Sunday July 7th 2019

Today was my last full day in the Washington Tri Cities area. I’ve enjoyed my three weeks in the area. A busy week would have been sufficient to see the area. When I decided to establish this area as a base, I thought it would be making day trips around the area. I found the distances to the things I wanted to see greater than I anticipated. As a result I visited various parks along the area rivers several times.

A couple of things I considered doing I never got around to. The Sacajawea Historical State Park at the confluence of the Snake and Colombia Rivers is one of those items. I drove by it many times when I was staying at Hood Park, but never stopped. The other big attraction is the B Reactor National Historic Landmark at the Manhattan Project National Historical Park. You need to sign up online for escorted tours of the world’s first full-scale plutonium production reactor on the grounds of the Hanford Site. I never seemed to get around to signing up.

Today was a grocery shopping day. I didn’t remember my observations about Sunday afternoons being a very busy shopping day until I walked in the door. The local Walmart was very busy again today. Some of the shelves looked like people had been stocking up for an impending storm. There were a number of things I wanted that were nothing but empty space on the shelf and I got the last lonely can of corn. Despite the slim pickings I managed to stock up on all the essentials.

Tomorrow I’m traveling to the Cascade Locks area of the Columbia River Gorge east of Portland Oregon. I’ll only be there until Friday. It is back in a prime tourist area and I couldn’t find a longer reservation. To see some of the things I want to see, I’ll have to be in full time tourist mode this week. There is also the possibility that I’ll stop in the Columbia Gorge again on my way out of Oregon at the end of summer.