Shakedown Cruise - We're Cruisin'

Thursday morning we were up and out early again, taking off from the Horsetail Falls parking lot and heading out to Oneonta Falls. Hiking here in the gorge is different because it’s the gorge – basically carved out of rock by the river. We’ve been basically skating along the edges of steep hills, sometimes with a pretty narrow path and a long drop off on one side. What’s fun is that the flora is pretty diverse, and we’ll be hiking along and come around a corner and things will totally change – a flowering groundcover showed up unexpectedly, and this morning on the way between horsetail falls and Oneonta creek we came to a grassy area that seemed to be where there’d been a relatively recent (past 20 years or so?) landslide. We also found an area that had the kind of shoulder- and head- high vegetation that is much more like what we’re used to at the coast. Then we turned another corner and found ourselves in the Oneonta gorge, which is a narrow slot canyon carved by the creek. The canyon is so deep and narrow that looking back along the downstream side of the creek there was an area with an undisturbed surface, perfectly reflecting the sky in a way I don’t think I’ve seen before. We crossed the creek on a nice bridge and climbed up the other side, where the trail splits into two directions – one towards Multnomah Falls and one towards Triple Falls, which we would have taken had it not been closed because of fire damage. It’s hard to comprehend the scope of the fire – it goes on for literally miles. You can get a sense of the damage in these pictures – normally the evergreens would be green from top to bottom.  

Stream runs downhill away from 
the viewer...

We knew that the trail to Triple Falls was closed, and we also knew that there’s a shuttle that runs between Multnomah Falls and Horsetail Falls. If we’d thought about it we would have done some more research and might have continued on to Multnomah Falls, but since we didn’t know 1) how far that was and 2) if/how often the shuttle was running, we decided to head back to the trailer for a short break and then off to Bonneville Dam.

Just a short digression here – the reason we came to Ainsworth for the shakedown was because it was one of the few campgrounds that had vacancies, and we’ve only stayed in the gorge once, for Ben’s first marathon. We thought it might be fun, but we figured this was a one-time thing. Our plan was to mostly hang out and relax in the trailer, because we didn’t think there would be much to do. We were so wrong. We love this campground (although we wish we were on the A side of the loop) and we could easily spend another several days here, and that’s without even going to Hood River.

After a short rest we headed off to see Bonneville Dam, which is amazing. We could have spent hours watching the shad (and occasional chinook salmon and pacific lamprey) swim up the fish ladder. Not to mention the fish hatchery and sturgeon center, the navigation locks and the powerhouses. As it was we saw as much as we could, and then continued on to Cascade Locks for a return trip to Thunder Island Brewhouse, where I’d made a reservation, although if we’d remembered how quick the service is I would have made a later reservation and we could have stayed and seen ‘em swim for longer. 

After a tasty lunch we went out to Thunder Island to hang out for a half hour or so until it was time to board the Sternwheeler Columbia Gorge for a 2-part cruise whose description was so confusing that we had no idea what was going to take place. But here’s what happens, you get on and cruise up the river (East) for a while, and then you turn around and go back to the dock and some people get off and some people get on, and you cruise down the river (West) to the Bonneville Dam, and then you turn around and come back to the dock. What’s confusing is that the part of the website I was on didn’t have a map and talked about two halves of the cruise, and it’s the same price if you do one half or two, but I didn’t understand how you would get back to your car if you got off halfway since I thought it was a single out-and-back. Anyway, we stayed on for both halves and even though it’s pretty warm today it was actually almost chilly on the boat. We love to be at sea and enjoyed ourselves a whole lot.

When we got back to the trailer it was shower time and then Dave made dinner – 10 cent chicken (so called because the recipe came out of a booklet I bought at a garage sale for, you guessed it, 10 cents). We haven’t done a lot of real cooking in the trailers and wanted to try it out. It worked very well, aside from a small mishap with the open bag of rice that we will probably be cleaning up from forever. While Dave cooked, I figured out how to play a DVD and set up the table for dinner. We weren’t crazy about the table solution the trailer came with, and Dave found a long skinny folding table we thought was the answer, and it worked ok but you have to sit up on the front edge of the recliner. We’ll do some more research. We discovered that the cupholders in the armrests will nicely hold a bottle of wine, and enjoyed our yummy dinner and reclining after while watching Bottle Shock and finishing off the bottle of rose’. In fact, the whole evening might have been the best part of the whole trip. 

