11-20-17

My wife Dianne and I took a trip to visit some friends in Montana.  On our return trip we were going to visit my parents in Eastern Oregon.  As we are driving in Washington, approaching Oregon, Dianne told me she found a short cut that would save us time on our trip.  Her track record as a navigator is sketchy at best, but what the heck.

As we are approaching the Columbia River, she starts giving me turning directions.  This takes us on some two-lane roads, but seems we are going in the right direction.  I start to become worried as the roads become more and more ‘rural.’  While continuing to drive she shouts that I should have taken a left at the last road we passed.  I turned around and went onto the road.  To say it is VERY rural will give you an idea of my skepticism on our survival at this point.  I’m starting to understand how some stories of people becoming stuck in the snow and lucky to be alive have occurred.

While driving down this road, I see a railroad crossing ahead of us.  My natural instinct when crossing railroad tracks is to look to see if a train is approaching from the distance (approaching photo opportunity).  When I look down the tracks, I see the sun setting with some nice cloud cover, directly over the tracks.  So I pull over and grab my camera.  The result is this photo.

Unfortunately, to this day I have no idea where we were.  So the photo location will remain a secret from both you and me.  Even though Dianne is trying to take credit for this photo location – I know she also has no clue where we were.