Tent Camping on the Oregon Coast #2

THE COLUMBIA RIVER GORGE


Tuesday as we continued along the Columbia River Gorge a misty rain started. We turned onto the old Highway 30 and visited Horsetail Falls and Multnomah Falls, and got our first glimpse of the lush ferns, pines, and undergrowth that make western Oregon so beautiful. At Horsetail Falls there were no crowds and I was able to pause, listen, and truly appreciate their beauty. (However, my very favorite falls were to come several days later).


It is said that the Columbia River Basin is the most hydroelectrically developed river system in the world with over 400 dams along the various rivers that feed into it. As we drove along we discovered that the 100 mile stretch of river that makes up the gorge has 4 dams backing up the river into a series of lakes that provide recreation, irrigation, power; and through the locks in the various dams, barges can travel from the Pacific Ocean all the way to Lewiston, Idaho. We stopped at the Bonneville Dam, watched the volunteers counting fish at the observation windows, and looked at the fish ladders. Along the mountainsides of both Washington and Oregon we saw windmill farms. We passed many semi-trucks each carrying one big windmill blade. These windmills appear to be twice as large as the ones we saw in the San Bernardino canyons in 1999.

I will have to admit here that I am in favor of dams, I am in favor of wind power, I am in favor of solar power (although that is more expensive). If I were given the duty of voting on nuclear power, I would probably vote in favor of that, too. I feel that we should be moving ahead on our sources of power and not get stymied in our efforts to provide ourselves with better, cleaner sources of power.

We steeled ourselves for the drive through Portland – thinking: this city is two times bigger than Salt Lake City, and driving in Salt Lake City is a white-knuckle nightmare. But we found the freeway to be well-signed, and the speed limit was doable, not like the wild 75 mile-per-hour roller-coaster ride through Salt Lake. The Oregonians seem to actually obey their speed limits, making it much more easy to negotiate through their largest city. We skimmed across the northern part of the city, still along the Columbia River, to the north-western-most city of Astoria, across the bridge over Young's Bay, and up to Fort Stevens where we had reservations for the next 4 days.

Fort Stevens Stake Park has 600 campsites, and we thought we would be awash in a sea of campers, but the area where we were to stay was in amongst tall pines and quite empty. We had just put up our tent, and finished our bowl of soup when it started to rain. And it rained for the next 7.5 days!