Day 03 — Columbia River Tour 



The pictures for this blog entry can be found here on my Flickr page, as I still need to conserve bandwidth.

Well, the weather has still not cleared, but we have to go today or put off the visit to the Columbia River Gorge until September. We tanked ourselves up at McDonald's and gassed up the rental car next door and zipped the 5 to Portland and around I-205 to pick up I-84 to follow the Columbia River east to the Gorge.

We took the Troutdale exit to drive the old US 30 scenic route. US 30 is the oldest cross-country highway, dating from 1916 and known for years as the Lincoln Highway. The section we are covering today was considered one of the most scenic in the country, with its sweeping views of the gorge, old growth rain forest, tunnels, viaducts and stonework guardrails. Unfortunately, the construction of I-84 has destroyed forever most of this. Shorter than 20 miles, the scenic corridor is about all that remains, other than fading photos that can be found at various stopping points on the route. It is slow and twisty, crumbling in many places, but worth your time to swing off the Interstate and see the route the way it used to be, experience the road east out Portland the way our Grandparents or even Great-Grandparents would have had they motored west.

Our first stop (and I almost drove passed it) was the Portland Women's Forum State Scenic Viewpoint, at Chanticleer Point, with a parking lot and historical markers overlooking the Columbia River and the west end of the gorge. That western end of the gorge is marked by Crown Point, which is topped by Vista House, an octagonal sandstone building constructed in 1916 as a rest stop for travelers on US 30. The marble interior is just as impressive as the exterior. Be sure to look up under the dome and notice the copper Indian heads adorning the upper walls. There are restrooms, gift shop and museum/photo gallery in the basement, partially lighted through glass brick skylights set in the walkway surrounding the building. Don't forget your camera, as Vista House is aptly named, views up and down the river. By the way, June 7th is the 90th Anniversary of Vista House!

When you leave Vista House, you drop down some 600 feet to the river via a series switchbacks through deep forests and it is here you get your best look at the arched stonework guardrails, some of them 90 years old. Once at river level, we entered waterfall country. This 10 mile stretch has the highest concentration of high waterfalls on the continent. Most of these falls are visible from the road and a couple are easily seen from across the river in Washington. If the light is right — early morning and late afternoon — these falls would be quite photogenic. Unfortunately, we hit most of them during the middle of the day when we had to aim our cameras up into the sun and the pictures suffer for it. The last of the falls we stopped at was the big one — Multnomah Falls — 620 feet in two sheer drops, it is the second highest year-round waterfall in the country and fourth highest period. Put another way, the tallest building in Kentucky is 90 feet shorter than the falls.

We stood in the spray looking up with our mouths open like everyone else around us and snapped away with our cameras for about an hour before we decided we needed something to eat. It just so happens that here is a very nice restaurant at the base of the falls. The Multnomah Falls Lodge serves Northwestern dishes inside the stone lodge building that dates from 1925. The stone and wood panel interior gives the place an Old World charm with a hint of rustic ruggedness which suits its location beside the falls. The tall windows in the dining room afford a nice view of the falls while you are eating. I had the sandwich special, a grilled roast beef sandwich with mozzarella cheese with tomato with a seasoned mayo (basil?) that came with a field green salad with a hazelnut vinaigrette; very tasty. Heather ordered the Chicken Salad Croissant, but they brought her the Salmon Salad Croissant; brought her the right one right away though, so all good. Lynda had the Roast Breast of Turkey Sandwich, which is thin sliced turkey with cream cheese and cranberries and she had it on white; pronounced it yummy. It was a little spendy, but food was great and service was very good.

By the time we finished lunch, the sun had slipped a little more to the west. Light was much better now and we didn't have to shoot up into the sun any longer, so at least the pictures after lunch turned out much better.

We finished the scenic route and got back on I-84 at exit 35 and headed east into the gorge. The walls of the gorge are more weathered hills of volcanic rock that are covered on the western end with fir, spruce and hemlock, with some of the trees growing to almost 200 feet tall. The gorge is quite wide and even the walls rise 4000 feet in in some places, you feel more like you are in a wide deep valley than in a canyon.
For the most part, the trees cover the hills thickly, but here and there are the scars left by big landslides.

Our original plan was to drive up past The Dalles to Biggs, OR and cross over to Washington and come back down that side and find someplace to spend the night. But the farther east we went, the drier the landscape became and the thinner the trees grew. By the time we got to Hood River, most of the trees were gone and it looked more like the high plains of eastern Montana or Wyoming with lots more vertical lift. Dried grass on high rolling hills was not that photogenic for us, so we turned left onto US 197 and crossed over to Washington at The Dalles dam and turned back west on WA 14.

Highway 14 is rated as the scenic route through the gorge, but, only place I found it so was back down at the west end of the gorge across from the falls area and Crown Point where the road rose up high above the gorge and gives you a view like you are flying over the gorge. Just wish there were better pullouts to take in the sights. We had spent most of our time on the eastern end racing a BNSF train, trying to stay ahead of it as it would block our view. We crossed back and forth with it several times and ran through seven tunnels.

We picked up the 5 at Vancouver, WA and followed the Columbia north to Longview, WA and crossed back over to Ranier, OR to pick up US 30 again. The highway doesn't follow the river very closely through this part of the state, but is a pretty drive of alternating forest and farms. We crested over the Coast Range a few miles east of Astoria, OR at about 700 feet and descended gently into Astoria. Normally, we have reservations any place we go, but we were living serendipitously, so figured we would see what we could find when we got into town.

If you have been to Astoria, the US 101 bridge is really impressive; you can see it for a few miles up river on 30 because it probably rises 200 feet above the river on the Oregon side to let ocean-going ships pass under it. The bridge is probably four miles across and both times I have seen it, has looked like it has just been painted. As a matter of fact, all the bridges we crossed over the Columbia have looked freshly painted. Certainly a stark contrast with Ol' Flakey (the JFK bridge) back home in Louisville. The hotel we found was a Holiday Inn Express directly beneath the bridge. Let me emphasize that point, the bridge goes straight over the roof of the hotel, so Monday night, we wound up sleeping under a bridge. We opted for 2 bedroom suite for $150 and it was very nice for that price. I once lived for 10 years in a smaller place than this suite. Of course my monthly rent was only $160 a month, so there is the difference. The picture of the bridge on my Flickr page was taken from the bedroom window. The bridge is actually so high over the hotel, we couldn't even hear the log trucks when they passed overhead.

All-in-all, a very nice day, but my body is very tired from sawing the steering wheel on very twisty roads. Had dinner at Stephanie's Cabin Family Restaurant (link, link, link) a couple of blocks back east up Marine Drive. The food was so-so and service was ok. The building had been a Sambo's back in early 70s and still has that look even if the decor has been toned down.

Astoria is a very nice, clean little city that doesn't feel like a seaport at all. Would like to come back and spend more time here if we can find some better restaurants.

Went back to our nice suite to edit photos and then called it a night. 

Posted: Wed - June 7, 2006 at 12:17 AM          

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