Pudding River

Amtrak Cascades no. 507 crossing the Pudding River at Aurora, Oregon.

Just two days after blogging about my current preference for daytime photography, I submit my first nocturnal entry of the year, southbound Amtrak Cascades train no. 507 crossing the Pudding River just north of Aurora, Oregon. The train was running about 10 minutes late after waiting in Clackamas siding for a much later-running northbound Coast Starlight, train no. 14. I had first scouted this location back in October, and this was the first time I had returned since then. The river was much higher, requiring some careful scrambling through the brush along the bank and a little bit of clearing work with my trusty Swiss Army knife.

The Pudding River is a tributary of the Mollala, itself a tributary of the Willamette. The Pudding flows 62 miles out of the western foothills of the Cascades before joining the Mollala near Canby. When discussing rivers, "meandering" is an often over-used adjective, but in the case of the Pudding, the term hardly does it justice. As it wanders through Willamette Valley farmland, the Pudding has more horseshoes than the Kentucky Derby, as this map shows.