Timberline Lodge - Mt Hood

In the midst of a Texas-sized heatwave (temps in the area above 100) we have driven up the slopes of Mt Hood to the Timberline Lodge - at 6000 feet. Even here the heat is obvious.

The lodge is the centerpiece of the primary ski area on the mountain. And the skiing here is a 12-month activity. Today there are hundreds of snowboarders and skiers headed up the lifts to what looks like patchy snow, but they're having a great time anyway.

Timberline Lodge was built during the Depression era by the Civilian Conservation Corps (FDR's CCC) and has been well-maintained in subsequent years. The pictures of it during the high season, covered in heavy snow, makes it the quintessential ski lodge. As usual for us,we enjoyed a very nice buffet lunch after hiking around the local trails.

Along the Columbia Gorge

When the ancient Columbia River cut its path through the bedrock of what would become the border between Oregon and Washington, it did a much more effective job than the smaller tributaries along its path. As a result, these streams created waterfalls.



This stretch of river is unique in that it gives the casual traveller the opportunity to see six impressive waterfalls within a few steps of the road, including Multnomah Falls which is the second highest (600 feet) year-round drop in America. (Sometimes they go a long way to come up with criteria to elevate the importance of something.)






A little further upriver is the Bonneville Dam, not too remarkable compared to Hoover or Grand Coulee or Shasta or Glen Canyon. But dams on the Columbia, such as Grand Coulee and Bonneville, are different from most we see elsewhere because they were created mainly for power generation, and not to manage water levels - floods and droughts.

And at the Bonneville sight, the flow of the mighty Columbia is such that the spillway continuously dumps millions of gallons of water downstream while two huge dams on either side of the spillway funnel water through turbines to generate millions of megawatts for both the Oregon and the Washington sides. Another achievement of the Depression-era.

A Walk Through the Shamrocks

As we're sure you've gathered, we love tromping around the countryside, (always careful to stay on the path - wouldn't want to leave footprints of our passing) especially on a hot day in the cool forest. Here, we kept thinking we'd meet Darby O'Gill and the Little People around the next bend. With 150-foot Douglas firs and western red cedars and dappled sunlight filtering through, we were out of the near 100 degree temps on the trail called the Cascades Streamwatch. The Salmon River runs along a nearby national recreation area called Wildwood, and we were following the markers on a paved path (not all government spending is a waste) on our way to a window on the river - a real window in the riverbank - that let us see salmon fry maturing in the rushing waters. (Actually we didn't stay long enough to see them growing, but you know what I mean.)

Along the way, we met locals enjoying their Saturday playing and picnicking on the river, and camp hosts tending the displays and information centers in the park. Another enjoyable day.

Seeing More Old Friends

We have arrived at Mt Hood Village, an RV park a few miles east of the highest point in the state, and a few miles south of the Columbia River. We have a lot to see in the area over the next nine days, but we started with one of the things that makes our lifestyle sooo soooweeet - seeing friends from our past that have relocated to places all over the country.

John and Nan were part of the sailing community we met when we went back to fulltime cruising after we really retired. The promise of another lousy year of hurricanes drove us out of the Keys and up the East Coast on our way with friends to at least the Chesapeake Bay. Alas, we succumbed to "old boat" syndrome - required repairs serious enough to make us say good-bye to friends continuing north while we were stuck in Brunswick, Georgia. But when your world is built around travel, having to say "so long" (for awhile) to some great friends can mean saying hello to new, great friends. Such was the case here. We made new lifelong friends at our new marina home. We've made claims in this blog that traveling around the country makes for stronger friendships rather than weaker, and this tale is a prime example. The two couples we bonded with in Brunswick have scattered now - Len and Connie, to Yuma, (see "Easter with Friends in Yuma, AZ") and John and Nan, to Vancouver, and would likely be forgotten to us if we weren't so mobile in our lifestyle.

Besides, it is such great fun to see friends after a two-year absence. A wonderful lunch - Nan and John know what turns us on - and a promise to get together again before we leave the area.

Just One More

The area is so full of not only volcanos that have blown their tops, but also small cinder cones on the flanks of the bigger ones. So we included one more. This one is right on the highway, easy to scale, and has a fire lookout tower on the top which has reported more forest fires in its lifetime (well, the lookouts in it have...you know what I'm sayin' here!) than any other in the state. Cool views.

Sorry about another pic of snow capped mountains over an ancient lava field - I just can't help myself.

In Search of Bald Eagles

The Cascades not only have many volcanic peaks marking the boundary of the plates which run up and down the Pacific coast, the local area is also dotted with beautiful natural lakes marked by the Cascade Lakes Trail. The scenic route took us through mountain meadows of grasses and wildflowers while we wound our way between the dormant peaks along roads which the signs warned would be free from snows only in these summer months.

