Stop 32: Cascade Locks, OR (Columbia River Gorge)

The trip up the Columbia River Gorge was beautiful, even in the fog and rain. The funny thing is that, in the weather reports that we've seen while we've been here, the rest of the area has cleared up. There's just the one pocket of rain sitting on the Gorge. It finally stopped at about noon on our 2nd day.

The hills above our campground.

More hills above our campground.

Beautiful trees over our campground.

We started our only full day here by crossing the Bridge of the Gods and driving the few miles up to Stevenson, WA.

Sternwheeler on the Columbia (from a pier in Stevenson)..

More from the pier in Stevenson (the Bridge of the Gods is in the distance).

The Bridge of the Gods (from the pier in Stevenson).

The view upriver from the pier.

Before leaving Stevenson, we visited the Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center/Museum.

While we were there, they started up and demonstrated this Corliss Engine. It, and others like it, once powered entire lumber mills and other types of factories.

 After lunch, we headed for the Bonneville Dam area which included an amazing fish hatchery, fish ladder and lock.

This was the only hatchery that we've ever seen that included sturgeon. These were just babies at 3'. Sturgeon aren't keepers until they hit 48".

This sturgeon, name Henry, is 10' long and 70 years old. Sturgeon can live to 100.

Henry and a couple of his rainbow trout friends.

Some very large (18-24") rainbow trout.

 We lucked out with the lock. Some barges had just entered so we got to watch the entire process.

The closed downstream gate.

2 barges full of wood chips, waiting for the water level to drop so they can continue downstream.

A 3rd barge full of logs and the tugboat that was controlling all 3 barges.

The upstream gate, starting to close.

The upstream gate, closed.

Kristen watching the water level drop.

Where did the barge go?

Continuing to drop.

The bridge just downstream from the lock is a pivot drawbridge. Here it is starting to open.

The water is down and the downstream gate is starting to open.

The downstream gate is almost all the way open.

And here go the barges.

Bon voyage!

The Bonneville Dam spillways.

The Bonneville Dam fish ladder. We could see a lot of salmon moving upstream but they were impossible to photograph.

At the top of the ladder, the Salmon are forced into a narrow shoot so that they could be counted. We saw very few Salmon at the windows that are open to the public but we did see a fine collection of lamprey eels.

The door was ajar to the room where the official counter sits (apparently this is the tightest spot and forces the salmon up against the glass). I snapped this picture through the door.

Tomorrow, we're off to Pendleton, OR.

-JC-

Stop 31: Woodburn, OR (between Portland and Salem)

Let me start by saying that, though this is the longest stop of our trip (7 nights), it'll probably be one of the least posted about.

We have been playing with the idea of selling our house next year and moving up this direction. We wanted to use this week to explore the area and make sure that there are communities and properties in the region that might meet out requirements.

We arrived in Woodburn on Saturday. We spent a good part of Sunday with my sister Stacy and her husband Jack. They drove us around and showed Portland's different neighborhoods. We had lunch out and later had dinner back at Stacy and Jack's.

Stacy and Jack.

Jack the cat.

Sagan the puppy. We discovered soon after this shot that Sagan was planting his face in cat poop.

The moment of discovery: Kristen, posing with Sagan, found him to be a bit ripe. Guess who, besides Kristen, need a bath after this shot.

Sagan is a cute little stinker.

Monday and Tuesday, we looked at a lot of neighborhoods and house listings in the area around Wilsonville. Houses that meet our requirements are definitely out there. We really like the town of Sherwood.

Stacy stopped by on her way home from work on Monday evening. We managed to work in trips to the Wilsonville Camping World and the Salem Trader Joe's on Tuesday.

Wednesday, we took a look across the Columbia in Southern Washington. Washington and Oregon tax so differently that we thought it wise to look at both. We can play with numbers later to see which would work better for us (there are places in California that we still might consider as well).

We only had a couple of listings to take a look at up there, one in Battle Ground and the other in Brush Prairie. The communities were beautiful and the houses were newer, larger and on more acreage than we think we are looking for. We've since seen listings for places in the same areas that are closer to what we want (and, as a result, less expensive - that never hurts).

Thursday, we drove into Portland in the rain and had lunch downtown.

