We started our day by eating the leftovers from yesterday's dinner...then checked out and drove to the Western Western Antique Aeroplane & Automobile Museum (WAAAM).
I kind of like watching antique cars, and I have always found airplanes unbelievable. Every time I sit in a plane 30,000 feet in the air, I remember that the first successful flight was merely 100 years ago. We humans were not meant to fly, but we cast that handicap aside.
We met one of the owners of the antique car on display. Don's car was a Chrysler Imperial Cabriolet E-80 (DonBriggs) that he bought in the 70s and took 10 years to restore. When he bought it, it was burnt and looked good to be salvaged and nothing else. Don, whose hobby is metal work, made the parts and carefully restored it. Now it looks BEAUTIFUL. I was impressed by the dedication, patience and expertise these guys invested into restoring the cars. Well worth it, I think.
Our next destination was an Alpaca farm. Alpacas..what are they? I thought they were llamas and it turned out that Alpacas, Llamas and camels are all in the family Camelidae. Alpacas are South-American and there are no wild Alpacas now--all domesticated for thousands of years. They produce fiber, and it's supposed to be many times warmer than wool and doesn't cause allergy reactions.
Well, I almost never wear wool and I don't stitch/knit/weave, so I went just to look at them. I knew Mom would be interested in the knitting part, and she was. The place we went to was Foothills Yarn & Fiber in Hood River. Pretty easy to miss the road leading into the farm, particularly because we didn't use the busier route.
Next, we got onto #35 and stopped at Draper's Farms to check out the orchards and buy some fruits. I don't really eat apples nowadays after my 4 years of apple-a-thon in Montreal, but this place smelled wonderfully of apples and pears (or the other way round?). Mom was happy to see apple trees loaded with apples, while I was very excited to see many insects buzzing away on the plot of flowering plants beside the orchard. We bought some apples and pears on our way out.
We had lunch at a campground on the way to Welches. Our tasty and filling lunch consisted of several snack bars, some Japanese rice-biscuits and plain water. The only real treat was the fruits that we just bought--sweet and aromatic.
We got to Welches early, so we decided to hike on the Salmon River Trail for a bit before checking in into our accommodation.
Salmon River Trail starts at the bridge where Salmon River Road crosses the Salmon River, just east of Welches.
The temperate rainforest was what I came to see, and saw it I did. It's all so wet and cold. Lichens, mosses, algae, mushrooms, everywhere!
Tonight we are staying at The Resort on the Mountain. Nice place with golf course, spa, pool etc. We aren't going to use any of those of course..because our practice has been to travel the day, eat and sleep at night. Dinner was taken at the Altitude, the resort restaurant. Nothing's special about their food except for~~their Mint Panna Cotta with strawberry soup, strawberry-mint relish and champagne meringue. OH MY...this thing was so good! We need to do this at home.
OK...time to zzz....
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