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A visit to Port Townsend

Nice small town where the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Puget Sound meet.  We drove the 12 or so miles from our campsite to the tip of the peninsula driving thru Fort Worden so we could check out the Pt. Wilson Lighthouse.   It wasn’t open to the public, but we were able to walk right up to it and around the property to snap some pics.

It looked like it was in a lot better shape in the pictures that Google brings up when searching, so they must be fairly old now.    It’s located on a pretty spot on the point that separates the Strait of Juan de Fuca from the Puget Sound.

While we walked around, a fairly large ship rounded the corner and, in what seemed like just a minute or two, was barely visible in the distance down the Sound.   After we had taken too many pictures, we headed back toward the town.

While traversing this large hill between the fort and the town, we came upon a beautiful home overlooking the Sound with a really whimsical low brick wall snaking its way between the trees and the road.   We had to turn around and go back to look at it.   The home itself was a slightly modern take on a craftsman home with the great woodwork and amazing leaded windows, but that fence was like nothing I had ever seen.    I thought I could live there with the great view and high up off the water.   It was for sale; but when we looked it up on Zillow, they are asking 2.5 million…   Not sure our house in SD would qualify as the 20% down for it, so we moved on.

A few minutes later we were in downtown Port Townsend.   We found a place to park across from a waterfront park where we decided to have our picnic lunch.   No picnic benches were to be found, so we ended up sitting on a bench that was on a pier over the water.  Not bad but a table would have been a bit nicer.   We watched all the boats go by and also the large vehicle ferry coming back from Whidbey Island then a little bit later head back.

After lunch we headed down the main street to look at all the Victorian era architecture with Kathy looking inside all the buildings for their wares.   The buildings where great, and some of the old advertising was just visible enough on the side walls to tell what was being sold back in the day.   I also found the fireman’s bell tower while walking down one of the side streets.

We stumbled across a Victoria Era Steampunk shop.   That was a trip to see all the cool stuff.      They even had a lot of wooden ships’ mastheads that I couldn’t tell if they were old or just recreations.  They were great though.

We sauntered over to the ferry landing to pick up a schedule and check out the workings for our next journey to Seattle via a different ferry on Bainbridge Island.    But that’s for another post.

We left the ferry landing and walked up the other side of the street in the direction of the car.   Lots of pubs and shops along the way.   We did find another waterfront park with picnic tables, but the park at the north end of the town was much nicer and much more wide open, not just a vacant lot between two buildings like this one.

As we got closer to the car, we found an ice cream shop, and while Kathy was inside getting our order, I snapped this picture of a building I wouldn’t want to be in when the big quake hits here in the not to distant future.   It’s still hard for me to imagine they only found the Cascadia Fault in the late 90’s and are just barely telling folks about the overdue 9.0 quake on the Oregon and Washington coastal areas.    They have put up a lot of Tsunami Evacuation Route signs here in Washington.   On the coast of Oregon, there were lots of entering and leaving Tsunami zones, but the Evac route signs were few and far between.    The powers that be probably think it would hurt tourism and/or population centers for folks to start seriously thinking about that.

The sun went behind the clouds as we were heading north, and I wished I had brought my windbreaker with me.   Sort of got a bit chilly on this July afternoon.   We found the car and drove back to the campground to plan a trip for tomorrow.

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Mount St. Helens

We took off around 10 am on Saturday morning to find the Johnston Observatory at Mount Saint Helens.   It was about an hour ride on some of the smoothest roads we have encountered while driving around this country.   Incredible views along the way with bright blue skies and few clouds hanging around.

On the way there, as we came around a corner, my vision got blurry looking at the trees.  I immediately started wondering what was wrong, some sort of eye problem or maybe a stroke?   I was figuring out all the scenarios of what was happening to me when Kathy exclaimed that all the trees were giving her double vision.    Holy Cow,  it was the trees!!  The forest service had planted thousands of Nobel Firs to reforest the land, and seeing them all in a row made them look blurry.   It was uncanny.   I had never seen anything like it before.   You can almost see it in the pictures I took, but when driving thru there it’s very surreal.

We passed by quite a few view points along the way up.    But I think the best view as at the observatory.   The guy that was at that spot the morning it blew didn’t have a chance in hell, it looked like the mountain had aimed at that spot when the side blew out.    I had read the book about the area a few years back and the guy from the USGS that was there the morning it blew was only there filling in for the normal volcanologist that had to fly to California for some reason I cannot remember.

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Camping at the Hillbilly Hideaway on Silver Lake

The campground was called Streeters Resort and it was right on Silver Lake.   First thing I noticed as we drove up to find the office was the crowds around it.   I can’t remember another campground with crowds around the office,  not one.   I started thinking this place might be a bit different.   The reviews I read didn’t indicate anything odd.   Maybe I need to go back and reread them.

