Columbia River Gorge: Lots of Beauty and a Little Frustration...


Every once in a while you have a day that is more frustrating than fantastic - for Cindy, that usually means it's time for a swig of Dulce Vida or a large Margarita.   Let's call Monday, June 24th a Large Margarita Day... 

We left Coeur d'Alene on Monday to head to our next destination, the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area.   We didn't really know much about the Columbia River Gorge, except that it is fairly close to Portland and contains over 50 waterfalls.   Cindy loves waterfalls, so this was a must-stop are on our trip.

We'd read that Historic Highway 30 was the route to take you to the waterfalls on the Oregon side of the Columbia River (the river divides Oregon and Washington), and the bulk of the waterfalls are on the Oregon side.   Our plan for this first day was to find Route 30 and visit a few waterfalls in the afternoon.


This proved easier said than done.   One thing we didn't realize is that Route 30 is not a through-route - it starts and then suddenly ends in several places.   We started on Route 30 and arrive at a beautiful lookout, the Rowena Crest, with a great view of Mount Hood in the distance.   Then we found ourselves in a town called Cascade Locks, entering a roundabout from Highway 30 only to find none of the spokes off the roundabout continued highway 30.  We were so confused, we re-entered the roundabout 4 times until we finally realized we need to get back on the main highway, I-84!     

View from Rowena Crest

The GPS navigated us back on the highway and to the exit for our first waterfall, Starvation Creek. But doh! The falls are only accessible from the west, not the east, meaning we would have to backtrack many miles on the highway to access the waterfall.   We started to get frustrated at the lack of signage and errors in the GPS for navigating this waterfall route.   We regrouped, and decided to head west on Route 30 to Wahclella Falls.    The hike to the falls was only about 2.5 miles, but had a pretty significant elevation gain.   The sun came out for our hike and the falls were beautiful, some pictures below:



By now it was late afternoon, so we decided to head to our hotel in Troutdale.  After checking in, we went to a local Mexican restaurant El Indio on the recommendation of the hotel manager.   It's not a good sign when you are the only people eating in a restaurant with seating for 100+ people, and this was no exception - we would not recommend El Indio.   

We arrived back at our hotel around 7:00pm and both felt incredibly tired, unusually so.   The next thing both of us remember is waking up the next morning around 8 am!    Not sure if it was a food coma, exhaustion from the trip so far, or what, but it was just what we needed.   We woke up re-energized, had a relaxing. morning in the hotel and headed out for our second day looking at the falls.




We headed to Multnomah Falls, the premier waterfall in the Columbia River Gorge.   Tip:  we didn't realize you have to get a timed entry permit to see Multnomah Falls (it's that busy!), so we were only able to view the falls from the parking lot - still a spectacular view from the parking lot.  







We then headed west to Latourell Falls, which was the highlight of our day.  Not only were the falls incredible, but the hiking trail was through a beautiful canyon filled with towering Lodgepole Pines, and the trail was almost completely empty.   At the middle of the trail was the 230 foot Upper Latourell Falls, which was spectacular.    This experience made all the minor hassles of the last day fade away and definitely made us want to come back to the Gorge sometime in the future:


Some crazy trees
on the hike!










A few takeaways from us on our time in the Gorge.   If you're going, don't rely on your GPS, use a regular map so you can better see where Historic Route 30 stops and starts.   The waterfall route was really designed to be experienced going west to east (i.e. coming from Portland), and you will need to do more backtracking if you try to travel east to west as we did.   And Multnomah Falls, while spectacular, is very crowded.  If you really want to see it up close get a timed entry permit two weeks before your visit, otherwise we would suggest viewing Multnomah falls from the parking lot on I-84 (the parking lot is a rest stop on I-84 accessible from both the east and west bound lanes) and then going to one of the less crowded falls (like Latourell Falls) that are also amazing to experience.  

Next stop is Oceanside, OR to visit our friends Johnal and Chris.    Until then...




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