Columbia River Gorge and Mt. Hood

On Wednesday, July 27 we left the coast to head inland to the Columbia River Gorge area.  From miles away you see Mt Hood, at 11,250 ft it is Oregon's highest mountain. It is potentially an active volcano but the last eruption was 1907!

We stayed in Troutdale, it's motto is...

Our campsite was very underwhelming, we had to park crooked (oh if you know My Dad, Wayne, you know he hated that) to fit on the pad and the park was really more of a trailer park. Our usual line is, "it's only one night," but this was five! We were wishing for a nice state park!

Our first day Mom, Dad, and ai drove to Mt Hood. Our first stop was a hike around Trillium Lake. Mom and Dad thought the view was pretty but didn't like the trail much, but I loved it! It was flat with lots of people to pet me and ducks to watch! The mountain was magestic.

Next we stopped at Timberline Ski Resort...they ski all year long, there were tons of snowboarders and skiers!

The next day I stayed home and Mom and Dad drove the historic Columbia River Gorge road and went hiking at several waterfalls. The road was very scenic...

The Columbia River is wide and beautiful!

Our first stop was the Vista House...I thought it might be a B&B or restaurant...it was built as a rest stop! Built in 1915 with Italian marble, stained glass, and brass, it was like no rest area we'd ever seen!

Our first waterfall was Latourell Falls, a 249 Ft plunge waterfall!

Next we hiked to Bridal Veil Falls, a tiered fall with the the upper 60-100 ft and the lower 40-60 ft. It was a beautiful hike.

Our next Falls was Wahkeena a tiered falls with a small 15-20 ft upper and a 50-70 ft lower.

We talked to a nice ranger who suggested we hike to the next falls as the traffic for parking is horrible. It was a nice hike, well above the road with a view of the Columbia River through the trees.

The Multnomah Falls is the Grandaddy of all, 2nd highest in US with a 620 ft plunge, but it was a zoo of people making it hard to enjoy. The sun was at a poor angle tor pictures, but here it is...First the lower section...

 

And after a climb, the upper...

After this one we packed it in for a nice lunch at a neat restaurant in an old power station building from the early 1900's!

After Mom and Dad got home we looked for a park for me to get some exercise...the first didn't allow dogs, the 2nd did, so we started down a path until Mom realized all the picnic tables had homeless people sleeping on them. We cut the trip short and came home...probably harmless but better safe than sorry!

On Saturday Mom and Dad made their way into Portland! They went downtown, but there were homeless everywhere, laying in gutters, coming up to harass people parking. We decided to leave and headed east. Later we learned that because of the mild temperature in part and that the govt has made new policies that it's okay to sleep on public streets that their homeless problem has exploded as well as drugs and crime, and it is affecting tourism...we can attest to that!

First we headed to The Dalles where no rain 300 days a year makes for a completely different climate and landscape...

Next we went back to the Hood River area with wineries and a cute small town. We enjoyed the Naked Winery, the wine names are a hoot! We bought quite a few!! We had an early dinner in the area, the food was mediocre but the view of the Columbia River was outstanding!

On the way home a terrible accident closed the interstate and required two helicopters...not good for some families! Stuck for well over an hour, we watched as men went to the woods and women hiked a mile to the state park at the next exit! Poor Finn was home waiting patiently for a long overdue trip outside, whew he said!

Our final day Mom and Dad went on an old Sternwheeler river cruise down the Columbia. Mom will tell you all about it... they did bring me this picture

It was a beautiful sunny day, starting from the Cascades Locks we went both up and down the river, east and west. The captain had lots of stories about the Lewis and Clark, very big here for their exploration of the area. He talked about Lewis' Newfoundland dog, Seaman who traveled with him from Atlantic to Pacific and back as well as a key guide and interpreter, Sacagawea. The statues were an ode to them...

We watched this barge head down the river being pushed by this tug with a 3000-4000HP motor...wow!

There were Ospreys, Eagles, and seals!

 

But, it was the water sports that dominated the day, several regattas were going on with different class boats. The Captain said the winds at this location make it one of the top 10 places in the US for small boat racing!

One of the groups had Olympic class boats

I think my sailing family and friends would have loved the challenging sailing with exciting heeling of these boats, they were clipping along very fast!

There were parasailers, wind surfers, and the most exciting kite boarders...they were flying 20-30 ft in the air getting ready to start a contest! They would come by our boat showboating, amazing!