I parked right in front as there were no signs indicating anything at all except Zip Line office arrow, which explained some of the people.  It just seemed to be a hang out spot.   I went inside and talked to Jose.   He asked if I knew my site number.  I did not.   Now I was remembering a review that mentioned they got there after calling where the office said to come over, they had plenty of space, and when they got there, there wasn’t any space for them…    I was starting to get apprehensive now.

I told him I had called earlier in the week and had a reservation.  He asked my name and flipped thru a few loose sheets of paper that had once belonged in a binder but had been ripped out and partially crumpled up.   Concern started to grow.    After quite a bit of time shuffling those sheets, he seemed to find my name and said I was in 19.  I said great,  very relieved!   I paid him and he just pointed in a general direction for a site.   I said I would walk over first, and he said he would bring me there.

We got there and the trailer to the left of our space had strewn paraphernalia, tables, large innertubes for pulling behind a boat, all over, including one of those canopy things screwed into the logs on the side of my parking space.   The gal sitting on the trailer steps told us there was no room and said we would like the campsite two over to the left as there was no one camping there.    We walked back to the office and he was muttering under his breath about “idjits” or something similar.   He also mentioned that we probably wouldn’t like that spot two over as the shack right behind it was going to get loud that evening.

In the office he consulted with the three women inside, and after about 10 minutes, they figured out someone had already paid for the other site.   So I was going to back into  #19    I would have rather pulled straight in as it was 5′ from the edge of Silver Lake,  a very large lake about 30 miles from Mount St. Helens,  but that would have put our door smack dab into their piled-up stuff.    We backed in…

I maneuvered the coach far to the left as possible so there might be space for my slide to extend on their side of the site.   The guy next door unscrewed his canopy back a bit  and moved some other stuff back so there was room for our rig in our spot while I was backing in.

As I got out and started hooking up our electric and water, the guy came around the back of his very large 5th wheel trailer and asked his wife if she knew how to dump the tanks.  She said, “Of course not.”   His reply was he had been talking to me, not her.    I finished up and explained he should open the larger valve first,  the 3″ one,  then after that is done open the 1 1/2″ pipe valve.   He looked at me kind of funny like those sizes made no sense.   I walked over and pointed out what was what.  Then he mentioned he had another set of them.   Turns out he had two sets of tanks, one in the front and the other in the rear.  Who knew?!   I looked at all the piping and suggested he dump the rear one first and then the front.   Then I went back to finishing our setup.

Once I was done with everything, I went back outside to check the basement doors were closed and locked, and the guy asked me if he should move his pig.   Just then I noticed a pig was right behind my coach tied to a small tree.   I said he was OK there as long as he didn’t start gnawing on my tires.   He also mentioned there was a rabbit around there too.   I haven’t seen it yet, but Kathy says she has.

A little while later I saw the pig coming down the 5 steps from inside the RV.   Now that is something you don’t see every day.  It’s not a really large pig, but has the requisite little stubby legs that made it look pretty awkward coming down the stairs.

On the other side of us were a couple of good ole boys with friends drinking all afternoon and evening.   I even overheard one of them on the phone.  Appears he called the wife or gal friend at work to have her bring more beer on the way from work.

I went in to take a nap a few hours after getting here, and I’ve now decided to call the family to the right of us the “loud family.”  Beside the pig and rabbit, there is two large dogs and many children with the wife and husband yelling at the brood to “not to do something” every few minutes.   Remember, there is a lake just a few steps away, a large floating dock with many jet skis and small water ski boats tied up, many flotation devices, kayaks, and lots of kids on and in the water surrounding the dock.   There are even a couple racing type ski boats with huge four or five hundred horsepower motors that make it sound like we might be at the Englishtown Dragstrip.  For any Californians reading this,  think Pomona and Don “The Snake” Prudhomme, only on a mirror flat lake…   BTW,  the lake is about 5 square miles of water.

About 5 pm the karaoke shack got loud.   It almost sounded like there was a band in there, so I walked over to peek inside.   No band, just a karaoke machine and a bunch of folks sitting on couches strewn about the place, drinking beer and reading the screen with the song lyrics scrolling by.    Earlier in the day I had walked into the shack over the water.   The floor felt spongy and had miscellaneous pieces of thin plywood nailed down in various places.   In the back of that “karaoke” space was another room strewn with old boat junk.

Dusty got to meet his first pig from a short distance that first evening.   The pig was quite nice and only squealed when the kids got too close and bothered him 🙂

We were packed in like sardines that first night and when everyone lit their fires, the air quality went into the hazardous range of the index.   The shack was pretty loud till about 10:30, but then the people around their fires were loud and rowdy until about 11:30.   I was hoping they didn’t go till 2…   I’m not really a country music fan, although Kathy is.

