It was a travel day today so we packed up our stuff and departed from Leavenworth RV Resort. We took the long way back to WA-2 because the short way through an area called Chumstick has steep hills, frightening curves and some interesting sections where the road seems to have fallen off a cliff. The Chumstick area also has gorgeous views so we liked driving it but not with a 34′ trailer attached to the back of our truck.
Fortunately, the easy way out took us down Tumwater Canyon again and it is hard to be disappointed with the views along this spectacular section of road. We passed through Leavenworth, Cashmere and Wenatchee before turning south on WA-28. This is a gorgeous road that runs alongside the Columbia River through apple orchards and some spectacular cliffs. The Columbia River Gorge is very scenic even this far up river from the Pacific Ocean.
In the town of Quincy we turned off WA-28 onto WA-281 which took us to I-90 westbound for about 10 miles. We then turned south again on WA-243 which is perhaps the road with the worst paved surface in the entire state. Smoothness was apparently not one of the requirements during the contract to build this road and many little items in our trailer rearranged themselves as we passed over it. The scenery is pretty good along this stretch and there is a particularly gorgeous but unforgiving set of curves where the road has an abrupt dropoff to the river below on one side and postpile rock cliffs on the other.
After about 20 miles skirting the Columbia, we crossed the river on WA-24 for a short time before continuing south on WA-240 to through an area called Hanford Reach to Richland. After that, I am not too sure what roads we took because it seems we turned every which way before Peggy, through superb navigation, got us right to the door of the Columbia Sun RV Resort. A nice guy named Al led us to our spot, backed us in and cut us loose. This park has nicely sized spots, wi-fi, full hookups but has a fairly busy road running right behind our space. We are not aware of too much nature stuff to see in Kennewick so we will probably be on our way tomorrow. The drive here was very scenic but that does not necessarily mean this place has any of it.
There’s a few pix if you click here