Aside from the load leveling bars being almost impossible to attach, hitching up went very smoothly. Because we attached to the sewer system we didn’t even have to dump, and we were back home and fully unloaded by noon. We kept the trailer nice and clean, so minimal cleanup was needed – although we’re not sure if it was “Tabetha clean”.

That’s the end of the shakedown cruise.

Shakedown Cruise: It Cleared Up!

We woke up to a beautiful sunny morning. Our first task was to see if we could hook up to the sewer system, which we did with ease – no worrying about filling the gray water tank for us! We decided not to use the marble-raceway sewer line bridge thingies and felt we had made a good decision. After fighting a bit with the on again, off again internet (it only works if you put your phone down and don’t look at it) we were able to find a nice hike from the campground to Horsetail Falls. The hike goes through areas that were burned during the fire in 2017, and it was interesting to see how things are recovering. We’re still in the wet part of the Columbia Gorge, where you need to work to keep things from growing, and the underbrush is very dense and green, but also very low – not much above knee

height. Many of the trees along the trail are scorched, and one of the trail signs we saw had been half burnt up. The trail is exceptionally well marked, with signs everywhere. That’s helpful since there are no maps of the trail. The trail is also very, very narrow, hugging the side of a steep grade, but we had our sticks so it didn’t make me nervous – much. It was a perfect temperature for hiking, and although you can always hear the I-84 traffic and the occasional train, it’s also very peaceful. And until we got to the trail from the parking area to the waterfall, we were the only people on the trail.

The trail (gorge trail #400, in case you’re wondering) runs into the Horsetrail falls trail about halfway between the lower and upper falls, and we decided to go to the upper falls first. There were more people on the trail and it was much wider. We were walking along and then I could hear the falls, before we came around a corner and saw them – they’re amazing, a long plume of water gushing out of a sheer cliff of basalt.

AND, the trail goes behind the falls, so you can stand under a ledge of basalt and watch the water come down. Lovely! We walked up the trail a bit, and then headed to the lower falls, which are also lovely and which cascade down into a pool that you could wade or swim in if you wanted. On the walk back we took a slightly different path through the day use part of the park, which is shorter and less hilly than the way we went out. It was a perfect morning. The weather was so fine, with a gentle breeze and around 74 degrees. We had some lunch out on the picnic table, highlighted by some strawberries we brought with us and chips and hummus.

After lunch it was very tempting to just settle into the recliners, but we managed to fight our way clear of them and headed into Cascade Locks. Dave thought he’d found a trail that started around the Bridge of the Gods – did I mention that the BotG is barely two lanes wide and has NO pedestrian walkway, but is part of the Pacific Crest Trail? Like you’re supposed to walk on it and share the lane with giant tractor-trailer trucks? – Anyway, a trail that started near there and meandered along the river. It turned out not to exist, but we had a very fun walk through Cascade Locks down to the Marine Park which is where the original Cascade Locks were, and also Thunder Island with its two wedding venues, and of course a boat launch and marina and the boarding place of the Sternwheeler Columbia Gorge, which we will go on tomorrow. We walked all around Thunder Island (which sounds so much better than the name we think it should be called, which is goose poop island), including being told we were trespassing when we crossed beyond some cones at the eastern tip. There are cherry trees growing at the eastern end which we tried a few of – they were ok but not great.

We found a map!

On the way to Marine Park we passed by the Eastside Drive-in, which has soft serve ice cream which we thought we might get some of on the way back in honor of family in SF. But it turns out that a) due to COVID they are only doing drive-up, no counter or walk-up window service and 2) they are hugely popular and had a huge line. So instead we walked back to the car and drove back to camp, where we did some major relaxing and also tried out the shower. I have a lot of hair to wash.