Seems like we went from the most rigid rules for a campsite to the most lax!!

Saturday morning we took off for the volcano and when we returned, the good ole boys to our left were gone.    It was a beautiful evening and we sat outside enjoying the view now that we weren’t packed in on that side.    Dusty got nose to nose with the pig as you can see in the pics.   Turns out tonight there was a guy with a guitar singing in the shack till around 8:30.   He wasn’t bad.   While we were outside listening, more folks moved into the site in front of the shack and we got to watch a few of them try to set up a one-person tent for at least an hour and a half.   They did finally get it set up, and to my surprise, it’s still standing this morning when I got up!  Although they left their stuff all out and even their car trunk hood up.  I hope the birds didn’t bomb it!!

 

 

 

 

 

We are heading out today (Sunday) to go to an Escapee’s campground outside of Port Townsend, Washington.

PS.  I never saw the rabbit.

 

 

 

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Heading over the huge bridge to Long Beach “Island”

We set out on Thursday morning for points north of Astoria, basically on the other side of the Columbia via that huge bridge on the edge of town.   It’s an odd setup, the bottom of the bridge is probably 300′ above the roadway below it.  The approach to the bridge is this big steep circular loop, like nothing I have experienced before.  The funny part, as we were climbing this circular roadway that reminds me of the mousetrap game when I was a kid, there was a 55 MPH sign.   It was so steep and curved, 55 seemed ludicrous!   We finally made it to the entrance of the bridge and went up and over this mighty structure, then steeply down the other side to a 4-mile-long causeway maybe 10′ above the water the rest of the way till you got near the other shore where there was another 3-truss bridge section, but that one was only 50′ or so above the water line.

We then headed up the 101 toward Long Beach and parts north.   I had expected lots of views along the way, but that proved to be incorrect as it was like driving thru a heavily wooded forest all the way to the northern tip.   Once there we realized we needed a Washington State Discover Pass and we didn’t own one nor did we know how to obtain one.   So instead of finding a place to eat a picnic lunch, we turned around and headed for the ocean hoping to find a spot.  We did find an ornate gate in a very secluded area on the way into the park and took a picture on the way out.   We also found another gate later, and I assume it may be the other side, based on where we were.

What we found was the oddest area I had ever seen near Oysterville.   Miles and miles of small bungalows with many undeveloped lots in between them housing trailers and motor homes on them with folks camping on them.    It’s like you buy property there to summer vacation in your RV; and then when you save enough money, you build a home on that same property.

We never found a place to pull over for a picnic and ended up in a small town named Ocean Park (sans any park)  and pulled into a parking lot to eat a late lunch.  Afterward we headed south to Long Beach.  All along the way we saw more of the bungalows and small lots with RV’s on them.  There is always something odd on our adventures.  We looked over and a guy was riding a bike and had his golf clubs on a hand cart hooked to the back of his bike.  Ingenuity at its best!

We arrived in Long Beach and found an ice cream shop, parked, went inside and found approximately 50 people in line for a cone.   We walked out and down a long road out toward the beach with the sign about the longest beach in the world.   It was a really long walk out to the end and a bit cool heading out there.  There were also a lot of port-a-cans lined up out there, probably still there from the 4th of July.  The sand goes way out and people drive their cars out there and park!

We found a sign listing all the shipwrecks off the beach and there were lots of them, about 200!!    We walked back toward the town thinking about that ice cream again; but when we got back, I decided to walk along the main tourist street.  Zillions of little shops, Fun Land, and restaurants on both sides of the street.    We did the whole stretch and back and hoped when we got back to the ice cream shop, the line would be shorter.    We got there, and the line was longer.   No ice cream for us today!

We proceeded to head further south to find the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse.   We found the parking area, and again there were all the signs about not parking there without your pass displayed; so we headed out to find the other lighthouse that’s not far from it.   We found that one and there was a kiosk to buy the pass there.   But of course the kiosk was broken.    We decided to park there anyway, and a bunch of the other folks there said they didn’t have a pass either, so we winged it and walked out the trail to find the North Head Lighthouse.

It wasn’t very far, with a gorgeous view along the way there.   We took a few pics and headed back to the car as it was getting late in the day.   We drove out of the park and found the 101 to head back over the huge bridge and to the RV park.    Along the way I noticed a Mexican restaurant very close to the campground.    When we got back, I suggested Mexican for dinner.    That was a hit and I drove back for take-out.

A long day that ended with a pretty decent Mexican dinner!

 

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Astoria, Oregon

After arriving at the Lewis & Clark Golf & RV Park, we settled in.  This park also got kudos from Kathy,  everything was shiny and meticulously kept up.    I even saw one of the ladies from the office cleaning one of the registration parking signs along their driveway.   I had read they might be the Dog Nazis here and the review was probably correct.   They really take pride in their facility so they have a lot of rules.

