July 8, 2013: Hermiston, OR to Columbia River Gorge

Another gorgeous sunny and cool morning.  Headed north to Scenic Route 14 in Washington that follows the Columbia River all the way to the Pacific.
 The scenery is brown hills with sagebrush gradually interspersed with verdant vineyards. This is prime wine grape producing country, home of Columbia Crest along with many small regional wineries.  It was morning and I'm not big on wine for breakfast, so we passed on visiting the wineries.

We had problems deciding whether to gaze at the river below or the floating snow covered Mt. Hood directly in front of us as we drove west.

 We stopped at the most unusual memorial to veterans killed in action we have ever seen - a reproduction of England's Stonehenge, set on a bluff overlooking the Columbia River.

Another stop at the Bonneville Dam, a depression era project.  It was fun to watch through underwater windows the fish climbing the ladder to get upstream beyond the dam.  Along the Columbia River w saw lots of windsurfers and kiteboarders.

We stopped at Ainsworth State Park right in the Gorge for the night.

No comments:

Post a Comment