Past Events: Over the Mountain Cruise 8.23.08 - Aug 29, 2008
by Dan Russell
It was a beautiful sunny Saturday morning when I met 6 other cars for a cruise up the river and over the mountain. Gary Moisant and his beautiful yellow 240
Damon "I just wanna drive" Freeman and Z Sport
Mike Nettlingham and his treasure
Kory & Ginny Mitchell with thier red beauty. Sorry, no pic. Jim & Brad Gilliam brought Brad's clean 280ZX
gary & Holly Tier brought their freshly rebuilt 300ZXTT. Look at that engine-
and my car
We left Vancouver and headed east up 14, to Skamania where we stopped for a little coffee.
Those cars looked so nice all lined up like that that a Mercedes decided to play "wanna be".
We left Skamania and headed up the river, over the Columbia and up Highway 35. SR14 is a great road between Skamania and White Salmon, it's right on the river level and has several tunnels if you need to check your horn or lights.
We drove up to Timberline Lodge and stopped again, this time for a few pics.
I ran up a little hill to snap the next one. Doesn't take much running at that elevation to run out of breath. No, Gary wasn't stealing traffic cones, it just looks like it. Pretty sitting there aren't they?
We drove back down to US 26,
then headed south to Timothy Lake where I'd planned to picnic. Unfortunately, they wanted a fee just to park and picnic so we drove back over to FS42 and found a ranger station. We stopped there to picnic.
While we were there, the Ranger told me that we could follow FS42 to FS46 which, although 1 lane for a "little way" would take us over to 226 and down the Clackamas. Off we went, it turns out the 1 lane stretch was about 10 miles of sheer terror (for me). It's a great road, mostly smooth, lots of corners and forest right to the pavement. The terror part is coming to a blind corner, knowing there are 6 Z's tearing along behind you and hoping some wood cutter's Dodge Dually isn't coming the other way. You've gotta slow down (lots) keep one eye on the mirror to make sure no one is closing too quickly while watching around the corner to try to spot any "incoming". Luckily, there was no one on the road and we all had a great time. We reached the Clackamas with no trouble, drove the length from near Bagsby down thru Estacada, Eagle Creek and crossed the Clackamas at Barton. Then we followed the "old highway" down to 205 and over to the Oregon City Shopping Center. It was a great day, I want to thank everyone who could come for sharing the day with me.