Our campsite is a pull-in spot overlooking a river and on the other side the golf course.   There is a wide mowed grass area between us and the river.    Quite a picturesque place to camp, and they clearly understood what RV’s need:  the hookups were correctly placed to point the coach at the pretty view.   Most places we’ve stayed do not appear to understand that concept.

 

 

I checked and our elevation is only 7′ above sea level, so we are keeping our fingers crossed that the Cascadia Fault won’t let go while we are camped here.   I should probably look for the Tsunami evac signs today so I know which way to run if it does!!  🙂

We drove into town the next morning looking for the riverfront trolley, but we passed it and couldn’t go back due to a large traffic jam in that direction.   We decided to head up to the Astoria Column that we could see from the riverfront on a large hilltop.   They have some incredibly steep roads here.  We heard they were the steepest roads in the country except for Lombard Street in SF,  except these roads go straight up the hill and not switch-backs like Lombard is.    I saw one bicyclist going down the hill, and he must have been going 70 mph and wasn’t even close to being half way down yet.   That must have been a wild ride!   Hopefully his bike had the disk brakes some have.    The type on my bike wouldn’t make a dent on that speed when he needs to stop.

 

We arrived at the top of the hill and it was a spectacular view from up there.    You could see down to the town,  across the river and all the way to the ocean.   You could also see a very large river on the south side of the hill that joins the Columbia at the west end of town.   I wanted to climb the tower but thought better of it when I remembered my knee is not fully healed from the MCL sprain last fall, so I just took pictures of it.

There were 164 steps to get to the top!!  I thought it was neat that the little gift shop up there would sell you a balsa wood glider for $1 so you could write your name on it and sail it off the top of the tower.   The kids really seemed to love that.   You could hear them exclaiming from the top of the tower, which was about 160′ above us.

I was thinking that hilltop would be a perfect place to watch the fireworks tomorrow night,  but the last mile or so of the road getting to the top was very narrow and steep.   Probably impossible to get near there to watch the show tomorrow night.

After wandering around and enjoying an ice cream while looking at the view, we headed back down toward the riverfront to find the trolley.  The traffic jam was gone and we drove to what Google Maps told us was the place.   It was not.  It turned out to be where the trolley is stored.  So we headed off alongside the tracks to find a stop.

 

We found the westernmost stop and parked to wait for it.   It eventually got there and it was packed like a sardine can.   No one got off.  The conductor said they were heading back to the barn to change shifts and would be right back and there should be empty seats by then.   That made no sense to me as there wasn’t another stop between here and the barn and there were no cars near that barn.

They came back a few minutes later, and as I suspected, it was still filled to capacity.    The really funny part was the sign that said you should board at the rear.   The trolley was on a single track and they switched directions; so when they originally pulled up, the rear was the eastern end, and when they came back from the barn, the rear was the western end.  Maybe you just had to be there…

We got back into our car and headed eastward toward the center of the town.    As we were attempting to keep near the riverfront tracks, it dawned on me that someone mentioned its eastern terminus was at the Safeway store.   We drove there and parked then walked over to the riverfront.   About 10 minutes later, the trolley arrived and lots of folks got off.  There was now plenty of room to board.   It’s a one-hour round trip ride for a buck.  ($1)  It travels right along the riverfront the whole way.  Some of the time you are actually over the river on the boardwalk.

They provide a bit of history of the area and about all the old buildings you can see from the trolley.  They also give you a bit of trivia, like where lots of movies where shot, pointing out the places and scenes from Goonies,  Kindergarten Cop,  Free Willy, and others I had never heard of.

This trolley is electrically driven and is powered by a large diesel generator mounted on a track dolly and pulled or pushed along.   There was no way to turn the trolley around, so the motorman moved from one end to the other at each terminus.    They said that was much cheaper than building an electrical overhead system that the trolley originally used.      That reminded me that I had thought of building a small trailer with a generator to pull behind my Nissan Leaf to give it long-range capability.  🙂

The seats on the trolley had a unique feature.  Since you would want to face forward, when you got to the end of the line, everybody had to stand up and the back of your bench seat swung front to back to shift the direction you were sitting in.   We have never seen anything like that!!!

It was an enjoyable ride, but at the end you are pretty happy to get off.   It’s  a pretty bumpy, jostling ride on 100-year-old wooden seats that you will remember.   Dogs were allowed on the trolley, but Dusty was pretty scared with all the bells and clanging and air purges when the brakes were applied.  Poor thing hunkered down for most of the ride, but he behaved himself.    🙁

 

 

 

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Cannon Beach

After exploring Fort Stevens, we mapped a way to Cannon Beach via Seaside, two very touristy towns.   I wanted to check out Haystack Rock and some of the beaches and hopefully have lunch somewhere on the water.    It was very cloudy when we started out; but as soon as we arrived in Cannon Beach, the sun came out and it was warm with a small breeze,  practically perfect weather once we got there.

