Portland, OR

We are heading home…

September 6; Labor Day…

Last day of summer! (Even though school started three weeks ago – it’s still summer!)

Our grandchildren enjoyed a day at the beach!

We left Puyallop and headed south…

The Columbia River never ceases to please…

Remember when I said one barge on the Columbia River holds enough grain to fill 160 railroad cars? Here is where the barges offload the grain, where it is loaded into the railroad cars…

Portland has some great bridges…

And we are set up at a very nice RV Park in Salem, OR.

With a beautiful sky…

Tuesday, September 7:

We left early – we have a long day… The fog was a nice relief from the heat…

Wait! That’s not fog – it’s smoke!

There are four wildfires to the east of us, just over the hills… The whole length of the state…

At a rest stop we couldn’t see the mountains…

We passed through the delightful little town of Jacksonville, OR, located about 20 miles off the 5, west of Medford… We found out camping spot for the night – Valley View Winery, part of the Harvest Host program…

Still a little smoky…

We were the gusts for dinner at old Airstream friends who live a few miles from the winery… They lave 7 acres and a lovely house overlooking the Applegate River…

Fiery sunset over the river…

After a lovely dinner we returned to the Villa…

Wednesday, September 8:

As we left the winey in the morning we found a few wild turkeys…

We soon returned to California! Yay!

We saw lots of evidence of last year’s fires…

And we had some more smoke as well…

But soon the skies cleared as we approached Clear Lake…

After a tortuous drive over Hwy 175 we arrived in Cloverdale in time for a lovely sunset sky…

Thursday, September 9:

We awoke to clear skies and headed down the road…

We crossed over the Richmond bridge and the San Francisco Bay…

Still a little smoggy, but we could see the Golden Gate Bridge…

Still a little smoggy, but we could make out the city skyline…

Oakland is noted for its giant cargo container cranes…

And downtown Oakland is looking good…

BART running past us… We love cities!

We arrived at our RV park in Marina, just outside Monterey…

We drove into Carmel to stroll the town before dinner…

The beach is lovely, but cold!

We had a delightful dinner at a “Contemporary Mexican Restaurant”. First Mexican food since we left California on July 23… (We don’t eat Mexican food outside California – way too many disappointing meals over the past years…)

Friday, September 10

As we headed out of Marina across the Salinas Valley we saw fields and fields of lettuce…

Soon we saw vineyards…

We arrive in Paso Robles and parked just outside downtown. And a lovely town it is…

We stopped in for a wine tasting, hosted by this charming fellow…

But we are on a tight schedule, so we head south again, arriving at Los Olivos at about 4:00 pm…

We enjoyed a little wine tasting on the front patio…

Plenty of parking in Los Olivos, even on a Friday afternoon…

We parked in the Saarloos vineyard for the night, and shared dinner with Airstream friends at Bell’s in Los Alamos…

Saturday, September 11:

We arrived home in Redlands, California…

We shared happy hours drinking beer on the front porch with our son…

And an enjoyable time was had by all…

Seven weeks and one day… twelve states… 7,000 miles.

The End

We escaped the doom and gloom of the RV park and headed to Portland! It will be good to do an urban hike and find a nice hip place for lunch…

We passed by the Bridge of the Gods, a National Historical Monument, crossing the Columbia River.

We enjoyed marvelous views of the Columbia River in the morning; we drove along a scenic parkway as we headed into Portland.

However, when the Oregon Trail emigrants came through here 170 years ago this was not the case. The Columbia has many dams on it and it looks like a placid lake. Railroads and highways have been built on levies and cut into the shear rock walls. When the emigrants were here it was a wild raging river. The wagon trail stopped at The Dalles, and only a single cow path continued on in to the Willamette Valley. More on this saga tomorrow…

Today was urban hiking day. We walked and walked all over the district or neighborhood called the Pearl… We enjoyed lunch at a sidewalk café and pretended that we were hipster urbanites…

Thirty years ago this area consisted of derelict railyards and warehouses. When the rails were removed the warehouses were remodeled into stores, office, and apartments. Then new apartments and condos were built. Today it is all built up into a marvelous mixed use neighborhood…

We headed back towards the Cascade Locks, driving over some great old bridges…

We stopped of briefly to see Multnomah Falls…

And then we stopped at the Bonneville Dam…

One of the first thing we saw was this turbine. It is a giant propeller that is driven by the flow of the water, and the turbine in turn rotates the generator, producing electricity… It is about 15′ tall. Family note here: My father used to build full size “models” of things like this, but out of wood. The wood model is used to make the die, or mold, into which molten metal is poured to produce the turbine…)

A fascinating thing is the fish ladder. The Columbia River is a huge spawning ground for salmon returning from the sea. Dams block their path. When the dam was built in 1936 the fish ladder was very primitive and experimental. However, when the dam was expanded by adding a second power house they installed a state of the art fish ladder. It is directly adjacent to the Visitors Center… The are underwater windows so you can watch the fish swim by…