Columbia River Gorge, Oregon

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After leaving Crater's of the Moon we followed the Snake River to Baker City , Oregon. Here there is an Interpretive Center for the Oregon Trail. The display is enormous with mounts of real oxen teams pulling wagons and horses and riders.
It is so lifelike that we came away feeling like we had seen the real thing and had a SMALL glimpse of the hardships these folks went through. But unlike those pioneers when we got back to the campground Ron flew his RC glider in a mowed hay field and we made ice cream in a bag which worked just like it was supposed to and was pretty tasty.


An aside - the folks here in Oregon are some of the most considerate drivers we have ever seen. If you only look like you might want to walk across a street, they stop and let you cross even in the middle of the street. This is one of the only states left where it is a state law that you can’t fill you own tank. Takes us back to the 60's when an attendant cleaned the windows while you sat in the car, if only the gas prices were the same. Right now we're paying $2.80+ for gas, but still better than last year when it was in the $4 range.



On the 25th we started following the Columbia River with the state of Washington in view on the other side. As we got into the Gorge area the landscape changed dramatically. We had been traveling for quite some time in high desert were everything looked baked and parched, now it started to look green and lush. Moss, ferns, trees - all shades of green. The salmon are running right now and we saw folks catching huge ones right from shore. We toured a sturgeon fish hatchery and went through a gift shop where Ron won the door prize worth about $35!! Then we bought a freshly caught steel head from a native American Indian and grilled it back at camp. Made us feel just like Lewis and Clark.



This area is full of high mountain waterfalls, 77 on the Oregon side of the gorge, and we've hiked to some of them. Many of them are accessed along Historic Route #30 which was built in 1910. The road is very narrow and has sharp switchbacks - makes for an interesting ride when some of the enormous bus style motor homes come around the corner
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