7/18/2017 - Waterfall Drive

Tuesday - Joe tried to call Camping World this morning but he couldn't get them to answer the phone, so we just drove over there.  Funny, they couldn't wait on him for a while because they had customers on the phone they were dealing with.  Finally, they talked to him but didn't have any fan motors in stock.  They did give us a price of a whole new unit ($1,187) but they are supposed to call him back with a price of just the fan motor.  No call back yet.

So we got on with our day.  Today was FINALLY our Waterfall Drive.  That is the one thing I wanted to do here, and on our last day, we are doing it.  We started at the west end, and worked our way east.  The guy at the sternwheeler counter the other day gave us a map of the falls and a little specific information about things not to miss.  On the way to our first side road, we passed the Women's Forum Outlook, so we got a few more pictures of the river.

From there we could see the Crown Point Vista House, which we drove right by but didn't stop at (no parking space).

 We turned onto our side road which was the 14-mile Larch Mountain Road, which ends in Sherrard Viewpoint, with a view of 5 mountains:  St. Helens, Rainier, Adams, Hood and Jefferson.  The road that took us to the viewpoint was totally foresty, dappled with sunlight.  Very pretty drive.

The trail wasn't too bad but ended with lots of steps.  But we could see all 5 mountains.

 Mt. Hood

 Mt. St. Helen

 I think this is Mt. Adams

For some reason my pictures of the other two didn't turn out very good.  Mt. Rainier was too hazy.  Don't know what happened with Mt. Jefferson.

From there we began the waterfall drive.
Latourell Falls

 There was a bridge maybe halfway up this one, the largest Multnomah Falls, and of course, Joe had to walk up to it, so I dragged along.   The picture below is the people below, from our viewpoint on the bridge (where the first picture was taken).

These two are taken from the bridge.

 

Here's Joe with his famous wave.

Next was Oneonta Gorge, which also has a falls but it was a mile walk.  The sternwheeler guy told us we just needed to walk as far as the log jam, so that's what we did.  But the trail was a little rough.

 We left our water shoes back at the car and Joe could hardly stand it that he couldn't wade across this little stream for a better look at the log jam.  But he finally walked away from it.

 Well, sort of.  The next time I looked, he was walking on a log.  It's tough to be old in body and young at heart.

And we still had the steps back up to the parking lot.

Then we checked out the tunnel here.

The last waterfall we did was Horsetail Falls.

I turned around to talk to Joe and couldn't find him -- he was down at the water level.  There were swimmers here, lucky he wasn't out there with them.

Then I ran into our buddies here. They kept looking for Joe too, but he was still down at the water. This was our last falls, and their first.  But we got together for a group photo.

There was one more falls on this road (Elowah Falls), but it was past the entrance to the freeway so we skipped it and headed back across the Bridge of the Gods.  Collins and Marilyn were headed the other way to one or two more falls.  After crossing the bridge, we drove up to the town of Stevenson, looking for dinner.  As we drove down by the river, we spotted some kite boarders again, so we had to watch them for a while.  They were practicing some maneuvers -- catching some air and doing somersaults, etc.  I kept trying to catch one of these on my camera and I did a couple, plus a wipeout. I'm thinking this might become the next new Olympic sport.

We ended up at Andrew's Pizza -- hard to go wrong with Andrew.  And finally, after a couple more side roads, Joe took me home.  I logged 11,372 steps today and I feel every one of them right now.  I think I have figured out a fix to get my horizontall pictures to stay vertical when I rotate them -- if not, there will be a lot of pictures sideways on this blog.

This was an awesome day.  We didn't make it back to the second powerhouse on the dam, but I got to see my waterfalls!  And I am tired!

7/17/2017 - Sternwheeler Ride

Monday - We are slowly getting the points of interest around here checked off.  Today we started with a tour of the powerhouse of the Bonneville Dam that is on the Washington side of the river.  There were fish ladders and generators.  This dam has more generators than the Hoover Dam (21 compared to 19) but not as many as Grand Coulee (33).  Joe, of course, is very interested in this stuff, and so is Collins.  I liked looking at the fish!

We watched a short movie about the dam which included information about the effects of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980, which closed the river for some time.  Fish going through this fish ladder are steelhead (July and August - we saw at least one), chinook salmon (Apr. through Sept.), and Sockeye (July).  Also going through is an ugly eel-looking fish called the Pacific lamprey.  We saw tons of these things.

Collins received a phone call about his car in the shop while we were here, about 10:30, so we finished up this tour and headed out.  We were going to drive straight in to The Dalles. But then he got another phone call that said it should be done around 3:00 (the first phone call was just getting his approval to proceed).  So we went back to our original plans and got on the 11:00 river cruise (barely made it, but they were waiting for a busload which didn't show up until the next tour).

