On the road again! For two days anyway. It’s my spring shakedown trip, so late but the rain seemed to never stop this year.

I got a fcfs spot overlooking the Columbia at Memaloose State Park. The campground is maybe 1/3 full on a Wednesday night. There are a lot of warnings about noise here because it’s sandwiched between a highway and a train track. the highway was pretty quiet at night, and the trains didn’t bother me. The advantage of being a deep sleeper with poor hearing!

I’ve wanted to do this for years. Every year I’d see photos pop up of the balsam root bloom in the gorge and I’d think, darn it, missed it again. But here I am, I finally made it!

The taco truck in Mosier looked a lot better than anything in my cooler so I hit my brakes and made a dinner detour. The fish taco was awesome, the birria sope was meh. The thick corn tortilla seemed premade and dry, and there was too much meat compared to other ingredients. I guess most people probably complain if there isn’t enough meat.

Mosier is a really cute town and it’s obviously been discovered. The population sign says 430 but there are many houses and row houses that have some real style (and expense). I spotted a coffee shop, yay for tomorrow morning!

An old fruit packing building. There are a lot of orchards out here.

This trip is also a test. I’ve always been fancy free on my trips, but I’m busy with writing and I wondered if I could take it with me and what I’d need to do that. I hate to spend money on a hotspot or Starlink for occasional bits of work. What is the minimum I really need? This time I finished the web-intensive parts of a couple projects ahead of time so I could work offline. And it worked great! I sat in my campsite working for several hours yesterday. If I was traveling longer I think I could just find a place to work with internet every couple of days. But I think I’m still going to want a hot spot, I don’t want to miss any deadlines!

One more for good measure!

Ok, another…