Our first full day of vacation started with a stop here to enjoy my favorite meal, breakfast! I saw this place on another food blog (can't fine the link, though), and we walked after stirring and getting ourselves presentable. Portland is a really easy city to walk in, as are most cities out west. It's all east/west and north/south grid aligned and it's not a big city by any means. Took us maybe 15 minutes to walk here.
The diner was cute. The name suggests the inside theme-highways and byways. It was a little 1950's-60's ish with loads of trinkets and souvenirs from different cities. Nana and Oupa collect magnets from the different places they visit and these magnets live on their fridge. If that fridge and a breakfast restaurant had a baby, this cafe would be it. As we sat and waited for our food, I look around at the fun memorabilia, and Keith took unflattering pictures of me. See the wooden cases to my left? Those were all filled with very trinkets.
Before we knew it, our food was ready. Deeeelicious. Portland does food right.The following two pictures are for my parents, who love taking pictures of their food during travels. Keith had amaretto creme french toast.
I had blue corn pancakes. SO. GOOD.
We ate until we could eat no longer and longingly stared at the leftovers on our plate wishing we could eat more. But the stomach is only so big, you know, so we paid and set off on foot to get our rental car. We passed through parks and down quiet streets. It felt to me like half of Portland was still asleep, or away on vacation, it was so quiet.
At the rental car place some lady annoyed me but I got over that quickly when we got our car and headed east, towards
Mount Hood, a town an hour's drive down the Columbia River.
After just a few minutes of driving, our view turned from this...
Into this. Ahhhh. Green and peaceful. As you can see, we took a left onto Graham Rd, and we were taking the Oregon Scenic Byway. Why not? The alternative is a busy interstate, and where's the romance in that?
Pretty sure the highway did not have cool old bridges.
The round led us up and up and through forest groves, until we got to a clearing, high above the river. It was misty and gray, just as I imagined the northwest to be.
We parked at the Vista Crown Point and checked out the building. The Scenic Highway and this building were built in the 1920's for people to enjoy as a day-trip out of the city, and its amazing to think of all the work it must have taken to built this almost a hundred years ago.
We explored inside the dome and went downstairs to a small exhibit area, and by the time we got outside to take a picture, the sun was out. Oh, Oregon, how quickly we learned the fickleness of your weather.
We decided we had enough of that, and got back in the car. So the big deal about this scenic byway is that are 77 waterfalls along the stretch. Some are small little trickles of water, but others are big. And beautiful. We stopped at all of them. Here's #1.
Same waterfall, different angle. Someone was busy playing with camera settings.
Same waterfall, different person in the front. Different angle.
Most of the waterfalls were right along the scenic byways's 2 lane road and there are little parking lots that you can pull into, walk a few steps and voila! you're at the waterfall. Except for Bridal Veil Falls. It requires a half mile walk. With breakfast lingering in the stomach, we thought it would be good to get moving. On the walk to the falls, there was a really pretty stream.
And just in case you're the type to get lost, the Oregon Park Service has your back.
And there she is, she's a double decker falls. There's a more technical term than that, but its close enough.
She falls twice, and after she hits the ground, she turns into this pretty stream that runs towards the interstate (which runs parralel to the scenic byway). Am I confusing you? I'll show a map later.
We spied another lady who had a camera very similar to ours, and she agreed to take our picture.
At this point, we're still driving east along the Columbia River, so this was the view to our left. All the waterfalls were to our right. Not much wrong with these views.
On the other side of the river is Washington State, if you're wondering.
The next stop was the most famous of all the falls, and in that parking lot we saw a license plate that made us think of Oupa. This is for you, old man.
Back to the waterfalls. The park service is really good about posting info for those of us who like pretty stuff+learning. We read about Multnomah Falls, which is the second tallest waterfall in the US. Yosemite has the tallest).
She is beautiful, and also a double decker. Back in the 1920's, a rich timber industry man built that bridge, called Bennett Bridge, after him. Cars used to drive across that. Hmmm. Seems a little crazy, but what do I know.
While we talked about the tallness of the waterfalls, we talked about how Ansel Adams took pictures in Yosemite, likely of the tallest waterfall, and I guess Keith got inspired by that because this was the next picture he took. Sorry for all the orbs, the sun was in a bad spot.
You might not be able to see them in the picture above, but people can walk up to the bridge. I stayed in the main viewing area and told Keith to scurry up there. There he goes, the little spec of red vested person is him on the trail.
He made it up there pretty quickly.
And zooming back out...he's still standing there. Pretty amazing sight, this waterfall.
Next along the scenic byway was the Bonneville Dam. It was...eh...ok. I mean, it's a dam, you know? Nothing poetic or natural about it. This particular dam has historic significance, and if you're into that, you're welcome to
read about it here. We did drive onto the island it sits on, and we went to the visitor center to learn a little more. A little.
Right next to the dam was a fish hatchery. There are way more of these things than I ever knew. This was, appropriately enough, called the Bonneville Fish Hatchery. They do trout and sturgeon. A view of part of the grounds.
The egg incubators, sort of.
Rainbow trout, just hanging out.
And before we left, we went to see the sturgeon. I'm not sure what I expected sturgeon to look like.
But holy sh*t, these are big and so prehistoric. 7 feet long!
There were also some other fish, salmon, I believe, in the tank and I had a good time with them.
Now, let's back it up a little. When we stopped at the Crown Vista Point the lady at the front desk said that we should cross over to the Washington side at the Bridge of the Gods so we could go through some tunnels for the next 14 miles, then cross back over to Oregon. So we did. Here we are, paying our toll and crossing to Washington.
And just to be sure we got it right, I consulted the map she gave us.
And then we drove. And drove. And wondered if that lady was just helping to get more tolls paid because there for sure have not been any tunnels on this side. Don't get me wrong, it was a pretty drive, but it's now early afternoon and I'm ready to get out of the car.
Then finally, a tunnel! Short, but it counts.
And shortly after, another!
But that was it for tunnels, then it was back to the regular pretty view.
A few miles later, we arrived to Mount Hood, and had lunch here.
They make beer. Guess who was really excited to be here?
This was our view from our table. Small town, pretty mellow. In the summer it gets busy with kite surfers and other watersport loving people.
I'm running out of town, so here is a short run-down of what else we did this day.We went here.
Saw this sweet dog, SnowBear.
Had a glass of wine after petting SnowBear.
Oh, the "here" was this place. Goooood wine, nice people. They also grow winter pears, and Mount Hood is the #1 producer world-wide of said pears. We love random useless facts.
Next we checked into our hotel, a remnant from the 1920's, build for those people exploring the scenic byways.
It's a historic landmark, and is currently getting a little facelift. It's been pampered some, but could use a little more.
Our room was nice enough, though. Nothing spectacular.
The view out was nice, too. There's the river.
Oh! But then I looked down and realize there was a waterfall right below our window! HEAVEN. Yes, we definitely slept with the windows a little open. Best whitenoise machine ever.
The hallways were a little creepy. Reminded me of The Shining.
But the grounds were gorgeous. We fully intended to take a nap, just 'cause we could, but went exploring first. Here is a view of the waterfall below our window.
And another handsome view, the other way. I told Keith to stand like he was a timber baron in the 20's, and this is what he came up with.
More opportunities to get our learn on.
And that's it. We napped, had a really nice anniversary meal at the hotel's restaurant, and fell asleep to the sound of the water falling over the rocks. Heaven.
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