Columbia River Gorge

Thanks to the lack of rain (most days) we have plenty of time to get to Seattle... 2 days to travel less than 300 miles, so on this day we take a side trip through the Columbia River Gorge along 'historic' highway 30 in Northern Oregon. The day started cloudy and cool and ended up sunny and windy. We had views of white caps on the river and took time for short hikes up for a closer look at Multnoma Falls as we rode along the Oregon side of the river.

We crossed paths with what appeared to be the Griswold family from National Lampoon's Family Vacation (minus aunt Edna), Clarke took our picture as he continued to espouse to the family with great authority all the details of the area, and reminded Rusty, 'you only have 27 pictures on that camera so use them wisely'.

From the map I knew there was a place to cross the river into Washington after about 40 miles. The map did not warn us, however, about the metal bridge perched a couple hundred feet above the water, much less that it, like so much of our route was, undergoing repairs requiring a mid-crossing stop for traffic. Actually it is probably better we were not forewarned else we may have thought twice and missed this part of the ride. But we made it with no problems, Debbie's attention focused on the viewfinder of the digital camera, which apparently allows her to disassociate herself from our surroundings. Once on the Washington side, the winds picked up and kept our attention until we reached the town of Kelso where we parked for the night.