This bridge is named the Bridge of Gods, but what caught my attention was that it was raised 40 ft, but prior to that, Charles Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St. Louis under this bridge...

We really had a fun day!

Newport, Oregon, the beautiful Pacific Coast and Whales galore!

Well, we left Crater Lake on Friday and headed back to the Oregon Coast. It is a beautiful area with rugged Douglas Firs and redwood Cedars meeting blue, ice cold Pacfic Ocean. Here we were making our way into the town of Newport!

Our resort is a true resort...still not as nice as our beloved Hilton Head but exceptional views that include whales right outside our windows!

The beach is often windy, but for me, Finny, it is fantastic!

And a dog park with grass no less! My buddies Rudy, Duffy, Cooper, and Murphy would love it!

The first night Mom and Dad went downtown to Local Ocean Seafood with a beautiful view of the harbor. Mom had Halibut, Dad had huge oysters he said, and they had a Dungeness crab appetizer...come on Mom and Dad, what about me😋

We ended the day with a nice sunset that we watched from the coach...

Okay Saturday morning all three of us headed down to Florence, but not before Mom and Dad visited some coaches on display at the resort and went to a Chowder House in Ney Beach for a nice bowl of clam chowder! Mom said it was a cute town!

Along the way we saw some nice scenery...

And a lighthouse!

We stopped at Oregon Dunes National Park to see the dunes. A strange sight was how they allowed Dune buggies and Dirt Bikes on the dunes...so different from what we are used to where we protect the east coast dunes. While it looked fun, we couldn't help but wonder if they will regret in years to come that they didn't protect them.

Florence was a neat little town with a Farmer's Market along the boardwalk! I got a few pets too!

The next day Mom and Dad went to Depoe Bay to check out the Whale Watching Tours...they didn't realize they could see the whales right in the harbor and right from their lunch stop!

Depoe Bay is called the smallest harbor in the US...it was a cute town Mom said!

BTW...a big milestone today...I am now wearing my big boy collar...I am an official Hokie Dog!

Mom wants to tell you about the rest of the trip...This part of the trip has been very relaxing, we have eaten too much fabulous seafood that included delicious clam chowder, Dungeness crab cakes, huge Pacfic oysters, salmon, and halibut without enough exercise to balance😋. However, nothing compared to today, Monday, July 25.

We scheduled a whale watching trip out of Depoe Bay, Oregon. Now we have been on trips out of Maine and Alaska, but this was just way, way above and beyond. We went out with four other folks plus our guide Carrie Newell and her Golden Retriever, Kady. Carrie is a PhD Marine Biologist with 26 years experience with studying gray whales on the Oregon Coast. We saw a film where she worked with Jean Michael Cousteau, son of famed Jacques! 

Through her research, Carrie has discovered specifically what the whales eat that has caused them to stay in the area. While some gray whales travel to Baja for breeding and birthing calves and then travel up the coast to Alaska for feeding, there is a subset that stop in Oregon and never go to AK. They feed in the bay in 30-40 ft of water. We learned to identify the difference in the blow air spouts of females, males and calves. Also, because each of the whales has very identifying marks and barnacles she had named them and could readily identify them! We were able to see 10 different whales with countless sightings! Two other very unique things about this trip...we were in a small zodiac boat she bought from Jimmy Buffet so we were often fairly close and her Golden Kady traveled with us. Now Kady was 151/2 yrs old, had lost her lower jaw to cancer but still went out on the boat up to four times a day. It turns out Kady can smell the whales before we saw them and would bark to let us know when one was close! I cannot say my pictures were very good but we were actually close enough a few times to smell the whale breath...which is pretty bad😝. 

On the way out we went through the smallest harbor in the US and saw a few birds and harbor seals.

Here is Kady, the wonder girl!

We watched the whales blow, dive, fluke, and feed. You can tell they are feeding because they flip on their sides and you see a dorsal fin flip up, looking like a shark!

Here are some feeding called sharking...

Blowing...

Fluking...

Kady almost jumped out she got so excited at one point when we had numerous whales around us...

We even saw their back ridges...

It was a truly amazing day thanks to Carrie and Kady!

While we are here one more day, we are posting today due to our Verizon wifi end of our month for our gigabytes and no good campground wifi (guess we need that new roll over plan!). Wednesday we head inland to Columbia River Gorge area!