There was a lot of activity on the river -- a boat towing another boat (which I sent to Mazie and told her that looked like them towing us on Roosevelt Lake, an event that has happened more than once).

 kayakers

 an outrigger boat -- she was trying to catch our wake

 wind surfing

more kayakers

and a barge hauling sawdust heading east.

We had some time to relax and just watch the world go by.

 Joe's selfie of us

Most of the channel markers here on the river had osprey nests on them.  We could see the birds in some of them.

 

We passed under the toll bridge, "Bridge of the Gods," and came within sight of the locks and the dam but we turned around there.

 Dip netting stands of the Native Americans are along the bank.

The resident sea lion was out sunning himself.  That's the only one we saw.

We met another barge on this return trip, it was a grain barge and it was heading west.  But we didn't get to see the locks in action.

And the jet boat that does the 7-hour ride also sped by.

We got back to the dock and deboarded about 1:20.  There were some beautiful blue flowers by the office -- snowballs, maybe???

So we got the boat ride checked off our list, and headed to town to get Collins' car.  Joe arranged to have the oil changed in ours so we picked theirs up and dropped ours off.  The Brundiges treated us to lunch, then back to the dealership to pick up our car.  The service manager gave us all tickets for a free car wash (after I mentioned that he didn't wash our car), so I went shopping while Joe got the car washed.  Collins was right in front of him at the car wash.  Then we made a stop at the grocery store, before heading back across the river and toward the campground.  Along the way, we could see a lot of river activity -- the kite boarders were out in full force.  We finally pulled over and watched them for a while.

 This guy was practically airborne for a while, until he crashed.  But he popped right back up and took off again.  He finally came in to shore so I got a better look.

Below the next bridge, there were a few kite boarders, but the wind surfers ruled here.

Of course, Joe had to check out a couple of other roads but we finally got home about 7:00, and hooked up with the Brundiges for cards.  Our air conditioner is definitely developing problems, so we are going to have to deal with that sometime.  We saw a Camping World store yesterday over by Portland so we might have to go over there and see about a new fan motor.  We hoped to limp it along until we got home but it doesn't sound like it is going to last that long.  We have a second air conditioner in the bedroom, and it isn't that hot up here, so what to do, what to do.

I hope to do the waterfall drive tomorrow.  And we have the other part of the dam and the locks to finish up.  Busy, busy.




 

7/16/2017 - Visiting Joy, Rich and Rachael

Sunday - Another full day.  They did get the water back on in the park, the manager said they basically put a bandaid on it, but we both filled our water tanks in case it busts again.  With that done, we set out for the day.  Our first stop was the Cascade Locks Marine Park Dock, where the sternwheeler docks.  This was back over the river, crossing at the Bridge of the Gods toll bridge.  As we drove around the marina, we saw another boat, thinking it was the sternwheeler, but it was a cruise ship on a 7-day cruise up the Columbia and the Snake Rivers, with a base price deal of around $3,600.  We didn't think that was in our budget, so we found our way to the sternwheeler dock and got our information.  We will probably do that tomorrow.  We walked out on the deck here to look at the river.

There was a little activity across the river, a wind surfer and a boat.

We left there and drove down I-84 to wind our way over to Joy and Rich's house.  It took lots of turns but, amazingly, we ended up in their driveway.  We had a nice lunch with them on the patio, a good visit, then followed them over to a farmer's market to buy some more fresh fruit.  We decided to check out a campground that Joy said was "just down the road," on our way back, as a possibility when we come back through here in a few weeks.  Barton Park, on the Clackamas River, looks like it will work as our headquarters for our days in Portland when Dixie and Jim get here.  We saw a few geese here, that was the only wildlife for the day.  People were floating down this lazy river and we watched a couple of guys delicately carry a canoe through the rocks to launch.

We got back to Joy's and I checked out their garden.  Looking good.

Rachel had worked this morning but called when she got off and decided to drive up from Salem to visit.  What should have been about an hour's drive for her turned into a 3-hour drive because of a wreck on the freeway.  We visited briefly with her, and picked Rich and Joy's brains about things to see in Washington.  Then we all left for dinner at Claim Jumper.

With their guidance, we found our way out of the parking lot and onto Hwy 205 across the river to our exit on Hwy 14.  I'm pretty sure they wondered how we ever got out of Arizona.  We got back to the campground about 8:30, another long day.  But it was great getting to visit with family and we will look forward to seeing them next month when we come back down the coast from Washington.  It was a cool day here, in the 70s (I had to put my jacket on a couple of times) and it was just 60 degrees when I got up this morning.  Nice, nice weather.  It's been a long time since we have seen any rain, and we thought it rained all the time in Oregon!