Friday, we just took it easy and went to see a movie in the afternoon.

Tomorrow, we're off to Cascade Locks.

-JC-

Stop 30: Randle, WA (Mt. Rainier National Park, Mt. St. Helens

Our trip from Port Ludlow took us down the East side of the Olympic Peninsula, across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and east to Randle. Randle is just South of Mt. Rainier and just North of Mt. St. Helens.

We feel relatively isolated here. The park doesn't have cable and there's no trace of an on-air signal in any direction. The only wi-fi is at a hotspot down at the office. There's no signal for my phone (strangely, Kristen's little Boost phone, which hardly ever works when we're on the road, works great). We've scanned the entire radio dial and found only 2 stations, neither of which are worth listening to. I knew that there was a reason that we brought DVDs and the IPod.

Our First Full day: Mt. St. Helens

We called up the Mt. St. Helens Visitor Center on our GPS and the route was 109 miles each way. The route went West almost to I-5, then South for a bit and then way back to the East. The map didn't show a better route to the Visitor Center. We both seemed to remember that Mt. St. Helens blew out on its East side. On the map, we could see that Spirit Lake was clearly East of the volcano. It made no sense to us to drive a long way only to approach from the wrong side.

Coming through Randle, we'd noticed a turnoff for Mt. St. Helens. On the map, that route was more like 30 miles and it approached from the East. That was much more like it so that's the route that we took.

The road was one of the roughest that we've seen in a long time. I don't know if it was tree roots or freeze-thaw or erosion or earthquakes but the entire road was pretty much shot. Our big disappointment was that the road that would have taken us to Spirit Lake and to the Windy Ridge View Point was still closed because of snow. We did make it to another view point that was at the Eastern end of the blast area.

Mt. St. Helens in cloud (unfortunately). In 1980, everything between here and there was knocked flat and covered in ash.

Same angle with less zoom.

Later in the day, we went to Packwood for groceries. Since our next day objective was Mt. Rainier and there was no guarantee that it wouldn't turn cloudy, I took this shot from the market parking lot.

We had some excitement when we returned to the trailer. The sensors indicated that it was time to dump the black and grey tanks. Black always goes first, since draining the grey cleans out the sewer pipe. I started to drain the black and noticed immediately that our sewage was coming up out of the sewer connections in the 3 adjacent sites. I shut it off immediately and got the parks owners down for a look. We ended up having to pack up and move to a different site (and got a bit of a refund for the inconvenience).

Our second full day: Mt Rainier National Park

Mount Rainier was a very pleasant surprise - it was just beautiful. Our first stop in the park was at he Grove of the Patriarchs Trail. This 1 mile loop took us through an old growth forest of Douglas Fir, Red Cedar and Hemlock.

The path in followed this stream.

Beautiful path (and we aren't even to the old growth part yet).

That's me.

Trees are getting larger.

Kristen and some monster Douglas Firs.

Met a friend along the way.

More huge Douglas Firs.

Pretty big tree!

Kristen wanted proof that she crossed the swinging bridge this time. We had to cross this going to and coming from the old growth forest.

Then we moved on toward the Paradise Visitor Center which is about as close as you can drive to Mt. Rainier. As we approached the Visitor Center, it became obvious that we were either moving into the cloud layer or else the clouds were getting thicker. There was no view of Mt. Rainier from the Visitor Center but we did get some interesting peeks at the peak (clever, huh?) on our way up.

Mt. Rainier from one of the turnouts.

The Tatoosh Range (South of Rainier).

One of many, many waterfalls.

More Tatoosh Range.

Still more Tatoosh Range.

And more.

Another waterfall.

And another.

One of the Reflection Lakes. When not frozen and when the clouds aren't covering Mt. Rainier, I suspect that that is what they reflect.

We waited a bit at the Reflection Lakes and Mt. Rainier did put in an appearance.

Mt. Rainier over Reflection Lake.

Tatoosh Range.

Mt Rainier from another turnout.

We couldn't let the viewless visit to the Visitor Center go to waste. We had a nice lunch at the Paradise Inn (adjacent to the Visitor Center.

Tomorrow, we're off to Woodburn, OR.

-JC-