Once you get a bit south of the town center (chock full of tourist shops) it gets a lot nicer.   But there wasn’t anywhere on the water that would allow us to bring Dusty;  so after a short while, we headed back north to see if we could find the Mexican restaurant we had passed.   All the pet friendly places were right on the main drag of the town, within a few feet of traffic and all the car exhaust.   It’s Hwy 101, a busy road on a summer afternoon,  not what I would call a great place to have a meal; although you couldn’t tell that from the jam-packed patios, so we kept traveling.    It was bizarre that as we left Cannon Beach, the cloud cover socked us in again and it started to drizzle like they are in some sort of weather bubble.

We never found the Mexican place and decided to stop at a small place on the highway called Ruby’s Kathy had noticed on the way south earlier,  not part of the chain of the same name; and they had a dog on their signs, so how bad could it be…    It was a pretty cool little place where Dusty was welcomed inside.   Kathy had a large chef salad and I got the day’s special,  1/2 rack of short ribs.   They were very good.  They weren’t Phil’s ribs, but the next best thing to them!

We headed back to Fort Stevens after our late lunch.

 

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Fort Stevens

Our drive to Fort Stevens was nice  and uneventful, which are the best drives.  We stopped for fuel in Astoria as the price of diesel was a very low $3.35.    In Oregon they pump the fuel for you, so I got to talking to the attendant and asked him about the cruise ships stopping here.   He told me they only come in the beginning of the summer and at the end of summer, making me think it’s only during a repositioning cruise for the beginning and ending of the Alaska season.

We arrived at Fort Stevens State Park around check-in time Saturday afternoon.    To my delight the signs were clear and led you directly to the registration parking.  (Pretty much a first)   We got checked in and headed further into the park to find Loop D,  Site 128.   As we drove toward the center of the park, you could see this place was well maintained and a gorgeous place to camp.

We found our site easily and backed into the fully paved spot for the RV.   There was 50amp and water, but no sewer hookup.  As we were only there for a couple of days, I wouldn’t have hooked the sewer up anyway, preferring to have it at least 2/3 full prior to dumping.   We deployed the coach and then took a walk around a couple of the loops near us.   There were a lot of Airstreams,  just arriving from the Salem rally was my guess.  There were even a few Airstream motorhomes.   I had to take a picture of one that was polished so highly it looked like it was made of chrome instead of aluminum.

I wonder if all the Oregon State parks are similar to this place?    If so, I really wonder what California spends all its tax dollars on?  It isn’t its state parks.    Oh, and Oregon has no sales tax, although every receipt has that line item with Tax 0.00 on it.   I wonder if they are planning to change that in the future or is it just there to remind you there is no tax…

While we staying in the park, we headed out to lands end where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean in the park.  There was a fairly rickety platform held up by four logs and some lam beams that appeared to be “delaminating” out in this harsh weather.   This spit of land is just across from Cape Disappointment on the Washington side of the river.

 

 

 

After the river mouth, we drove out to the wreck of the Peter Irldale on one of the beaches near the river mouth.   I was surprised that you can drive on all the beaches here.    What was left of the wreak was just bits of its skeleton.   After seeing it I was shocked this thing had run aground in 1909, a hundred and nine years ago.   That steel left must have been really thick to last this long.

On Monday afternoon we headed the 9 miles to our next campground.  🙂

Shortest trip ever!!!

 

 

 

 

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Exploring the Columbia River Gorge

Thursday morning I was able to make a couple reservations for this coming weekend and next week, which includes July 4th on Wednesday.   First for Saturday and Sunday nights we scored a spot at Fort Stevens State Park west of Astoria right on the Pacific Ocean and the Columbia River.   With that reservation in hand, I was able to get the place I originally wanted to stay, just south of Astoria for Monday thru Friday, the week of July 4th.

With that housekeeping done, we headed out to explore the gorge.   First we headed down the hill and then east on the Washington side of the river, soon we spotted the Bonneville Dam.   We drove to the entrance for the visitor center and were stopped at the gate so the guard could check out what was inside the car and trunk, presumably looking for a bomb or some other terrorist things most retired folks from California drive around with.

He let us pass as we had nothing of interest.    Unfortunately when we arrived we were not close time wise to their twice a day dam tours, so we decided to go look at the fish ladders.   I had never seen one of those before so I figured it would be interesting.   We walked thru a lot of chain link gates to get into that space, and it was fascinating to see the insides of the large concrete spillways.   I assumed it would just be steps from the top to the bottom, but it was much more than that, all sorts of chicanes and other concrete shapes to make the water turn back on itself like a small whirlpool.   Those must have caused a harrowing ride for the fish going both ways.

