2013 TransCanada Part 1 - Home Sweet Home

Monday - July 29 - The train takes us miles while we sleep....sort of sleep anyway. The train was 2 hours late leaving Whitefish last night which meant we left at 11 p.m. We slept as best we could in the reclining seats. The train split in Spokane at 4 a.m. with the other half going to Seattle. Donna wandered down to the restroom just in time to see that our bike boxes were being loaded in the luggage space on our car. That was good news since we are riding the bikes home from the train station!

Sunrise found us in the Palouse of southeast Washington.

Crossing the Columbia River at Pasco while eating breakfast.

The Amtrak route travels along the Washington side of the Columbia so we are looking towards Oregon, not the view we usually see on our way to and from Kalispell by car.

Mt. Hood

Hood River, Oregon

Back in a place with trees.

There is a big bend in the river which makes it looks like we are crossing it but we aren't. We are looking at part of the Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area.

In Portland, we switched to an Amtrak bus for the ride down the Willamette Valley to Albany.

One more leg of the journey to go.

The biking part from Albany Amtrak station to our home.

Putting the bikes back together one more time. We got into the station at 2 without having had a real lunch yet. The bodies are still in touring/FEED ME mode so we got this done in record time. Fish and chips at one of our favorite spots, The Depot, which is a couple blocks away, got us refueled.

What was so lush and green when we left has been harvested in our absence.

This time Doug saw the fork. Donna still can't believe he missed it when we passed it a month ago.

People have been busy while we were gone. A choir of angels has been added to the whimsical yard art on Denny School Road (see first blog post for this trip for more).

Grass seed for the world's lawns is moving out. In case you didn't know it, Linn County bills itself as the Grass Seed Capitol of the World.

Almost there.....1,178 miles horizontal and 40,730 feet vertical and many wonderful memories later. Thank you for letting us share our journey with you!