Searching for the Trees of Mystery Part 1. The Oregon Trail

Fourteen years ago, I stopped along highway 101 in Oregon to look at  the coast. When
I came back to my car, someone had left a "Trees of Mystery" sign on it. We weren't
going that far south on that trip, but I took the sign home and stuck it on a rafter in my
garage.

This summer, we returned to Oregon, looking for natural and manmade wonders.
 

We start near the end of the Oregon trail at The Dalles. This was one of the West's first tourist traps. Wagon trains either paid a hefty toll to go on, or took a risky raft ride down the Columbia River.  Not far away in Washington State is a reconstruction of  Stonehedge. All the stone pieces are  there so it doesn't  look as dramatic. Here, we met a outlaw biker sitting there smoking dope. He had been waiting for someone  to come by and  take his picture on his chopper with his camera.  He returned the favor and took our picture, although my son thought he was going to run off with my  camera.  Ha ha. Gift shop was closed. Doubt if they had snowdomes.

It's really a monument to WWI  veterans. It's free too, Thousands  of cars must pass it very day and   never know it's there.

Any snowdomes at Stonehedge  might have looked  like this one.  This is a 4 inch (100 cm) dome. Twice the size and just as ugly. I snapped a picture and left it in the store.

Less than an hour north of Portland on US30 is the  Columbia Gorge. There you'll find the kind of good  old American ideals that preserved this scenery for a park and  snowdomes like the one above.

So what does the Trees of Mystery have to do with Oregon? More about that in the
next installment.