Pleasant Drive Over the Mountains From Randle, WA, to Pasco, WA, and Hood Park

We almost hated to leave our nice, cool, shaded spot at the Shady Firs RV Park on August 10th.   We did have a nice parting sunset reflected on the mountains behind our site.  Naturally, we went on one more late evening  “Elk Hunt”.  They were out and so was an even larger herd than the first herd we saw. 
 
 
The morning we left, it was a clear blue sky day as we headed up and over the mountains through White Pass.  We took this same route in 2008, but that time it was covered in early morning fog.  The drive took us through more thick forests, around the edge of mountains and even gave us a great parting view of Mt. Rainier.  A few of the surrounding mountains still had  small areas of snow at the tops. 
 
Further up the road we had a nice view of this pretty waterfall.  It is so much fun to find these little hidden gems. 
 
The road also followed the edge of Rimrock Lake, which was very pretty.  Then we followed much of the Yakima River out into the Yakima Valley.  I think these 2 pictures look pretty good for taking them by holding the camera backwards as I looked at the LCD screen all while Doug was driving!   Always looking for that photo op!
 
As we descended down out of the pass, we were back into the dry cliffs, bluffs, and hills of the desert.  Uck!  Give me the mountains and shade back!   WA refers to itself as “The Evergreen State”, so you don’t think of WA as having desert.  You can really see the effects of the rain shadow on this part of WA.  But the desert has been tamed, and the valley has many wineries and lots of agriculture advertising well known fruit like WA cherries and WA apples.   Yes, we are still enjoying as many fresh cherries as we can before their season ends.   We even stopped at Wal-Mart on the way and found some more Tillamook Huckleberry Ice Cream!  Good stuff!  Guess we will have to walk a little faster and a little farther to burn it off!
  
Our stay for the next 5 days is at Hood Park, a very popular Corps of Engineers park where the Snake River meets the Columbia River.  We would stay through the weekend but the parks in the area are usually already full due to their popularity for swimming and boating.  The park is like an oasis in the desert because the whole park has thick green grass and beautiful huge sycamore trees.  The park is well taken care of and we managed to reserve one of the sites right on the river.  Of course the view is not the best because of all the commerce and processing plants along the river banks.  We had a couple of short storms come through with strong winds.  Across the river from us is a grain plant which has 3 huge piles of what looks like fine crushed grain.  So guess which way the wind blew!  Yep, right in our direction over the campground! It was so thick that you could not even see across the river.  The truck and RV were covered in this fine yellowish dust which, when mixed with the few raindrops, really left a mess.  I plan on cleaning the truck and RV when we stop for a couple of weeks anyway, but this just added a lot more work!  We went to town, so we washed and swept as much off as we could.  Still, it is a nice park.  We stayed in this park in 2008 when following more of the Lewis and Clark Trail.  How to you like my version of a “selfie”?