Thoughts on the Oregon Trail

One general theme of this (and past trips) has been the greater appreciation we’ve been having for the early settlers. We’ve been stopping at historical markers and just looking at the land. It’s absolutely unbelievable the places people went with Conestoga wagons. And the distances they covered. People actually took oxen and wagons through Craters of the Moon! It took us hours to drive some of the distances through mind-numbing flat/hill/sagebrush terrain and we were in an air conditioned car (with music) on a paved highway!

Classic Roadfood.com experience

We chased another Roadfood recommendation into the southwest section of Portland. Our map didn’t do quite what we thought it would do so we ended up with a nice tour of some of the residential areas in the city. After a long, convoluted route made more complicated by construction and one way streets we ended up at our restaurant. Which was closed. So we grabbed a random Thai place and had a fantastic meal.

Columbia River Gorge a Bust

After Mount Saint Helens we decided we had enough time to swing through at least part of the Columbia River Gorge on our way to the hotel. The map listed a place called the Columbia River Gorge Interpretive Center about 40 miles along the river that we thought might be interesting to check out. We took Route 14 along the edge of the river but despite the grand entrance sign proclaiming it a national scenic area there really wasn’t much to look at. The views that weren’t blocked by roadside trees weren’t of huge rock cliff faces that we’d been expecting but more river and meadow valley. Not once did we even think about reaching for the camera.

We crossed the grandly named Bridge of the Gods ($1 per car) and drove to Portland along I-84. Yes that’s the same I-84 we have back in CT. Turns out it ends in Portland. We’ve now been to both ends of the road. Haven’t done a whole lot of the middle, but we’ve seen both ends.

It Wasn’t $9 So We Didn’t Bother

We decided to push on to the last visitor center, rather than stopping all along the way. The AAA book said it would be $3, instead it was $8 per person. Honestly, if it had been $8 and less of a mob scene complete with frantic rushing to make the next talk, we would have paid. If it had been free and with mob scene, we would have fought the mob. We settled for going to a nearby outlook and getting the same view without interpretive exhibits.

Mount Saint Helens

We headed off to Mount Saint Helens. There’s no direct way to get there. As the crow flies it would have been quite short. As we went was 2 – 3 hours. The views of Mount Saint Helens are remarkably beautiful; the mountain is covered in strips of snow. It turns out that the volcano became active again in 2004 (hence the sale on the “here we go again” t-shirts from 2006), and this day was no exception with pretty continual wisps of steam coming from the center of the crater.

There are a ton of visitor centers, and it’s tough to tell which is about what. We stopped at the free Forest Learning Center, which close observation of the nature of the exhibits shows it is probably brought to us by the forest products company, Weyerhaeuser, which owns most of the land in the area.

Some areas of the mountain have been reforested by Weyerhaeuser starting in 1982, and some of those have been fertilized as well. Other areas have been left to recover on their own. It’s very interesting to see which what has happened where. The least amount of re-growth has occurred on the crater side of the mountain. The opposite side of the mountain almost looks like a regular mountain with snow capped peak and forests.

Back to Mount Rainier

For our route back to the Portland airport, we decided to spend the day at Mt. St. Helens and Columbia River Gorge. In order to have enough time for them both in one day, we would need to spend the night in the area. Thus, we rationalized going back to Mt. Rainier. We spent the last camping night of our trip back at our favorite place, but we did try a different campground (Cougar Rock, nice, but not nearly as nice as Ohanapecosh).

We were set up around 5, perfect length of time to take a hike. A glance at the map on the board in front of the ranger station led us to Carter Falls, a 2.2 mile round trip trail with a 500’ elevation gain on the way up. Sounded perfect. We took it nice and easy on the way up, stopping every so often to look at plants, trees, etc. There were actually two waterfalls at the top, well worth the effort. Plus, going down was fun. At the base of the hike is the Nisqually River, which comes from glacial melt, as opposed to melting snow. It really does look very different – very milky, churned. The other is exceedingly clear.

Our last ranger program of the trip was the right note to go out on. Ranger Jim’s presentation was a tour de force. It began with a primer on plate tectonics and how they cause various geological features (like mountains and volcanoes), and segued seamlessly (how, we’re still not sure) into plant and animal adaptations. It basically covered pretty much an entire high school earth science class with a liberal helping of biology as well. He was only momentarily thrown when his laptop went into ‘hibernate’ mode (‘gone the way of the marmot,’ he quipped as he went to check on it) forcing him to finish without the aid of slides. As most of the evening talks we’d been to this trip had lasted on the order of 20 minutes, we were surprised to be there well past dark (and after 10). But it was worth it.

Decision Time

It was 11:45 and check out time at the campground was noon. It was decision time. Should we stay or should we go? The main choice seemed to be whether to head back to Mount Rainier or spend another day here. We waffled and ended up deciding to stay and make the eastward drive to see the rest of the North Cascades Scenic Highway. We’d heard from our neighbors at the campground that it was worth it.

This turned out to be one of the best decisions of the trip. As it happens, Colonial Creek is essentially the line of demarcation in this area between boring, obstructed views of North Cascades and gorgeous vistas of the mountains. We’d stayed west of our campground and missed the jaw-dropping scenery that makes up “the most beautiful mountain drive in Washington.” One particular spot, the Washington Pass, was indescribable. (It’s worth noting, though, that by the time we hit this we were into national forest land as opposed to the park itself).