Columbia River Gorge & Portland

Thursday, 22.06. Woodland - Troutdale - Columbia River Gorge - Portland (203 miles)

There is no breakfast in our hostel, but there is nothing really keeping us here and so at 8:30 am, we are in the car heading south. It's approximately 15°C - where is the summer??? It's not even spring weather! The sky is thick with clouds. We arrive just before the Columbia River on the northern side in Washington, in a town called Vancouver where we find a nice café that serves hand-filtered (!!!) coffee.

We enjoy our coffee and continue driving. It starts raining as we cross the Columbia River from the north and enter Oregon. We turn left (east) as planned and make a two-hour stop in Troutdale, a not-so-great outlet - but we always find something.

It's almost 2:00 pm when we leave Troutdale, hoping all the while that the sky will turn blue, the sun will come out, because we want to visit the Columbia River Gorge and you'd better have nice weather for that. But today, that remains a wish.

Over thousands of years, the Columbia River has carved through the volcanic rock of basalt. The last major deepening of the riverbed occurred during the last Ice Age about 13,000 years ago. In the early 17th century, a landslide occurred which caused the river to dam up: the "Bonneville Slide". When the river excavated below the loose earth above it, a kind of bridge was created over the Columbia River. Unfortunately, it fell victim to a later volcanic eruption. The Native Americans gave this natural bridge the name "Bridge of the Gods". The bridge that was inaugurated in 1926 also received this name.

The area here often has rain (!!), which makes the forests and waterfalls flourish (and tourists should never come here without a rain jacket..). Because there are different elevations here, there are a variety of ecosystems from rainforest to wildflowers to wine production - although that is more on the (southern) side of the river in Oregon.

Our road is the Historic Columbia River Highway. It is one of the National Scenic Byways and in the year 2000 it became a National Historic Landmark. It takes us through dense forests, and on both sides of the narrow road are large, mossy trees and smaller retaining walls and posts that are completely overgrown.

It resembles the Hoh Rain Forest and looks very mystical. We stop at a viewpoint from where you would have a great view over the river far below us and the steep cliff beside it that rises over 1,200m above the river (on a better weather day).

At another viewpoint, we try to take more photos, hoping to capture the true beauty of this region, but it doesn't work. The clouds hang low, everything is gray, and we continue driving.

Although there have been many waterfalls on many trips and you don't have to see them all, we still stop at one of the 77 waterfalls along this relatively short route. The highest of all waterfalls here are the Multnomah Falls, a two-tiered waterfall almost 200m high. We take photos and walk onto the bridge that goes over the lower part of the falls. The trees around us are once again covered in moss. It's a beautiful sight to see these waterfalls, but the number of tourists is overwhelming.

Multnomah Falls

It's almost 4:00 pm when we continue from here to Hood River, where you can go surfing on the Columbia River. Now the weather has become so autumn-like that we don't see anyone surfing in or near the river. After a 20-minute stop with coffee in hand, we turn south onto another scenic byway called the Fruit Loop.

However, we are probably too early in the year on the one hand and too late on the other. This means that the fruit farmers haven't set up their stands yet, some of those that are open only have apples and a few shriveled strawberries. Most of the wineries are closed. In the one we visit, they only have pear wine. Yikes. Wineries often have nicely stocked small shops. Not here. However, the pear wine winery is a beautiful white house with a nice garden. But our visit is limited to taking a few photos of the surroundings and we don't taste anything. In the gray sky, we catch a glimpse of Mount Hood with its snow-capped peak - it would look great with sun and blue sky.

As we continue driving and go higher, it starts pouring rain. We are now about 1,400m high and we are still driving through forest, forest, and more forest, and through very low-hanging clouds. We pass towns again that were surely founded by Germans, with names like Welches or Wemme or Rhododendron, and even the street names like Hoffstadt Road testify to the German settlers.

After many miles in nature and under miserable weather conditions, a large Safeway appears where civilization has once again taken hold. Just to be safe, we stock up on fruit, vegetables, and yogurt. Two days ago, I got a customer card at a Safeway, so today I save over $14 compared to regular prices. It's especially great that we finally get a foldable camping chair for both of us, at the "club price" of only $7.99.

We quickly throw everything in the car and half-wet, we retreat into it. It's pouring and pouring, the windshield wipers are on full speed. It's a really annoying drive now.

Around 8:30 pm, we find our small Econo Lodge in Portland. What a day, what weather! We only drove 200 miles but it took us 12 hours and we didn't see a single ray of sunshine. The lousy weather is really awful and one shop even told us that we're here in the spring, and summer only happens in July/August. Great.

View from our Econo Lodge in Portland

We settle into our room, there's a fridge for our groceries, and we're only a 15-minute walk from Pioneer Square. The Econo Lodge was the cheapest hotel/motel in downtown with an affordable parking lot. The hotel has only 19 rooms and hides beneath high-rise buildings around a small parking lot. The room is OK, and the lady at the reception is super nice.

Thanks to the helpful explanations from the lady at the reception, we only have to walk two small blocks to catch the free streetcar at 6th Avenue and go to Pioneer Square. The weather doesn't allow for walking, at least not yet, even though after the long day in the car, we would gladly walk.

It's dark now, so our first impression of Portland is a bit unclear. We find a cozy restaurant, plop down groggily on the bench, and need a beer to relax. Once again, there are a variety of beers from local microbreweries and we receive great advice on their flavors. We also have dinner, which serves as breakfast/lunch/dinner for today since we haven't eaten all day.

After the unusual meal, we go for a walk and hike uphill back to the hotel, where we fall into bed around 11:00 pm. We seem to have adjusted to the time difference!