We also went downstairs in the fish viewing building to look thru the big glass windows into the ladders to watch the fish swim against the very strong current in the ladder.   They must be some very determined fish to get thru that contraption to get to the other side.

 

Afterward we drove back over the BOTG and into the small town of Cascade Locks.   We found a park along the river, and as it was probably close to 2pm, we located a picnic table and ate our packed lunch under a large Douglas Fir overlooking the river.   There was a small gem and minerals show going on in the park and all the vendors were showing lots of pretty cool looking sliced up and polished rocks.

Once we looked over all their wares, we got back in the car and headed east on the freeway toward The Dalles (Dalles rhymes with gals or pals)   We started noticing as we moved further east from Cascade Locks it grew noticeably more arid very quickly.   We got off the freeway in Hood River and found the Hood River Yacht Club and a cute little beach where lots of wind surfers were flying back and forth across the river at a very good clip.  Did I mention it is extremely windy along this river?   At least it was the three days we stayed around here, luckily not up at our campground which was about 500′ above the river.  Those very tall trees would make it truly uncomfortable to camp under them if the wind was blowing there like it was down in the bottom of the gorge.

We left the river to get on Old Highway 30 toward The Dalles.  It snakes its way up the foothills along the river,  lots of 20 MPH blind curves.   It would be a great ride on the motorcycle, but a veritable nightmare in our bus.   We arrived in The Dalles and it was just another town along the river to me.  I didn’t see anything of note while driving thru it.   There is another bridge across the river here, and for some reason this one is free.   On the way toward the bridge, Kathy wanted to snap a picture, so I pulled over and she got out.   She practically blew over the guardrail as some wind gusts I guessed of about 80 MPH tried to take her to Oz.    Did I mention it’s windy near the river?

 

Just up river from the bridge was another that was built in the 60’s called the John Day Dam.  You can see it in the pics.

We arrived on the other side of the river a few minutes later — this was a much wider bridge than the BOTG –and headed west toward our base camp.   Along the way we stopped at a rest area and overlook where again it was extremely windy on a small promontory on the river.    We could see more wind surfers further west on the river and got back on the highway to go find them.

We found a lot of them quite a few miles south of the Hood River Bridge at a national fish hatchery.   Those folks really move across the water being pulled along by kites or small parachutes.   I bet that is an incredible workout.   No need to hit the gym after doing that for an hour.

As we drove down that small side road along the river, we made our way into the fish hatchery just as it closed.    We headed back toward our camp to cook some dinner and kick back for the evening.

 

The next morning we got a late start and headed back toward the hatchery during its open hours.    When we got there, we saw at least triple the amount of wind surfers on the water than the prior late afternoon.    The fish hatchery was open so we went in and parked.   To my chagrin, there were no fish in the tanks.   They explained they were all let out in May.

 

 

 

While we were leaving the hatchery, we noticed that today you could see Mt. Hood very clearly in the distance.  As I got ready to snap a shot of the mountain, it got even better as a cloud on the east side of it moved a bit further away to allow its volcanic shape to really shine.

 

So we headed over the Hood River Bridge and worked our way back west toward Cascade Locks for lunch at a small restaurant on the water we had noticed the day before which was also the landing for a paddle wheeler that plied the river.

We had some really good fish and chips.  They even had a gluten free choice.   Kathy said it was the first time she had had fish and chips in at least 5 years!    They had a Dechutes Porter on the menu.   It was like being in heaven.  We thought about taking a one-hour tour on the paddle wheeler, but they don’t permit pets so we didn’t give them our money.    I’m not sure how they stay in business as the boat was not very full when it arrived back, nor were there many people waiting for the tour getting ready to leave.   But it was a true paddle wheeler.   You could tell when they tried to dock the thing,  a prop right in front of the rudder would have made that much easier.

We left Cascade Locks to drive down to the Oregon side of the Bonneville Dam.    Again we had to let the guard check for bombs and such.  Again we didn’t have any for them.    But this time as we drove in, we passed a lock and I noticed there was a barge in there that I had seen heading downriver while we were having lunch; so I made a U-turn and drove back over to the lock parking lot.

 

 

To my surprise, you can walk right up to the ships at this lock and touch them.    Last year, at the Eisenhower lock, you were behind a tall chain-link fence.   So this was pretty cool.    We got there just a few minutes before they were to lower the water to bring the barges and tugboat down about 60′ to the level of the river below the dam.    As the tug left the lock, it was amazing to see it steer those very large barges sticking so far out in front of it.   After another smaller craft,  maybe a 40-foot boat, motored into the lock to head upstream, we left and drove over toward the dam.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We were amazed as on this side of the Bonneville you drove your car right on the dam to get to the visitor center.    You were also allowed to go inside the power house without a tour, and there was a great picture vantage point of the Washington side’s dam spillway.   They were letting out a lot of water.   It made quite a sound.   Turn up the volume to watch and listen to the short video.