Bonus photo from Thunder Island. 

Back into C.L. for dinner. On the way we parallel old highway 30, parts of which have been turned into a bike trail. We think it might be fun to bring bikes sometime. I wonder if Eastside would serve us if we biked thru? Dinner was at Thunder Island Brewing, which looks sort of sterile and humdrum but turned out to be delightful. For one thing, they’ve combined scan-and-order online with cheerful, friendly service in a way that really works (and lets me order lots of small beers). For another thing, the big open dining space has lots and lots of windows so even though we didn’t get to eat on the patio it still felt like being outside – and outside is beautiful, overlooking (underlooking?) the BotG. Dave had a reuben with kimchee instead of sauerkraut and delicious fries that Jen and I would both love, and I had a yummy salad with perfectly cooked salmon. My salad was interesting because it had beets AND golden raisins AND candied walnuts, which would normally be too much sweet, but the dressing was nice and acidic to balance it out. So good stuff. They even had a low-IBU IPA that I liked.

Back to the trailer for reading/knitting/relaxing/listening to trains, and also making and sitting by a nice campfire. We brought some DVDs but I don’t know if we’ll get to them. There is a lot to do!

Shakedown Cruise: Getting there

 

We bought a new 17’ Imagine trailer with heated, vibrating recliners instead of a dinette and a murphy bed for space saving. Dave picked it up on Wed June 9^th, and we got all the stuff moved in from the old trailer on Saturday. I went to work and took a Pilates class on Monday, and then we packed up on Tuesday morning. Our plan had been to be ready to go at 1:30, but a combination of slow service at Ridgewalker (back to counter service, good; many low alcohol, lower ibu beers on tap, also good, but the food is meh or meh- minus), not being completely in the groove of how to hitch up, and having to wait out drenching rainstorms meant we left later, which meant that it was rush hour pretty much all the way through Portland. Also drenching rainstorms while we were driving, which wasn’t a lot of fun for Dave. Fortunately it wasn’t pouring when we got to the campground, and we were able to get set up fairly easily, except for the cool new leveling block slipping on the wet pavement.

Ainsworth state park is lovely; green and leafy with just one big loop, at the foot of some amazing basalt peaks. And the trailer is lovely too – although it’s smaller (by 7 feet) than our old trailer it feels much more spacious and has more comfortable places to sit – and an astonishing amount of storage space. What Ainsworth doesn’t have, even though it’s barely off of I-84, is cell signal… mostly. Sometimes if you put your phone down you get some. We didn’t really plan for that and hadn’t done a lot of research about local attractions, which turned out to be a bad thing because even though there are many wonderful hiking trails, none of the many, many signboards have trail maps. None. We went for a quick walk through the campground (so many information boards… ) and then headed out for dinner in Cascade Locks, where both of the brewpubs are closed on Tuesday. 

BotG and a weather preview

We decided to head to Stevenson, WA for dinner, which is only 3 miles or so from Cascade Locks. It may be close by, but it's across the Bridge of the Gods, one of the world’s scariest interstate bridges. It’s barely two lanes wide and carries heavy traffic from Oregon to Washington and vice versa. It’s also a toll road, $2 each way. The taphouse there had good beer (walking man brewery Schwarzbier) and good food.  We sat at a counter that looked out the front window, and watched the rain come and go across the valley. It was fascination to watch it slowly hide more and more of the scenery, even though we’d rather it had been not raining. I might note here that it’s been raining hard on and off for the past week or so, but the forecast from Wed on was for sun, sun, and more sun.

We got safely back across the bridge without paying (the toll taker was on break) and back to our trailer palace, where Dave connected by Bluetooth to the sound system and we listened to tunes in our recliner, reading or knitting. It ended up being kind of a stressful day, and we were glad to turn in. The bed is quite comfy, and aside from being awakened several times by trains going by (long, long, long trains, carrying cheaply made goods from the East to the East coast) we slept very well.

I still have the $2 from the return trip in the outside pocket of my purse, just in case we need to take a quick trip to Washington.