Columbia River Gorge – Part 2

I realized that I should have mentioned where the Columbia River Gorge is.  The river is between Oregon and Washington.  Most of what I did was on the Oregon side, but I did go into Washington a couple of times.  I went to Vancouver, WA to go to Trader Joes and the credit union. 

I was expecting colder and rainy weather, but I wasn’t expecting this much cold and rain.  The snow level was down to 2000 feet for a few days, so some of the mountain passes were closed.  One of the hikes I wanted to do I couldn’t get to because of the snow.  Of course I didn’t find that out until I was just about there and found the road closed.  But on the drive I did see Mount Hood from several locations.

In the picture above, you can see Mt. Hood in the background, lava beds in the middle and the top of some fruit trees in the foreground.  I did make it to Government Camp (a ski resort) several days after the snow and went for a short walk in the snow.  Well being from Ga, I’m really not used to walking in snow.  When I started walking I quickly realized I wasn’t going to go far.  Some times my feet would sink just a couple of inches and other times they would sink 10 inches or so.  As I was going back to my car I noticed that the other people there had snowshoes on!!  I had a good laugh over that!

A few more waterfalls -

The above is Upper McCord Falls.  They are only about 64 feet, but one of my favorites.  The trail to the falls was interesting.  They had to blast out a trail on the the 400 foot walls around another water fall.   I also went to Elowah falls on this hike.

I was picking out pictures for this blog and put both of these in my temp area.  After looking at them,  I noticed how similar these falls are. 

The one on the left is Wahclella falls and the one on the right is Wahkeena_falls. 

One day, I went to Tom McCall Nature preserve and Rowena Crest.  This area is known for it’s wildflowers, but was extremely windy.

 

As you may have noticed, I like taking pictures of trails I hike.  Well one of them had a very different view that what I was used to--

This was the Starvation Creek Trail.  The trailhead was just off I-84 and as you can see was right beside the interstate for a short distance.  It was worth it.  I didn’t do the whole trail, but saw 3 more waterfalls. 

Next I go to Astoria, OR.

Columbia River Gorge – Part 1

I am really behind in this blog – Again!.  I am hoping to start blogging more often.  When I wait so long it’s sometimes hard to remember things – such as the names of some of the waterfalls you will see below.

I spent 2 1/2 weeks along the River Gorge, part of the time in Troutdale, OR in a private campground and part of the time in Memaloose State Park.  The River Gorge area is beautiful.  Between the waterfalls, wildflowers, ferns, moss…  I loved it!!  Between I-84 and OR 30 there is some great scenery just from the road. 

Below is a view of the Gorge taken on a foggy morning. 

This is Multnomah Falls, probably the most popular falls in the area. 

This area was developed in the early 1900’s.  For example the bridge in the above picture was built in 1914.  Below is the trail leading to Shepperd’s Dell Fall’s.  I kept wondering what it would look like if it was done today – probably a white PVC fence.

Latourell falls (248 ft) is a drive-up falls (several of the falls are just off the road).  But I walked to the bottom of it and got rather wet from the mist.

One day, I drove into Portland and went to the Rhododendron Gardens.  It was great. 

Some of the rhododendron’s were so big they looked like trees.   This picture was taken from underneath the rhododendron – not your typical view!

I don’t know what type of pine tree this is, but I don’t think we had this in Georgia -

One of the hikes I took was the Triple falls loop.  The first falls on the loop was Upper Horsetail or Ponytail falls (about 100 ft high). 

You can see the trail goes behind the waterfall.  Below is another view and you can see people going under it in this one -

The trail was a bit steep in a few places --

Triple falls was well worth the hike -

Some wildflowers that I saw on the trails -

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The yellow flower was about the size of a pencil eraser, but the red dot on each flower intrigued me.

To be continued--

Anacortes – Part 2

I had my shortest travel distance ever – 2.7 miles.  I went to Fidalgo Bay Rv Resort.  It has no shade (which is what I wanted) and is on the bay.   Looking one way the view is great, the other – well if you can ignore some of man’s mess it’s good to.

I think these were oil refineries.  From the campground I saw otters, sealions, bald eagles and other birds.

The campground was rather surprised to see the pheasant above.  Apparently they are not normally seen in this area.  My guess is he was lonely and was trying to make friends with the ducks.

I took the Washington ferry over to Orcas Island one day and did some hiking in Moran State Park.

The above picture was taken from Mt. Washington in Moran State Park looking out over some of the San Juan islands. 

I’ve been here for a couple of weeks now and I still can’t get over the big trees, ferns and moss!

