Hood River, Oregon

Another busy touring/hiking day.  We started out by driving west along the Columbia River Gorge.  It's a beautiful wide waterway. 

 

Towering hills on both sides.

 

This is the power plant - we'll see it more in-depth on tomorrow's outing.

 

There is a long list of waterfalls to see today - Multnomah Falls is sortof the most famous and accessible one, right beside the highway.  Unfortunately, everyone else in a 4 state region picked today to see it.  No parking available and just a silly amount of folks.  We gave it a drive by.

Back on the road, we needed some petrol...this was a cool little general store.  They had everything from local honey to vodka.  In Oregon, they pump your fuel for you unless you protest.  The pump had a padlock on it when we drove up....maybe we were the first customer of the day since I believe this is an extremely safe area.  (Most of our AirBnB's come with the directions - "there's a key by the door if you want to use it".

 

We stopped at everything we could along a "scenic corridor map" I found online.  This was the view of the gorge from the Women's Forum overlook.

We drove 14 miles up Larch Mountain for the promised 360 degree views with 5 mountain peaks.  It did not disappoint!  

Beautiful wildflowers along the trail.

 

Driving down the mountain to the next vista.

Another stop - the Crown Point View House.  It is an observatory built in 1916 to honor the Lewis and Clark explorers.

 

The view from Crown Point.

 Next is going to be a bunch of photos of waterfalls and gorge views.  I've got to admit, I lost track of which-waterfall-was-which....Several of these were close by the historic highway 30 that we were traveling.  But a couple required a mile or more hike to see. My watch registered 18K steps for the day - and it registered 50 stories climbed.  I think that's a lot of up-and-down!

Not that it matters to anyone, I'm going to list them here so I can research them later if I want....

Laourell Falls (lower and upper), Sheppards Dell, Bridal Veil, Multnomah, Horsetail

  

 

Just a pretty bridge structure.

 

This is part of a historic roadway at Shepperds Dell falls.  Was built in 1910 - now is just a path to the falls.

 Views of the gorge. 

 

Nearing the end of the day, we saw a sign for the Mitchell Point Overlook.  A quick detour brought us to a cool area - I found this info later about it:   Originally built in 1915, its historic tunnel was a marvel carved with arched windows, but modern highway expansions forced its demolition in 1966. Today, the overlook features a stunningly faithful 655-foot replica tunnel designated exclusively for pedestrians and cyclists.

 Views from the overlook were stunning as well but the sun was getting pretty low....our clue that it's time to stop for the day.