The plan for this day was to drive up the Columbia River Gorge (w) on the Historic Columbia River Highway (w) , and then drive back around Mt. Hood. So again, let's look at the map:
My original plan was to drive east on the Oregon side, and come back on the Washington side. But as they say, if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans...
I got to the I-84 onramp, at a little town east of Portland called Troutdale, only to find that the onramp was closed. So I looked at the map, found another nearby onramp, went there... it was closed too. Beginning to sense a pattern, I asked a highway worker what was up. Turned out that a truck had turned over, there was a bad spill on the road, and it was closed for something like 25 miles! So we had to backtrack into Portland, cross the river, and take Highway 14:
...from Washougal to Cascade Locks:
Now, that wasn't so bad on its face - after all, one assumes that the gorge looks just about the same whichever side of it you're on. But what made me sad was that the guidebook said that there were several waterfalls along that stretch of the gorge, on the Oregon side - and I couldn't see them from the Washington side!
Ah well, there was plenty to see on the Washington side. Just past Washougal, we entered the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area:
...and a little while later, I took these pictures from a scenic overlook:
A little farther up the river, we came to Beacon Rock (w) :
...which, unfortunately, is hard to encompass in a single photograph when you're standing at its base. I took a picture of a descriptive sign at the base of the rock:
There's a trail leading to the top of the rock, but we saved that for another day.
Beacon rock is made up of a volcanic rock (Andesite, according to Wikipedia), and the ground was covered with pieces of the same kind of rock. I found its texture interesting, and took this picture:
...and also picked up a piece and showed it to Terry, so she could feel how sharp and angular it was.
Continuing on up the river, we came to Bonneville Dam (w) :
...and shortly after that, we crossed the path of the Pacific Crest Trail (w) :
...a trail that runs along the crestlines of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Ranges from Mexico to Canada.
We then came to the:
...a bridge with a rather grandiose name, which took us across the Columbia River back into Oregon, where we continued our way eastward:
The scenery along this stretch was somewhat different, but no less impressive:
At a viewpoint along the way, I read a sign about the Mitchell Point Tunnel (w) . Apparently, this was a tunnel on the Columbia River Highway with a unique feature - it had windows in the tunnel wall facing the river, so that motorists could still see the river while driving through the tunnel. I was dismayed to learn that the tunnel had been destroyed when the freeway was put in. Ain't progress wonderful?
So we came to the eastern end of the scenic highway, to a town with the unusual name of The Dalles (w) , where we had lunch at:
The Baldwin Saloon
I also took a picture of this building, just because I thought it looked interesting:
...and then we were back on the road, headed back the way we came. But I never like to go back the same way I came, so I crossed the river and drove back on the Washington side:
On the way back, I saw some people.... well, I wasn't quite sure what they were doing. I mean, I could clearly see what they were doing, but I wasn't sure what it was called. Windsurfing? Parasailing? None of the above, it turns out. It's called kite surfing:
Whatever you call it, it looks like fun.
At the town of White Salmon, WA, we crossed back into Oregon (by this time, we were laughing about how often we were going back and forth from state to state), and headed south towards Mt. Hood (w) :
Along the way, we stopped at a place called Panorama Point. I expected it to have a view of the Columbia River Gorge, but instead, it looked south away from the river. That's where I took the first of these three pictures of Mt. Hood; I took the others as we got closer:
I couldn't seem to get a clear shot, without there being clouds in the way. Very frustrating.
We then drove up to the base of the mountain, to a hotel called Timberline Lodge (w) :
There was snow on the ground, and as we walked in from the parking lot, we saw some kids snowboarding down a mini-glacier:
Then we got around to the front entrance of the hotel:
Look familiar? It was used as the Overlook Hotel in the movie version of Stephen King's The Shining, with Jack Nicholson.
So we went inside and had a drink:
There's a large central atrium that goes up to the second floor. There's an inside balcony running all the way around the second floor, which is where we sat to have our drink. In the center, there's a huge fireplace, going from the ground floor all the way up to the ceiling:
We wandered around the hotel a little, and eavesdropped for a while on a Park Service tour. Then, while Terry made a stop at the ladies' room, I spotted something interesting.
Remember Pee Chee folders? Those yellow folders that everybody but me used at school? They had pictures on the front and back depicting people engaged in various sporting activities:
...including, on the back cover, this picture of a woman on a ski lift:
Well, according to a display on the wall, the picture on the folder was taken from an actual photo of a woman on a ski lift, taken right there at the Timberline Lodge ski area:
An interesting little bit of trivia.
On the way back down the mountain, there were a couple of places where I saw water cascading down the side of the hill by the road:
...which partially made up for the waterfalls that I missed that morning.
And that was the end of that day's adventures. We went back into town, had dinner at an interesting place called Salvador Molly's, and went back to the house.