Today we are off to Portland, but not the direct route. It’s only about 45 miles and we’d rather take more scenic routes then spend a day in town – so we map out a scenic loop tour plan. First stop – back to Char Burger for breakfast. It’s included with the hotel – so why not? No table service for breakfast, you order at the cafeteria style line, then grab your coffee and wait for the food. Typical hotel choices – but very good and leaves us fulfilled and ready to venture out.
We start off by back tracking down the Columbia River to the Bonneville Dam. We chose to bypass it yesterday afternoon, preferring to get to the hotel sooner. But we’re really glad we chose to visit today – it is really an amazing place. First of all, you drive through the working parts of the dam – over bridges where the sluice gates are located, past huge warehouse looking structures for who knows what, and finally into the visitors center – where there are a whole bunch of kids on tour that we will manage to successfully navigate around.
The docents here are great – totally friendly and so knowledgeable. The inner workings of the dam keep us spell bound, but it’s the salmon swimming up stream that really keep us occupied. First you can go see the “ladders” built into the river from above, then you can stand downstairs, under the water level, and look through the windows at the salmon. It’s sort of at the end of the spring season, so we only see a couple fish, but they can get 10,000 fish coming through daily (and more in the Fall). Would be incredible to see that – but this was cool enough!
The view for the rooftop viewing area is quite nice too – a 360 look at all the operations – with another terribly informative docent up there as well.
Back in the car – we loop back toward Cascade Locks, wave goodbye to the Bridge of Gods and head down 84 to the Hood River Valley and the Hood River Fruit Loop trail. Yes, the Fruit Loop trail. There is a Fruit Loop association, a printed map and all sorts of information related to all the fruit stands and producers in the Hood River Valley. A total of 31 in all, everything size from a small road side stand to The Fruit Company – which we pass on the way up to Mt. Hood – and is enormous with hundreds of thousands of plastic fruit crates stack all about the property. As a matter of fact, the fruit crates are everywhere you look! The scenery is beautiful – rolling farmland nestled into the foothills of the mountains. The only things marring it are – well – the fruit crates!
Unfortunately, we are very early in the season, so not a lot of the stands are open. There are Lavender farms and Alpaca farms as well, but we aren’t interested in those so much. We end up only stopping one place – Packer Orchards and Bakery – where they sell sugar free cookies sweetened only with vine ripe pears. Can’t pass that up! You can taste all the cookies (they have huge drawers full of cookies with samples on top) and they are really reasonable if you buy 5. Well, ok, I’m not turning down cookies! We end up with some delicious varieties which I am betting won’t last through Portland! We pass on the pies though, cookies are quite enough for us now.
You can get a feel for the scenery here – the orchards with the river and valley in the background, and Mt. Hood peeking out of the trees in the other direction. Truly gorgeous.
Back on the road, we start climbing up the mountainside into Mt. Hood proper. The vistas, just from the side of the road are gorgeous.
As we get higher and higher, the temperatures start to drop and we start to see the beginnings of what appears to be…is it really??? Yes, it’s snow!
We had checked before we left and knew that the roads were all open now – because the passes where shut down a few days or a week prior. Today though, it is relatively sunny, but with snow flurries and as we approach the Timberline Lodge (otherwise known as the location for the filming of The Shining), you can see the results of the recent storms. Gorgeous….to look at from the warm car that is!
We arrive at the Lodge, and have to park in the lower lot – it’s packed with snowboarders. We of course, are not really dressed for the weather, but we make the best of it and try to navigate around the biggest snow drifts in our not waterproof or warm sneakers.
The Lodge itself looks lovely, but we decide not to walk up there – just to take a picture from the parking lot. You can sort of see the resemblance to the movie, but there are too many cars and of course, they’ve done some upgrade work since it was filmed so many years ago – but the idea is the same and still gives me shivers to think about “Here’s Johnny!”
It’s beautiful up here, but it’s also pretty darn chilly, so we head back to the car and back down the mountain road. Once back on Mt. Hood highway we enjoy the scenery as we descend the almost 6,000 feet back down toward sea level.
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