Medford to The Dalles, Oregon (Monday 21.05.12)

We left the motel at 7.30am, and after a couple of stops for breakfast and lunch, we reached the farm where Richard was going to look at effluent processess at 12.45pm (quarter of an hour early).  I stayed in the car and happily looked at the maps and read my book while he was happy working.  While I'm talking about maps, we must thank Larry (who works for California Dairy), who gave us tour books and maps for all the regions we are going in! Even though we have the GPS in the car, I still like looking at the map as well.
Richard really enjoyed looking at (and touching) the cow poo, and he got a chance too look around the cow barn too which just made his day.

So here is a picture of some composted cow poo that is used for cow bedding.  It's organic, so it has to be good!

 

And here is a picture of an automatic milker that is grade A certified, (apparently being grade A is what you strive for here in the USA.)

So after the farm visit we drove to Multnomah Falls, which is the most visited attraction in all of Oregon (so we were the perfect tourists).

Two things about today, firstly the weather was rubbish.  It didn't get above 20 degrees C, and it rained!!! and rained. So we didn't have the top down today, but on the up side the sun burn got a chance to cool down a bit.

The other thing was that we nearly ran out of petrol.  We thought there would be a petrol station at the falls, but of course there wasn't!  The dashboard was saying that we had 14 miles of petrol left, and the guy at the information desk at the falls said the nearest petrol station was 13 miles either way.  So we did make it, but with not much to spare!  Not doing that again.  As soon as the petrol light comes on we are filling up!

Richard also said to add that I am not the worlds greatest photographer from a moving car.  That is why the only photos are from standing still. Perhaps you might get some photos from the car when I pluck up courage to drive and Richard can have the camera.

 This is Multnomah Falls.  It is pretty spectacular.  We did walk up to the bridge in the background, which was only 0.2 miles, but we didn't walk to the top which 1.0 miles.  My excuse was that it was raining, and my hair was getting wet.

We did get in to Washington State briefly.  We went across a green steel bridge at Hood River, but it was so narrow and bumpy Richard didn't want to drive back across it, so we drove along the Washington State side of the river until we came to another bridge back to Oregon at the Dulles dam.

So we didn't do much today really.  It was more or less a work day for Richard.