Columbia River Gorge
We drove to Cascade Locks, Oregon last Friday. It’s on the Columbia about 50 miles east of Portland….Saturday was a beautiful day so we headed to the famous Vista House at Crown Point. The building is 100 this year ….it was built to commemorate the completion of the historic Columbia River Highway. It’s quite beautiful and much larger than it looks…displaying many photos of the construction of the highway
This point is 733 feet above the Columbia and is a great place to start a tour of the gorge
Below, looking east toward Portland…the Highway below is I-84…some of it replaced the historic Columbia River Highway when it was built in the 1960’s
We had in mind stopping at all the waterfalls along the historic road…we were able to get a parking spot at the first one ….this is Latourell Falls which is 249 feet….
But after that, it was a beautiful Saturday and all the parking areas by the falls were jammed. We went to Mt Hood instead….it’s a rather long drive to the iconic Timberline Lodge on the south side of Mt.Hood…
Note the hardware on the main entry door….where can I get a door knocker like this?
At 6000 feet above sea level here at the lodge it’s still over a mile straight up to the top….
Note the average snow depth here at the lodge…21 feet…
On Sunday we drove over the Bridge of the Gods here to drive out the highway on the Washington side of the river
Near Hood River we passed several places where wind surfers were launching. The wind was really blowing, maybe 18 to 20 knots from the west, and there were dozens out there…
Near Hood River the sky was dotted with the kites of the kite surfers….quite a site on another gorgeous day
And…. Mt. Hood in the background…
Today we went back to the waterfalls and the Marina Park here in Cascade Locks……I will post some photos later…
We are starting back to Josh and Maren’s tomorrow…2846 miles according to my route planner…we’ll do about 400 a day so it will take a week
