Drive South or East First?

We have planned a few days off for a little road trip. We checked with Lynne and Joel earlier in the month for reservations at their place in the Wenas. We try to make getting there an annual summer pilgrimage. In fact, it was almost exactly a year ago when we went through southern BC and crossed into the Idaho panhandle and routed ourselves through Spokane WA to visit them.


This time we had originally planned to go down towards Portland, OR and travel up the Columbia River Gorge towards their desert place. This week, we've also considered travelling over to the British Columbian Okanagan as it seems like a very long time since we enjoyed our closest area of vineyards and Canada's only desert. From there, we could travel straight down Highway 97, almost directly towards Ellensburg.

So, should we travel on the first or second routing option? I guess we can make a final decision at the very last minute. In fact, maybe we should take the weather forecasts into consideration. Which ever way we go, we expect to be lounging near their pool, by the map's yellow star, on Sunday and Monday!