Portland, OR - 145 miles total and 25.0 mpg. Totals for the trip, 8283 miles, 27.4* mpg. Those are the stats.
The day started with Breakfast with Donna – Donna made us a wonderful breakfast, with fruit, English Muffins, a fantastic jam(berries with a hint of Heather: S-H), sweetbread (I can’t properly identify it, but it was really good). We had a great stay with Donna – it was too short was the only problem. We got ourselves back into the car and headed out.
First stop, you guessed it, the Dog Park. The boys enjoyed 20-30 minutes of play and running – no incidents. Whew!
Now for the drive to Columbia River Gorge. We’ve got good directions, fill up with gas (did you know that in Oregon they are required to provide full service at the pump?), and it’s off to the world of the Interstates. South (!) on 5, north on 205, east on 84. No worries – we’ve waited late enough that the morning rush hour has ended, and travel is pretty smooth.
First stop is at the Visitor Center, to verify our plan and get perhaps a map of just this area. Donna told us about an overlook that we should drive to – from there you could see all of the gorge. That is what we did. We drove up Larch Mountain, about a 30 minute drive, and a beautiful drive through dense forest, and walked the short distance to the overlook. The overlook, at 4056 ft, is impressive itself – there is a very sheer drop on three sides, and I mean very sheer. I hoped to get a picture of the overlook from below, but we were never able to see it. From here you can see just about everything. Today is very clear, and the big mountains are all visible – Mt’s Jefferson, Hood, Adams, Rainier, and St. Helens are all right there. It is a very impressive sight.
Backtracking, we drive along Route 30, which parallels I84 (sort of), and stop at all of the falls (about 6) and enjoy the forest. There is a train line through here also, and train traffic is fairly heavy. Love those trains!
Bonnieville Dam is a power generating station on the Columbia River – we drove as far east as Bonnieville Dam, as we were running out of time and couldn’t do the whole gorge (at least another 4 hours!). There the most interesting thing for us was the fish. They have a fish ladder for the salmon, of course, and they provide underwater viewing windows so you can watch the fish as they make their way upstream. It’s cool, and I tried to get some pictures and movies. Fair results. You can also look at the top of the run, and in just a couple of months you’d see salmon jumping up these falls by the hundreds!
The drive to Bill and Donna’s is basically back down I-84 to Portland. It was a nice drive – there was the brush fire that narrowed the road to one lane, but that turned out to not be as big a backup as we expected. And we drove fairly easily to their front door. It’s is really good to see them – they live here for the summer, and in Scottsdale for the winter – how bad is that?! We had a lot of conversation, introduced the boys, and just relaxed and enjoyed being together. Well, I must confess, I spent a bit of time on the computer too, trying to catch up with picture uploads and such. Too much time, darn it! But still, we had a nice time.(S-H: Donna and I had a laugh two engineers at work on their laptops in full concentration back to back)
The hungries set in, and we decided on a Thai dinner. We went to Tuk Tuk Thai Restaurant, and it was fabulous. I’m telling you, we have been having great meals on this trip, and this was another one. Tuk Tuk was unusually busy – we suspect the heat had something to do with it. The temperature today was in the 103 vicinity. Nice of them to import some Phoenix weather for us, don’t you think?! We had a great meal. The only distraction was Woody, who managed to open the passenger side storage drawer and eat the triple wrapped dog biscuits we had stowed there. Is there any way to stop this guy?
Back at home we had lots of good conversation – the clock had slipped in on us though, and everyone has headed off to bed, except me, of course – the engineer always typing at his keyboard. Well, no more tonight. Goodnight!
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