Tour of the West Cascades, 2019
A while back now, while perusing some guidebook or other I ran across a list of scenic drives to take in Oregon. A lot of them were your standard (yes, scenic, but still standard) state highways. But one in particular caught my eye as it linked together some very developed but a bit more out of the normal flow of traffic roads to create a route up the western side of the Cascades in Oregon from Oakridge to Estacada. Portions of it have been closed by landslides and wildfires ever since. Until July 1 that is. It just so happened we didn’t have any other plans for the following weekend, and off we went.
We didn’t quite make it to the byway on Friday night, but we did make it just to the west side of the Cascades, and spent the night at Gold Lake. The mosquitoes were still alive and well, but not as bad as our trip to Miller Lake a couple weeks back.
