Many years ago I came to Portland to give a training class and we spent our one free day visiting waterfalls in Columbia Gorge. The combination of the falls and the amazing weather had me thinking I could live here permanently, so when the opportunity came up to take a work kamping job for the summer and check it out I couldn’t resist. Originally we planned on spending today visiting the Japanese Tea Garden in Portland, but a Sunday with beautiful weather really brought out the crowds so instead we drove down to Historic Route 30 to see the gorge. This area was absolutely stunning and will require several trips, but I wanted to share with you a few of the falls that we saw and say some things in life do live up to how you remember them. This was the place that cemented my love of waterfalls and I have always wanted to share it with Lee.

We started Historic Route 30 in Troutdale. You can access some of the falls from Route 84 but we wanted to take the old path.

You can see the Vista house in the upper right of picture. The parking spots were all full when we drove by so we will save that for a later day.

Our first stop was LaTourell Falls which was a beauty. Short walk to either an observation point of the base of the lower falls. We will be coming back later to hike the 1.8 miles roundtrip to the Upper Falls.

This map shows many of the main falls all along the route, although there are many others that require walking to get to. I definitely see lots of hiking in my future!

Around this time though things were really getting crowded. All of the parking lots were full and near Multnoma Falls there was quite the traffic jam
Since the crowds were getting worse, we decided to get off Historic Route 30 and get back on 84 and head back home. But we passed the Bonneville Fish Hatchery and Lee really wanted to stop and see the giant sturgeon. Well OK, I liked the fish Hatcheries in Alaska so off we went.
Then we headed back down Route 35 which is along the Hood River and saw lots of farms. We can’t wait to go back there in July when all the farm stands are open, but we did get some amazing shots of Mount Hood on this perfectly clear day.
Since we were both starving at this point we stopped at The Huckleberry Inn at Government Camp and had a reasonably priced dinner. For $13 I got a salad, mashed potatoes and gravy, broccoli, and roast beef. Then we splurged and split an a la mode Huckleberry pie which was delicious. We definitely need to do a better job of taking food for these long days, but since it was Huckleberries I didn’t mind so much.

The town itself was a bit disappointing, but then we are spoiled by living near all those Vermont ski towns for so many years
Terrific day despite the last minute change of plans and now we have made two big loops around the surrounding area to get the lay of the land. Not a doubt in my mind we will have plenty to keep us busy for the 4 months we are here and look forwarding to seeing lots of waterfalls. Lee made a video of the few we saw on this trip, which is linked below.
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