts were taken either from the Amtrak train or in a car....anyway, here they are.

This is the story of Havre, ND. I thought this was interesting...and may prefer the original city name of Bull Hook Bottoms.

At this point a very negative Native American man had boarded the train. This may have actually happened in Havre, ND (if memory serves me). So, this gentleman had to tell me about his troubled past while I was obviously trying to take in the scenery of the Rocky Mountains. I did tell him that I will likely never take this trip again. He didn't seem bothered by that. So, I had to make my way to the Observation car. Oh well. This was a shot of a bridge. Nothing spectacular. But interesting.

This was a shot of sunset in the Rockies. I thought it was an interesting mix of light and dark. So, this was the end of the 2nd day on the Amtrak Train on my trip. The next day I have some great shots of the Columbia River (a la Lewis and Clark)

belated podcasts

well. Later is sometimes better than never. I have been a busy boy...and I am now blogging via my iPhone as I am en-route to Portland. I believe I'm still in Illinois......long way to go. But it should be fun via Amtrak. I could hardly believe the allowed amount of luggage (3 fifty pound bags can be checked. 2 fifty pounders can be carried aboard). Crazy! In a good way.

So the marathon blogging session may happen during my train ride if I can maintain sanity using my phone. It could take awhile knowing my scatterbrainy writing style.