And the windows in the fish viewing area were quite a bit less murky so the fish were easier to see.  Check out the video below.

We headed back toward the campground and spotted another hatchery and drove over to see if they had any fish.   They did,  looked like millions of minnows in the tanks spread out over many acres.   Turns out this hatchery was the original one set up back around the turn of last century.

After walking around it for maybe a half an hour, we headed back to get the coach ready to move out to the mouth of the river west of Astoria, Oregon tomorrow.

 

 

 

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Motoring over to the Columbia River Gorge.

We left McMinnville and headed northeast toward Portland and the Columbia River Gorge, looking for Cascade Locks and the Bridge of the Gods.   It was only about 100 miles to our next campground, so it was a truly enjoyable ride.   After a bit we got on I-5 north and once in Portland proper took the exit to I-84 east toward the Bridge of the Gods.

It is a beautiful drive along the river.   I was surprised how big the river is.   I haven’t seen large ships on it yet, only tugs pushing barges and the occasional river boat with a working paddle wheel for propulsion.   When I looked at www.MarineTraffic.com for ships on the river east of Portland, they all appeared to have drafts of 12′ or less, suggesting the river isn’t very deep.   I haven’t seen any channel markers in the river yet.

We were hoping to find a rest stop along the river, but we never did and soon we were at the Cascade Locks exit heading over to the toll booth for the Bridge of the Gods.   During my prior recon using Street View, the toll booth charges were written on a small A-frame sign on what looked like flip chart paper.   It said $3 for a motorhome.   Today the sign looked more official and was mounted on the booth itself and the price had gone up 66% to $5 for a motorhome.   Now that’s some inflation!

We paid the toll, and as we exited the booth, noticed how narrow the bridge was.   Just then a truck coming towards us veered over into our lane because of a pedestrian walking on the bridge.   Why they allow pedestrians on a very narrow bridge without a sidewalk is puzzling.   There is no way to stay in your lane while going past them unless you are a motorcycle.

On the other side of the river we found our “rest stop” on a small hillside where we walked the pup and made lunch.   We needed to kill some time as check-in time wasn’t till 2pm.

We were there for about an hour and then headed east on Washington State Highway 14 toward the hamlet of Home Valley.  One thing you notice when driving along the river is the train tracks are on both sides and the trains are long with lots of containers stacked two high.   I’m guessing Portland must have a very large container ship port or maybe all the goods from Seattle/Tacoma ship east thru here too.

It was probably a 10-mile drive on Hwy 14 to our turnoff on a small road heading up the mountain,  which kept getting narrower till another turnoff that got even narrower than the first road.   It was there I wondered if I made a mistake choosing this park to get farther away from the train tracks.    Luckily it was just a short hop on the extremely narrow road to the park and we got there unscathed.    We had an easy spot to back into right down near the office with a big gravel driveway to maneuver the coach.

The owners were a young couple from the LA area that wanted out of the rat race.   They definitely found that.   This place is surely not part of that.

This is a very nice campground and you can just barely hear the train whistles if you listen closely, which is just perfect to me.   I like to hear them in the distance; but from what I read about park reviews down near the river, they sound more like you are stuck on a grade crossing with the train barreling toward you.

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The Evergreen Museum!

We drove right past the Evergreen Air and Space Museum on our way to the campground we were staying at while I attempted to get the tow bar  serviced.   I had read many years before that the Spruce Goose was moved to Evergreen,  although I thought that was a town in Oregon.    As we were driving past it, the light bulb lit and I realized that it was a museum, not a town.   I started thinking I would finally get to see the Spruce Goose!   We checked in at the Olde Village RV, and I asked them about the Goose.  They acknowledged it was there and said if we went, they had discount coupons to get in.

I had originally planned on being there for at least five days, but I wasn’t sure I would be able to get into the Airstream rally; so I only booked the campsite for two days (Sunday & Monday nights)  and asked for an option to extend if I was able to get into that rally and leave my tow bar for service.  I was planning on going to Salem, but I read they were having some kind of toxic contamination in their water system, so I stayed about 30 miles out of town.  Yikes!

As I got the tow bar serviced early Monday morning, I went back and asked to extend my stay just till Wednesday morning.   That would allow us to walk over to the museum on Tuesday.  It was a really short walk over on a fairly new sidewalk hundreds of feet away from the highway between the campground and museum.

We went into the closest building, which turned out to be the aerospace section that also included planes and helicopters built after the Korean War.   The other large building housed all planes from the Korean War and older.   There were two other buildings, one was a theater and the other a water park.  That’s the one with a Boeing 747 on its roof.  We heard that all the big water slides had you start from inside that roof mounted plane.   That sounded pretty cool to me, but I wasn’t planning on going to the water park.

