Another day another adventure

June 9 2021

Today was an exploration of a several falls and other sights along the Columbia River.

It’s an interesting challenge just to get on I-84 from where we are. I-84 follows the Columbia River so we eventually jumped on it going east and getting off at a place called Cascade Locks, there is a hike to a water falls that we decided to pass up, instead we crossed the $2 toll bridge, Bridge of the Gods, into Washington, where we promptly turned around and paid the toll again:)

Heading west the next stop was to visit Herman the 11 foot long Sturgeon and feed the BIG Rainbow Trout at the Bonneville Dam Fish Hatchery. The ducks begging for food were hard to resist giving them a couple of tidbits too. The tanks were all empty of fish except for salmon, everything else was drained. There is a fish ladder here also but it was closed for some reason. I think we’re here in the off season for the hatchery.

From there we took the Historic Highway 30 west, there are several falls right at or a short walk from the road, unfortunately by the time we were heading west most of the small parking lots were full and we could not stop, the famous falls, Multnomah Falls was so crowded that the second time we tried to drive past the traffic was at a stand still, the parking lot was full, so people were just stopping in the road, both directions, waiting for some to return to their cars, that’s when turned around in the road and abandoned that idea, there is a larger parking lot accessed from the expressway but with the number of people, I didn’t even try to backtrack there.

Lots of pictures below and more words.

Sights along the Highway 30.

Horsetail Falls

Oneonta Gorge

Vista House

Wahkeena Falls

The adventure hike of the day was at Latourell Falls which is actually 2 falls, an upper and lower. The upper falls is well up. For the first mile it was all up hill some places steeper than others but each step was high than the last one. We did pretty good going up with only a few hundred thousand stops along the way. Most places you had no vistas or views so it was just put one foot in front of the other. Once we reached the upper falls (1.5 mile there) and started down the loop trail, it was easier, it felt like it had a gentler downhill. Of course the trail got a little confusing at times with off shoots. So anyway according to Mary’s app thingy the 2.1 mile loop turned out to be 3.5 miles, I’m not sure the elevation gain but it felt substantial.

The End