Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area

We picked the perfect day to explore the Columbia River Gorge Highway as it was cloudy but warm. This makes for better pictures and pleasant sightseeing. Our route took us on the old Historic Scenic Highway for most of the drive. It was a narrow, winding road (have I said that before?) that mostly followed the Columbia River Gorge.

We stopped at several view points along the road. One of these is called The Crown Point Vista House which was built in the 1920's as a rest area for the tourists and was refinished in 2004. The highway circles around a three story round house with a balcony viewing area at the top. It is all marble and stained glass windows for a very elegant resting place. And the views of the river really are awesome.

There are about 11 waterfalls along this route but we only stopped at three of them as we didn't want to get caught up in the tourist crowds. Plus John has a saying, "You've seen one waterfall, you've seen them all!" We saw Latourell Falls, Shepperds Dell and Multnomah Falls. At 620 feet, Multnomah is the second highest year-round waterfalls in the country. We chose to hike up the mountain to view the falls from the top down. It was about a 1.5 miles hike and seemed pretty strenuous going up with 11 switchbacks. Even though this falls is very tall, it does not have a high volume of water, but that doesn't stop it from being spectacular.

After a picnic lunch we stopped at the famous Bonneville Lock and Dam which spans the Columbia River from Oregon to Washington, built in four sections with three islands in-between. Not only does it provide power for 900,000 homes but also features a lock to move barges up and down the river and a set of fish ladders which is used not just by salmon but by many other fish such as steelhead trout, sturgeon, and lamprey. There is a viewing room in the visitor center where one can watch the fish underwater 'climbing' the ladder. We also got to watch a barge going through the locks from the lower to upper river.

A short drive to the town of Hood River, a short drive through town and we turned around and headed home. We had originally planned to drive around Mount Hood and back but ran out of time.