We entered the museum, paid and received our wristbands.   The first thing you see was a V-1 and V-2 rockets.   There was a Titan II missile, lots of older rockets, including a Redstone and others, and very cool displays with engines and capsules and even a LEM replica including the lunar rover and astronauts.

But hidden behind all them was a display of  50’s and 60’s era helicopters.   Some of the weirdest ones I had ever seen, even ones where you stand on a small platform with no bubble around you.  My favorite was a single seater from the Marines.   The saying “letting it all hang out” must have been invented for that thing.   One even had motors at the ends of the rotor blades.

 

 

 

We headed back toward the front and found an SR-71 with the engine exposed and sort of almost below it;  but the biggest surprise for me was the SR-71 Drone that it could carry on its back.   I had never even heard of that, let alone seen one.    One of the docents near the SR-71 took an interest in Kathy, and she followed us around till we left, explaining all about those Jets.   She was a pilot and knew quite a bit about all of them.  That was pretty cool,  like a personal guided tour for about an hour.

She pointed out the planes that were just a shell for display, which I think she called “Pickles on a Stick”.   Odd name,  but I probably won’t be able to think of a plane again without that image coming to mind.  She also told us about the history behind the museum being built.  The owner had 2 sons, one a race car driver and one a pilot.  The race car driver had an accident where the son that was a pilot died, along with a good friend of his.  The museum is a learning center and museum in honor of his son.  What an amazing tribute!

After we had seen everything in that first (eastern) building, we headed for the short walk to the Aviation building with the older planes.   The first thing you see when you walk into that building is a wing of the Spruce Goose.   It’s basically the ceiling over your head.   Geez is that plane big.  I mean it’s huge!  We couldn’t get it all in one picture.

To enter, you walk thru an engine nacelle from a large jet as a kind of tunnel entrance.    You cannot miss the Goose as it’s the whole center of the building.  They brought it up here in pieces when the building was almost built.  They left the sides open to get the Goose in, then rebuilt it inside of the building.  It’s amazing to see!!!  There are lots of planes surrounding it.

We decided to take a tour starting in a few minutes, so we stopped for lunch in the little cafe in the building.  Then we were off,  starting with the types of engines on display and over to the Da Vinci flying machine replica.  Now that was pretty cool itself.   Then over to the early part of aviation with the Wright brothers and Curtiss planes.    There were so many cool Korean and WW11 planes to see.  There is even a MASH era helicopter hanging from the ceiling with the baskets for the wounded mounted on each side.   We toured around  the back of the Goose where all the Korean jets were and over to the Spitfires and Messerschmidt 109’s.

Then we went for the main attraction,  and climbed the stairs to go inside the Goose.  It’s really large inside.  They said it was intended to carry 750 troops into battle landing on the water.    Not sure how they would get to shore from it though.   I guess I should have asked that.

After going inside, they mentioned that for $29 more we could have our pictures taken in the cockpit which was behind thick glass panels and up a circular staircase.    Kathy eventually talked me into it and I’m glad she did.  What an interesting cabin that was.   Very large,  about the size of a 747 second floor.   What astonished me even more was a doorway I looked into that turned out to be the inside of one of the wings.  It was a very long walkway/hallway that was at least 7′ tall where I was.  It looked to get a bit shorter as you got to the end of the wing, but not that much shorter.

Then we got to climb into the pilot and copilot seats, which was a first for any museum I’ve ever been to.   I’ve been to a lot over the years, including most of the Smithsonian museums in D.C.

Getting into the pilot seat was very interesting for a guy my size.  There was almost no room for someone over 5’10” tall and skinny.   Also it was high off the ground, tickling my acrophobia.

Once I got in there, I started wondering how the heck I would get out.   Kathy had jumped into the copilot seat even before I started toward the front.  That side had lots of room, and most of the controls were on the pilot’s side.   It wasn’t hard getting out like I thought it would be, but swiveling in the chair for the picture was not happening.   I could not move my legs more than an inch or two due to all the “things” in the way.

I asked the docent if I could start the engines, and he said to “go for it”   Just amazing!    There are a zillion gauges and switches up there.   Check out that one panel.  There were too many to count.

We had our pics taken, and we headed back down the smallest spiral staircase I had ever seen,  although it was close to one in a small lighthouse we visited last year that wanted to take my head off.   I think it was one near Bar Harbor.  Guess I will need to go back and re-read that one.

I left the best part of the museum to the last.  They encouraged you to touch everything in the museum.    There were several exhibits that you could go inside.  That is something I never experienced in any other museum before!

We headed back to the coach,  but it did seem like a much longer walk back than it did in the morning.  🙂

We headed down the road to explore the Columbia River Gorge the next morning.