We had a wonderful time seeing the sights and visiting relatives and friends, but it was time to head home.
In keeping with our back roads theme we decided to take US 26 from Boise to Portland rather than I-84. If you are considering the same, I have 3 words of advice: DON'T DO IT. We had driving US 20 over to Eugene years ago; but US 26 is a whole different story. We spent hours winding through the Blue Mountains. It took us 10 hours to travel about 450 miles to get home. This is as long as it took us to get from Portland to Lathrop on our first day, when we travelled over 600 miles. It will be a long time before I am on Highway 26 east of Gresham and west of Boise.
There was a little interest on the way; somewhere in the mountains we encountered an enormous flock of butterflies. We saw thousands of butterflies; so many it was almost scary.
Finally Mt. Hood came into view.
We had put over 3,000 miles on the car and hit a lot of bugs. Here is a close-up of the front end when we got home.
The Final Numbers
Distance: 3,409 miles
Total in-car driving time: 71 hours 49 minutes.
Average MPH: 47
Average MPG: 29
In a day or two I'll post some final thoughts on the trip. Thanks to everyone for reading and following along.
P.S. To all of you who have pointed out that the sun probably sets in the west in Arizona; you are right. I knew they do weird stuff with DST there and thought maybe they had the sun turned around also. Carla had pointed out numerous places where I referenced the sun setting in the east; but I guess I didn't get them all. Keep the cards and letters coming.
What an outstanding trip and look at all those interesting bugs you have been collecting comming across the states :-) I love the shot of Mt. Hood; personally my favorite mountian in the US but I am not predjudice. When I do my Idaho trip this year, it is one of my favorite sites seeing Mt Hood disappear while I drive toward Idaho and re-appear as we drive back to Portalnd. Thanks for blogging this for us.
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