We finished up Howie’s service and upgrades. Somethings were loose and got tightened, all systems checked, and a much-appreciated upgrade to the rear suspension (quad shocks). Steering is more precise now, and road jolts have been noticeably softened. Many thanks to Robert for his sharp eyes and keen expertise….

Just before we drove away, a miniature space-alien drone came by my open driver’s-side window for a visit. This thing looks like a housefly on super-steroids, almost 1.5” long (3cm) and it flies more poorly than a bumblebee. A low-frequency hummmm causes it to slowly levitate, and wobble about with seemingly poor directional control. It really makes you wonder which way it wants to go — or might actually end up going. I didn’t want to swat it for fear it might swat me back. Right after I snapped the picture, it launched in a kamikaze dive off the window ledge, managed to start flying halfway to the ground, and buzzed away in a vaguely random fashion to terrify someone else.

Our late departure put us on I-5 toward Portland just in time for the rush hour, so we skirted to the east a bit and traded stalled-freeway monotony for small-town traffic lights. Not a bad trade-off really. I get tired of the blandness of the Interstates very quickly, and we both prefer the diversity of back roads when it’s practical.

Originally, we had planned (if you can call it a plan) to simply make a beeline from home to British Columbia and then start “being tourists”. Ah well, life is what happens while you are making plans. While we were northbound, our friends John and Charlene Stoltz invited us over to Mt. Hood for a visit, graciously offering a nice flat driveway for Howie to rest upon. That sounded great, so our ‘plans’ changed.

Up the road another 330 miles from Grant’s Pass, we are now hunkered down and hiding out from the Memorial Day Weekend hordes, parked comfortably in John and Charlene’s circular drive. Here’s what the Mt. Hood area looks like as you drive inbound.

Not too shabby, huh? We will monopolize their mini-road for a few days while we visit, get caught up, and do some casual exploring in this very pretty part of Oregon. The super nice thing about visiting friends from a motorhome is the comfort in NOT intruding too much in their lives. John and Charlene are wonderful, generous hosts, and we are happy to see them again – without being a burden.

It’s said that “dead fish and guests both stink after three days”. Well, we’ll crowd that limit, but at least we’re not cluttering up the living room. 

For those unfamiliar, Hood River is situated in the middle of the incredible gouge in the Cascade Range called the Columbia River Gorge. This waterway’s passage to the Pacific Ocean was explored by Lewis and Clark’s intrepid band back in 1804-5, as a part of their magnificent two-year excursion into the unknown lands of the West. The tumultuous Gorge Water (namesake for the Cascades) is pacified by a dam now, but back then it ranged from placid flow to raging torrent, and was navigated by hand-made canoes. What a time that must have been. I still get goose-bumps when I re-read the several books I have on the Corps of Discovery expedition. At that time, it was nearly equivalent to today’s project to go to Mars.

Oregon is at its greenest this time of year, and (at least for us) its grayest. We’ve seen only scraps of sunshine over the last week, usually accompanied by a thin high overcast. Our solar panels and our spirits are in need of buoyance. Sniffle. But, despite the flat light, it’s still pretty, albeit not too photographically friendly.

We wandered into Hood River, about 12 miles north of Mt. Hood and right in the Gorge. First order of the day was to check out Stoltz Vineyards winery (owned by our friends), a lovely, cozy spot with a high river view and a great selection of hand-made wines. Then we added in a couple of the local sights, and headed over to the Columbia Gorge Hotel for lunch. This is an old (original) building from the early days of the town, circa 18-something. Great landscaping in the old “natural” style, sculpting rocks and trees and a small waterway into pleasant surrounds. The grounds have meandering pathways to stroll through the area and appreciate the soft lushness.

The back side of the hotel has a commanding view of the Columbia. The extensive grounds also encompass a private 208-foot waterfall cascading down the rocky cliff-side to the river.

By the afternoon, I was getting pretty tired from a rasty stiff neck that had hung around for several days. We called it quits and turned in early.

Next day (Saturday) my stiff neck had loosened up a bit. I was feeling considerably more alive, so we decided to be tourists. John gave us some great suggestions and we headed off for points west: Cascade Locks, Bonneville Dam, and Multnomah Falls. These are ambitious targets on a holiday weekend, and we found ourselves simply swarmed with fellow tourists out to see some of the most popular sights in Oregon.

This close to Portland and the Pacific Ocean, the marine layer reliably closed up the sky and squelched any reasonable photographic light. Snap away we did regardless, and some diligent application of Photoshop fixes produced some rather dull pix.

Multnomah falls is a lovely sight, splashing down 208 feet of sheer cliffs before joining the Columbia. The deep, rich rocks and forest make for a story-book picture, not hurt at all by the 19th-century stone bridge just below the pool at mid-falls.

The wooden bridge which preceded the beautiful stone creation was not so striking – but no less impressive.

Sunlight would not have helped with this next one. Thirty feet below the Locks fish-ladder, sockeye salmon swim up the river toward ancestral spawning grounds. The dam and locks would have messed things up big-time, so weirs and fish-ladders were incorporated into the design, preserving the salmon migration. The visitors’ center has viewing windows, where I was just barely able to catch this 3-footer in the dim murky waters.

Near the Locks is one of two bridges that cross the Gorge proper. This one is called the Bridge of the Gods, and for no reason could we figure out why such a mundane, steel-truss structure would merit such praise.

Turns out, Bridge of the Gods was the moniker given by the native peoples to an oral-tradition legend of a footbridge across the river. This fanciful fable was muralized on one of the (modern) bridge’s stanchions.

And it further turns out those “superstitious” natives weren’t all that far off. Geological studies show that the Bonneville slide occurred around 600 years ago; a massive landslide from the north crashed down across the Gorge, and completely shut off the flow of the Columbia! Later, the water build-up broke through and created a rough, rocky passage that became the Cascades. And of course these were all later submerged in the waters behind the dam.

Heading back up the River toward Hood River, we were treated to two striking sights: one, a sunny afternoon, and two, a windy afternoon. In the Pacific Northwest, sunny is always striking – but what’s so striking about windy? Simply that we are passing through one of the “meccas” of the wind-surfing world. People come from all over the country, and from other continents, to ply their skills across the wind-whipped waves of the Columbia. This holiday weekend, the river is dotted for miles with the colorful canopies and sails of kite-surfing and board-surfing enthusiasts. Watching through binoculars and telephotos, it looks like they’re all going to hit each other, but somehow they stay separate as they skip, hop, and crash across the choppy waters.

As we relaxed and watched the scurrying water-rats – well, as much as we could in the 25mph “breeze” – we noticed that the river-side trees tended to have few or no branches on their western sides. A roadside placard explained the huge wind-generating orographic and thermal effects of the maritime air, desert air, and intervening Gorge.

Another placard showed us how fierce it could get. Lucky there was no wind-surfing back then, some crazy loonies would have tried it out I’m sure!