Day 38 - Portland, Oregon

What a beautiful, warm, sunny day it was as we set off on a comfy tour bus via the freeway through the city of Portland for a drive through the National Scenic Area on the Columbia River Gorge Road. On our way through the city, our guide pointed out several sites: Mt. Hood covered in snow (but for once not covered in clouds); Portland’s old Fort Vancouver where the Hudson Bay Company did business way-back-when; Government Island (originally named Diamond Island by Meriwether Lewis because of it’s shape) where the Lewis & Clark entourage camped both going to and coming from their West Coast adventure; Mt. St. Helen, not as tall as it once was; and the dykes along both sides of the river, built to keep the river water from flooding the surrounding areas in both Washington and Oregon.

Mt. Hood

Factoid #1: Mt. St. Helen, called the “ice cream cone” mountain because of its shape, lost 1000 ft. in height when the volcano of 1980 took a big “bite”.

Reaching the Gorge, we drove along the Sandy River on the Historic Oregon Trail. This river was originally called the Quicksand River in the L & C journals, named such because of the near loss of one of the members of the group due to the unstable river bed. We also learned from our guide that the Sandy River is full of steelhead and salmon. (Attention all fishermen!)

Further along the road, we stopped at Vista House where we enjoyed a walk-around and took pictures of the view of the Columbia River below 

Vista House

View from Vista House

before dropping the 800 feet (by bus, of course) to the bottom of the Gorge. There we saw beautiful Multnomah Falls, an over 600 ft. two-stage waterfall, and had a delicious lunch in the restaurant while enjoying a view of the falls.

Factoid #2: There are ten major year-round waterfalls over 100 feet high on the Oregon side of the Columbia River .

Factoid #3: Sacagawea saw sea lions in the Columbia River, and they still may be seen there today.

After lunch we passed a large osprey nest atop a tall pole (complete with a baby osprey peeking over the edge of the nest) as we motored on to the Bonneville Dam, built by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1934-37. The dam has been updated in more recent years to provide better electrical service and kinder ways for the many types of fish to swim the ladders as they head on upstream.

Bonneville Dam Spillway

Lamprey “stuck to the window”
in the fish ladder

Fish ladder at Bonneville Dam 

 “HALT!” Roger “defending” the dam
as was done during WWII 

Larry, Tom and Roger inspecting the
old turbine wheel at Bonneville Dam

  

Factoid #4: This year a record of over 25,000 Sockeye salmon passed through the Bonneville fish ladder – in one day! (Again, attention all fishermen!!)

As clouds came in – though it was still a warm day – our last stop was at the Bonneville Hatchery where we “met up” with Herman the Sturgeon weighing in at 450 pounds! He’s a whopping 10 foot-long sturgeon – much larger than the 3-6 ft. sturgeons that may be legally caught and kept. And he’s over 70 years old! (How do they know this?)

Factoid #5: The sturgeon is a “prehistoric” fish that appeared millions of years ago in the Jurassic period.

Whew! What a day! Back "home", we agreed that we thoroughly enjoyed this busy, beautiful, eventful day!

Roger and Jonette Stones Rig #20,
at the Multnomah Falls