Our afternoon ended, strangely enough, at the largest unnatural lake in the area - Wikiup Reservoir - in search of some of the dozens of bald eagles which nest along the shores of this favorite hot summer weekend hangout of the locals. We must be continuing to live right - we saw some in flight as well as nesting fledgling in the tops of the 150-foot pines.

Crater Lake National Park

On our last visit to the Northwest in '07, we loved almost everything about our experience along the coast of Oregon. So we were looking forward to spending the month of July back in Oregon, this time exploring and sampling the central part of the Cascade Range, especially getting the chance to see Crater Lake NP on the south end and Mt Hood on the north. We went to Crater Lake Monday and it did not disappoint. As we drove back to our RV park (75 miles each way) we compared our experience here with those of the other 25 or more national parks we have enjoyed during our travels. There is something special about each of these parks or they wouldn't be designated a national treasure, and we've loved the opportunity to see all of them. But we decided that Crater Lake is in the top three among those parks (with Glacier and Yosemite.) We obviously have a bias toward the mountain west. The scenery is just soooo stunning and compelling.

The crater was formed about 7,700 years ago by a series of explosive eruptions over a number of years, eventually blowing off the top one mile of Mt Mazama, spreading six inches of ash over a 5000 square mile area in five states and two Canadian provinces. Subsequent smaller eruptions created features such as Wizard Island and the Phantom Ship. Over the millenia, the hole created by the further collapse (turns out this is technically "Caldera" Lake) filled with rain and snow melt - even today it receives about 44 feet of snow each year - creating the deepest lake in the U. S., nearly 2000 feet. There are no streams or rivers coming in or out of the lake making it what they call a "closed system."

We drove the entire 32-mile loop road, seeing the lake from every awesome "shoreline" viewpoint (the drive actually stays hundreds of feet above the water.) Even with half of July over, there were still many patchy areas with more than three or four feet of snow. The colors of the lake are as varied as the waters in the Keys - deep shades of blues in the deep to greens in the shallows, instead of the light blues and turquoise seen from the Overseas Highway - all breathtaking. We stopped for a real Texas picnic - KFC and watermelon - near the resort lodge, then continued through the Douglas firs and ponderosa pines and redwoods, past waterfalls and "pumice castles" and more views of the lake waters. If you are in this area from Memorial Day thru Labor Day, don't miss it.

Visit a Volcano

The Cascade Range lies along the boundary between the Pacific and North American Plates so the entire chain of mountains was built through volcanic activity. Many of the peaks are the type that erupt violently, creating a crater (deeper than it is wide) and leaving a (sometimes) large field of destruction and area of ashfall. These are the violent type. A second type is called a shield volcano which undergoes periods of continuous eruption and lava flow (like Kilauea in Hawaii) building a mounded volcano covering dozens to hundreds of square miles. Over the eons, as the lava chamber empties, the mountain above it collapses in the middle creating a caldera (wider than it is deep.)

The Newberry Caldera National Monument, just south of our RV park, is an example of the latter. Friday, we drove all the way to the top of Paulina Peak to view the spectacular vistas on this clear day. (We were able to see peaks over 100 miles in the distance.) It is a very beautiful and interesting area with two lakes in the caldera below the top where we were perched, as well as acres of lava flow (hardened into black obsidian) and pumice. We mistakenly identified it as sand, but the ranger's presentation corrected that notion and informed us visitors of the geologic history of the volcano and the area. (How'd you think I came up with the first paragraph - duh??) There are other parts to the NM that we plan to see next week.

Oregon or Bust

Our last trip to the Pacific NW in '07 took us along the coast route (Hwy 101) thru Oregon and Southern Washington, then across the state to see Mt St. Helens and Mt Rainier, the Grand Coulee, and the area north of Spokane. This year we are following the Cascade route (US 97) thru Oregon with plans to visit Mt Mazama (Crater Lake NP) and Mt Hood among others, before crossing into Washington to do the Olympic Peninsula, and the Puget Sound/ San Juan Islands area. On July 1st, we arrived at our first major Oregon stop, a Thousand Trails preserve close to the ski resort town of Sunriver just south of Bend, the largest city in the central part of the state. The RV park is one of the nicest we've seen, with large sites (we have a stand of trees separating us from any of our neighbors,) two heated pools and a spa, tennis courts, pickleball courts, mini golf, a fishing stream, plus a nice activity center and general store. There are beautiful views of the still snow-capped mountains 20 miles to our west. The temps are upper 40's to low 80's, some days cooler. (Sorry about that, Texans and Floridians and Arizonans.) There is lots of sightseeing, too, so we're happy we had decided to reserve three weeks here.