Scenic Serenade

When you drive to Mt Hood from Portland, you usually drive east on highway 26, or you could drive east on highway 84, along the Columbia River, and then drive south to the mountain when you reach Hood River. But, we drove (towards Mt Hood) on a roughly parallel route between the two highways, through miles and miles of foothills (Eric's old stomping ground, actually). We wandered around until 5 or 6, when we stopped to spend the night at a rental house in Welches, on highway 26. Friends had rented the place to stay after a wedding at Timberline Lodge, but had to cancel because of illness, and offered the place to us. Very last minute and fun. 
We, who have no TV, and only watch things on our laptops or phones, relished the huge projection screen in this house and happily watched, once again, Simone Biles win that last bronze medal, only this time she was huge and close up. We watched that, the women's marathon, and the men's horizontal bar.
This morning, we took a different route back. We drove from Welches, north over Lolo Pass to Hood River, to take highway 84 back to Portland. We drove along miles and miles of a wide swath cut through the forest so they could put up huge highline towers to carry electricity from the Columbia River to California. Such audacity. Even so, it was great scenery and great to be out in it - though we did have to retrace our route once when it took us in a funny circle. But, Eric kept saying, "follow the Subarus," and that seemed to help. There weren't many cars, but most of them were Subarus. Along the way, he stopped to practice his trombone. You can see part of the swath in the upper left, and a few of the towers.