Day 5 Morning through Afternoon in the Columbia River Gorge

 The photos in today's post are all from the Columbia River Gorge, which exceeded my expectations. The area has the highest concentration of tall waterfalls in North America.

 This Art Deco visitor's center in the park, located on the cliffs of the gorge was an attraction in itself. The stain glass window included further down is from inside.

 Some of these are actually different waterfalls, however I admit there are multiples of a couple.

 I like how you can see the volcanic rock in the picture above, the formations remind me of Devil's tower, also pretty awesome if you ever have the opportunity to see it.

 These photos are of the Gorge's largest waterfall Multnomah Falls, which is a huge tourist attraction complete with a classic Lodge, restaurant, snack stand, and a horrible parking shortage. It was worth the road rage to find a space (actually since I was on vacation I recall being very mellow-albeit probably more high strung than 85% of the Portlandians). Like most of the waterfalls, it involved a nice 1-2 mile hike. Needless to say after seeing several we did a lot of walking. We had a lovely park service hot dog here, and some chips- the kind that try too hard to be Yuppie-tastic and leave you wanting a bag of Utz.

 I know- these photos are almost exactly alike but the top one show's the vibrancy of the trees better, where the bottom photo includes more of the two falls, the top one is 542 feet tall, and the bottom one 69 feet. Pretty damn awesome if I do say so myself.

 Aw shucks, you're taking a photo of little ole me? Oh yeah... the sodas were ridiculous. I can't remember if we were smart enough to just get one, but retrospectively I like to think so. I'm representing Maine here with my BIW shirt.

 This little waterfall and the bridge below involved a longer hike along ledge in the wall of the gorge. It was late afternoon and once you got up high enough away from the sound of the traffic, the light coming down through the trees and the sound of the water was total serenity. Just don't go in the poison Oak! We successfully avoided it.

 This tunnel is no longer in use and is only maintained as a tourist attraction. Some photos in the visitor's center indicated that there are more of these nifty tunnels in the gorge, some of which you can still drive through and they have windows out of the side of the tunnel into the gorge below. Sadly we did not find them.

 There was a sort of here.... and it seemed tempting to walk in, if the water weren't icy and I wasn't certain I was going to come out with some sort of leech on me. Also, I have this feeling that walking under a 70 foot waterfall doesn't quite work like it does in the movies. Just call it a hunch.

 Fishy Fishy!

 Come here so I can eat you.... (The sturgeon's thoughts not mine- I'm fluent in sturgeon, bet you didn't know that)

 The sign says this bridge will collapse if you are too American.

I'll continue later with our return to Portland for dinner.

Day 4: Oregon Coast Continued

I'm back from some travelling for work and thought I would finally get around to finishing this trip up, which I'll probably do over the course of several additional posts.

 Above you can see Haystack rock an "inter-tidal" out cropping on Cannon Beach. The Pacific water is supposed to be quite cold up in Oregon, therefore very few people are swimming. I think the currents are also rather rough, so before all of you New Englanders thump yourself on your chest- I think there is more to it than it seems.

 On this day we visited Astoria Oregon, which once had booming commercial significance but has now been reduced to a hip artist community. I apologize for the smudge in some of these photos, I believe ocean spray got on my lens on Cannon Beach. Those pictures without the smudge can be attributed to Kate. We drove along a scenic highway and the views from seaside hills and mountains were spectacular. For whatever reason we didn't take many photos, and the ones we do have didn't really do it justice.

 Again, let me apologize because these pictures are out of order. These shots are from a hilltop overlooking Astoria, and the mouth of the Columbia river. On top of the hill is the Astoria Column which you can climb to get an even more impressive view.

 This is a 'burial canoe' which was given to the Astor family by the local Native Americans, and it sits atop the hill with the Astoria Column.

 This picture was taken at Seaside, which is a beach community full of American tackiness. For those New Englanders think OOB, Hampton, or Salisbury, for others think Jersey Shore. After the beauty of Cannon, this was a bit of a buzz kill.

 Some photos from Astoria.

 Here we are up on the tower. Yay Vacation.

I'll continue on with more soon!