Prologue

The last blog –  Mt Hood Scenic Byway loop – was a long read. In contrast to that, this is going to be a shorter one and with a lot more pictures to tell the story. While the trips I wrote about till now were all solo trips, this is one I did with friends who also love to drive and explore places. Hope you enjoy the read.

This is a recent one, from January 2020, but the planning for it began well in advance, almost as early as November or October 2019 when Debolina and Subhadip got to know that they will be travelling to the USA from Europe for work. They are also avid travelers and love road trips, but they had only one weekend in Washington State. This is how the planning began.

A lot of potential locations to explore were discussed-  California, Washington, Oregon, Idaho… But we could not decide on one. We were looking for places that neither of us have not been to before. I already had plans for Oregon at the time and I didnt know what to expect in Idaho. So I never even bothered to check it and Washington was my own backyard. California seemed like the most likely destination 

By Jan, Debolina and Subhadip got to know their travel dates and we were excited about the trip even though we were yet to decide on a destination. Around this time, a close friend of mine decided to move to California for work. One thing led to another and I ended up planning a road trip with them to California to drop them off and as it turned out, this road trip was to happen on the weekend before the planned trip with Debolina (Story for another time). With these series of events, the only place left which met our criteria was Idaho. I was not very keen on Idaho at the time, but Debolina felt positive and I decided to trust her decision as she is the more experienced traveler. She would work on points of interest while I planned the route and way points. 

Jan 22nd, two days before the planned road trip, a route was plotted and planned. It was to be a 3 day road trip where we’ll start from Seattle on January 24th Evening right after work and return by 26th night. We decided to rent a car for this trip and I booked one with Sixt.