Oregon - Day 13 - along the Columbia River to Cascade Locks

Cascade Locks KOA, Cascade Locks

Friday, 13 May 2022

On our 2nd walk this morning, we saw 3 deer that were very nearly tame.  They looked at us and casually moved over a bit and continued to eat grass.  Luckily, Dext was relatively calm about it.

The campground had a display about the cause of tsunamis that I thought was well done. 

I enlarged parts of this below.

These diagrams go a long way toward explaining why the Pacific coast is so susceptible to earthquakes and tsunamis.

today's route

This north coast area is apparently popular with elk, because I saw several warning signs for them, one with flashing lights.  

I went through a number of small towns, including Cannon Beach, known for its beauty.  I saw a rock that looked just like the Haystack I saw back at Newport, so I looked it up.  According to Wikipedia   https://en.wikipedia.org/Haystack-Rock this one is the Haystack - the third-largest of its kind in the world.  I don't understand why this one wasn't mentioned in that blog page I posted a few days ago about other Haystacks along the Oregon coast, or why those others aren't mentioned in this article.  But they all look like each other so to my untutored mind, they all qualify as Haystacks.  (Pictures are on the Wikipedia page.)

At Warrenton, pop.5,050, I came to yet another bridge (this is an internet photo).

New Young's Bay Bridge

It's 4,200' long and was built in 1964.  That section in the middle is called a vertical lift and goes straight up (parallel to the bridge, not rising at an angle) to accommodate large boats.  I saw a nearby railroad bridge with the same construction and the lift section was raised, which is what gave me a clue.

I didn't stop in Astoria but drove through the main part of town and saw a beautiful old building - the Liberty Theater - which is still in use.

Isn't this beautiful?

It dates back to 1925.  We should all look this good at this age.  It was the first entertainment building replaced after the 1922 fire here.

Astoria is known as the ending of Lewis and Clark's Voyage of Discovery - at least, the westward section of it (they still had to get home again).  Technically they ended at nearby Fort Clatsop where there's now a national memorial.

I passed yet another bridge, this one across the Columbia River to Washington.

This bridge is more than 4 miles long and
I was thanking my lucky star I hadn't planned to drive it today.
This is the longest continuous truss bridge in North America.

In Astoria, I picked up US-30 and stayed with it intermittently for many miles while I traveled east.

I crossed the John Day River, where I saw some houseboats floating.

You can see on the route map that the road followed the Columbia River for much of this section of the drive, and I got occasional views.  In this section so near the mouth, the river is a half-mile wide - 2,640'.

A deer skittered across the road while I was already negotiating downhill s-curves.  The deer was lucky I was going slow for the curves.

I passed a sign saying to turn left for an eagle sanctuary.

I was surprised to find that the road was climbing, though this close to sea level, "climbing" is a relative term.  I saw a sign saying elevation was 500', though the road kept climbing, and then coming down on the other side another "elev. 500'" sign.

I saw a campaign sign and thought I'd missed seeing the last name.  What I saw of the sign read:

            MELISSA

       Nurse     Farmer

         Octogenarian

Apparently she's not pushing her last name much but instead is running a real woman-of-the-people campaign.  It's Busch, if you're interested.  She's campaigning as "Caring for Senate District 16."

I managed to pass through Portland relatively unscathed.  I didn't want to stop because Google said this was a 4-hour drive, which meant it'd take me at least 6 hours.  I'd left last night's campground at 7:00 just to be sure I'd get where I was going while allowing margin for unexpected events (like traffic).

I picked up I-84 and made it through the city, but we were tired and needed a break, so I stopped at a Burger King in Gresham.  The exit before that, I saw a large homeless encampment in a large grassy area that the exiting and entering roads swing around.  Considering the rain we've been having, they must have been pretty uncomfortable there.

Anyway, we had lunch and got gasoline, and I had to do some major maneuvering to get back because of one-way roads.  Then I was so relieved to be on the right road that I made the wrong turn and got on I-84 westbound.  It took me 18 miles to get to the next exit, get off and get back on again to where I'd made the mistake.

As I drove farther, I had some impressive views up the Columbia River: high green hills running right down to the water.

I passed Multnomah Falls, which I planned to see in a few days, and the Bonneville Dam National Historic Site, which I need to look up.

And then to the town of Cascade Locks, "Heart of the Gorge" - meaning the Columbia River Gorge.  To reach tonight's campsite I passed Bridge of the Gods National Historic Site.

Bridge of the Gods

This is a photo I took a few days later from a local park.  The bridge was built in 1926 and is the 3rd oldest on the Columbia River.  The National Park Service provided a piece of trivia about this bridge: in 1927, Charles Lindbergh flew "The Spirit of St. Louis" up the gorge from Portland, passed low over the bridge, then turned around and flew under the bridge on his way back to Portland.  Some piece of trivia, huh?

But when I got to the campground, I found my travels weren't over.  The site I'd asked for was a nice one, but as I was parking I noticed the road around it was pretty muddy.  I knew there was a lot of rain forecast in the next few days (my reservation was for 4 nights) and I decided we'd likely be swimming in mud in a day or two.

I asked to move to another, slightly more expensive site that looked much drier.  Except when I got there, I couldn't find anywhere even thinking about being level.  I went back and forth, moving all around the site, trying hard to find a situation I thought we (and the touchy frig) could live with for the next few days.  After a while of that, a man who'd been drinking wine with his wife outside their RV came over to offer help.

He finally brought over chunks of their firewood and helped me get the right-side tires onto them to help level the RV up.  Very generous of him.

Once I was finally parked, I discovered the water faucet leaked badly no matter how hard I tightened the connection.  I finally just filled my water tank and rolled up the hose.

When I walked the dogs around, I found the whole campground badly needs more gravel everywhere, which would have helped the mud problem at my first (level) campsite.  Oh well.