From my previous blog, I posted a picture of a beach at Ebby’s landing where I hiked on the beach.  This time I hiked on the cliff next to the beach one way and then on the beach on the way back.

I enjoyed the hike, but I could have done without the wildlife -

One of the many things that really interested me in Washington and Oregon was tide pooling. I went to Larrabee State Park.  Just the drive up was great, but I was very impressed with the starfish or sea stars (I’ve seen them called both).

A couple more tulip pictures -

If you read the previous blog, you may remember that I mentioned they pluck the blooms once a few start aging.  I thought it was an interesting process.  These tulips still look good to me, but I guess they know more about this than I do! Before I left there were no blooming tulips left.  So I made it just in time!

I’ve had quite a bit of rainy weather while here, but I did take advantage of it and got both my Honda and RV serviced.  That’s one thing that is interesting about traveling.  You end up going to a different place every time and just hoping they do a good job.  I ended up taking the RV to the local Ford dealership and the RV to the local Honda dealership and was pleased with the service from both places. 

Anacortes, part 1

I started my Washington visit in Anacortes, WA.  It is on Fidalgo Island and is about 80 miles north of Seattle.  The main reason that I wanted to get here a bit earlier than most tourist (it’s still a bit cold) was the Skagit Valley Tulip festival. I had seen pictures of this and it looked amazing.  Even though I ended up getting to Anacortes later than I expected I did get to see the tulips.  It was amazing, thousands or perhaps millions of tulips blooming.  To see the tulips you can walk through the fields or visit a garden.  I did both.

The gardens were display gardens for bulb companies.

The fields of tulips are there for the bulbs, not the flowers.  Actually once a few flowers start aging just a tiny bit, they pluck (or deadhead) every flower of that variety so all that’s left are the leaves and stems.  They do this to keep out infection. 

 

I hope you like flowers, because there are more.  I also visited the Meerkerk Rhododendron Gardens.  I was there a couple of weeks before peak, but it was still nice.

I did a little bit of hiking in Deception Pass State Park.  This park has a great bridge between Fidalgo and Whidbey Island.

The picture below was taken from the bridge.  

I also did some hiking around Ebby’s landing.  I hiked along the beach for a few miles.  I also hiked the trail that you can see that leads up the cliff.  I’ll post pictures of that hike in my next blog - part 2 of Anacortes.

I got to see a lot of farms- flowers, crops and shellfish.  Below is a mussel farm.

They have a very interesting tree, a Madrona tree.  It has orange/reddish bark that as the tree gets older peels off and leaves a shiny finish to the wood.  Actually the above picture of the Mussel farm is framed by Madronas.

   As mentioned above, it is still a bit cold here.  And as expected it has been quite rainy.  I had found a campground that had great reviews with people commenting on the park-like setting.  So I made a reservation there. Well it was beautiful – big trees, ferns…  But when it’s cold and rainy you really don’t want to be under lots of trees.  You want somewhere that gets what little sunshine there is – at least that’s what I want.  The sun that is on my RV below is the only sun that my RV would see during the day and it lasted for less than an hour!  So I stayed at this park for a week, but then moved 2.7 miles to a park on the Bay with no trees.  More on that in part 2 of Anacortes.

The drive from Southern California to Washington

Well, I finally left California.   The drive from Southern California to Washington was interesting.  Hopefully no more earthquakes!

I started in the High Desert and ended up in an area with cedar, fir and spruce trees.  In between I went through the Raisin capital of the world, the Olive capital of the world and the Grass Seed capital of the world. Wow, a lot of capitals!

Before looking at the next pictures, you need to remember that I am from Georgia so snow is not something I saw very often.  I couldn’t get used to the snow and the mountains -

 

The following was taken from a truck stop.  I’d love to have a view like this out my door.  Wait, I guess I do – my view is everywhere I travel!

Just a couple of days ago, I saw some traffic on TV and thought that I had been extremely lucky in my travels because I had not hit any bad traffic.  Well, that was before I got to Tacoma and Seattle.  I had been warned and had read that the traffic in that area can be bad.  But I was arriving on a Sunday and didn’t think it would be bad.  Wow, was I wrong.  The picture below of stop and go traffic was taken about noon on Sunday. 

  According to my GPS, it only delayed me about 8 minutes but I couldn’t believe there was that much traffic on a Sunday.  I haven’t figured out when I will leave but I definitely don’t want to leave during rush hour. 

As some of you know I had hoped to catch the tulip festival.  On driving to the campground I went about a block away from some  fields.  Fields of Pink, Purple, yellow and red.  I guessed they were tulips, but wasn’t close enough to tell.  More on my visit to the tulips and other things in the area later--