MAY 17, 2019
Thom’s cousin in Portland OR offered not only to host us for our stay here, but also to provide “guided” tours of various places in the region.
On Friday May 17 we dropped the RV off for its repairs and took the transit light rail into the city. Patrick met us at the plaza and we wandered around for a little bit of sightseeing and found lunch at an area of various food trucks. In the evening I joined Cheri during her paddle practice on a dragon boat in the Willamette River. It, again, was drizzly so photos are not so good. But it was great to get out on the water. I did paddle some of the time!!!
MAY 18, 2019
Saturday May 18 started with a 2 hour bike ride!!! We rode for some time out to the southeast, returning along the river. After the last long uphill slog we were rewarded with a stop at Starbucks!!! We passed some great areas of wetlands restoration along a well maintained bike path.
MAY 19, 2019
On Sunday we were treated to a ride to the east, to Mt Hood. We toured the Timberline Lodge, built during the 1930s. There is still a great deal of snow and we saw some skiers even though it was well above freezing and foggy and wet. The snow must have been very heavy. We drove down from 6000’ and went to the Town of Hood River. We had lunch at a nice brew pub set back but with some views of the river and the many kite surfers there. I was excited to see the menu had an Impossible Burger listed. It was as good as is now being reported by the media as a plant based meat substitute. It was really good!!!
On the way back to Portland we stopped and toured the Bonneville Dam. What a complex!! It is on the Columbia and is managed by the Army Corps of Engineers. We viewed one of the power houses with the generators and stopped by the windows along one of the several fish ladders and spotted what could have been salmon swimming upstream. Evidently the sea lions are a real problem and are shot with rubber pellets to encourage them to head back downstream. They capture a great number of the fish and rarely eat the whole fish. Maybe just a bite is taken but it’s enough to kill the fish. They are impacting the fish populations in a major way. On the Willamette River it’s such a problem that licenses have been granted to kill the sea lions due to their deleterious impact.
We also stopped to see the Multnomah Falls, the tallest in Oregon. It was rushing and wet!!! Some of the nearby trail that used to go up to the top of the falls is closed due to damage from erosion that closed it after the fire 2 years ago. It’s amazing to learn how much Oregon and California have to deal with frequent forest fires.
