DAY ONE OF WASHINGTON STATE SIDE TRIP

AWESOME VIEW OF MT HOOD (11,239 ft) On Friday a week ago we left Mt. Hood Village to go into Washington for a few days of sight seeing. We were especially anxious to get away from the Mt. Hood rains, which sure seemed perpetual! We started at the WAAAM Museum (that is Antiques, Aero planes & Automobiles) you know, you see one you've seen them all?? Gary will do a Blog to show you guys all of our finds there! The Museum was located on the Oregon side of the Columbia in the quaint little town of Hood River. The view from there of the Columbia River and the Washington scenery was awesome!

especially of Mt. Adams (12,276 ft)

We traveled west through the Dalles and high dessert area headed for the Maryhill Museum of Art which is housed in the mansion built by Samuel Hill.

Queen Marie of Romania, the grand daughter of Queen Victoria of England on her mother's side and grand daughter of Tsar Alexander II on her father's side, though raised in England, wholeheartedly adopted the culture of Romania after her marriage to Crown Prince Ferdinand in 1893. Known as a skillful diplomat she was also an accomplished author and artist.

Marie's friendship with the two American's Samuel Hill and Loie Tuller during the aftermath of World War I led to an invitation to dedicate the Hill Mansion on the Columbia River for this museum of art. Gary said that much of her wealth (some that we saw in the museum) was probably brought to the North American continent after World War I.

The Museum is now having a new addition built on to it, but it did not deter our tour of the museum at all.

The museum houses exhibits of Queen Marie's art and furniture, French fashions of theatre, other American and European art and Sam Hill's life history artifacts. Much of the queen's furniture was designed by her with her favorite lily design.

The Loie Fuller Gallery

International Chess Sets (which we took pictures of especially for the benefit of our son, Victor).

Exhibits of the Native People of the northwest North America continent:

From Maryhill we drove on west a little to the Stonehenge Memorial, the Klickitat County War Memorial to their veterans of World Ward I.

The view from Stonehenge looking down on the Columbia:

From there we decided to call it a day and stopped in Yakima for the night.

From the view of dessert mountains in all directions, was the determining factor that we would not want to live in this area. Thought wonderful to see, we decided that it would become boring after a while.

We stopped in Shari's for dinner that evening and Gary had their very delicious blackberry cobbler and I their pecan pie. We were so impressed that we went back the next night just for their desert!! We bypassed dinner that night and went straight for the desert!! Less calories that way.

Stay tuned for Day Two.