I think we’ve made it to all the Ironman events for Chris and Matt. When I search the blog I used from 2019 through early 2023 I found 11 posts about our Ironman experiences. The earlier WordPress blog (which is what I’m using now) had Chris’ first Ironman in 2013 and the second one in 2016. Do you see the purpose of these blog posts? Like I’ve said before, they replace the old scrapbooks. And now, to have the best of both worlds, Matt has made real books out of many of them (see this post).

Chris had to fit this Ironman in before fire season. Chris and Meryl live in Boise and Chris works out of McCall, so it seemed that Coeur d’Alene was doable. For us it was a 13 hour drive. This post is all about the drive on the first day.

We left at 5:45 a.m. on Friday, only 45 minutes behind schedule. The event was on Sunday so this would give us a day to check out the course, check in the bike, and visit with Chris and Meryl.

It was good to see that Shasta Lake is full.

I always look forward to seeing Mt. Shasta.

We veered off I-5 at Weed to take Hwy. 97 into Oregon. I interned for a summer in the mid 1970’s (or was it two?) in Siskiyou County for the USFS. This is the station where I reported and I lived in a tent at a campground about 10 (?) miles away. I have forgotten a lot of details. I wouldn’t mind going back there to see it, but this wasn’t the trip for getting side-tracked. There were lots of memories driving through this area though.

Once in Oregon we were struck by the mountain peaks rising so far above everything else. I’m used to our area where you see a whole range of mountains when the sky is clear enough. Here it’s interesting to see individual mountains that rise above all the rest. This one is Mt. Jefferson (I think), 10,502′ at the peak.

I have lots of landscape photos but I can’t put them all here. I don’t know if I’ve driven this stretch through Oregon. The main feature along this part of the route was the grassland. In fact over 173,000 acres are designated Crooked River National Grassland

I’m skipping ahead. We’re still in Oregon but with a view of Mt. Adams in Washington.

This is crossing the Columbia River at Biggs Junction, entering Washington.

This is the view from the north side of the Columbia River.

There is an interesting structure on the north bank of the river. This is known as Stonehenge and it was constructed in 1918 to memorialize the men who fought in WWI. See the whole story here.

John Day Dam is not far from where we crossed the river. Construction started in 1958 and it was first used in 1971. I am fascinated by the lock structure that lifts a maximum of 113 feet, seen on the left in this photo.

View crossing the river at Kennewick.

Knowing that Dan would want to do most of the driving, I brought a ridiculous amount of projects and unread magazines with me. I spent the first few hours working on the article I’m writing for Handwoven that was due soon. Once we got into the Northern California mountains and then through Oregon and Washington I wanted to see the scenery. I didn’t get anything out until the last bit when I pulled out this inkle loom to thread it.

It was still daylight when we got to our motel. We met up with Chris and Meryl briefly but everyone needed to get some sleep. To be continued.