Day 4 - Friday, April 1, 2005 - The Columbia River Gorge

 

I began the day by driving back over the Columbia River from Portland to Vancouver, WA, back to Custom RV Interiors to tweak the fine work done the evening before...

 

East from Vancouver, WA, along the north, Washington State, side of the Columbia River. On the Lewis & Clark Trail...

 

         

 

Into the Columbia River Gorge...

 

     

 

Beacon Rock...

 

The Bonneville Dam...

 

Bridge Of The Gods... facing Oregon, over the Columbia River. I stayed on the Washington State side of the river...

 

Proceeding eastward through the Gorge, to the crest of the Cascade Mountains...

 

       

 

   

 

The climate transition zone. West of the Cascade Mountains crest the climate is maritime. East of the crest the climate becomes arid...

 

         

 

       

 

 

The Maryhill Stonehenge... finished in 1930 by a fellow named Sam Hill as a memorial for the soldiers from Klickitat County in the state of Washington who died in World War I...
 

       

 

       

 

       

 

   

 

Postcard aerial view, facing westward toward Oregon's Mt. Hood...

 

Continuing eastward through the Gorge to Umatilla...

 

         

 

       

 

At Umatilla, near where the great river's course changes to flow from the north, I turned to the south, into Eastern Oregon...

 

       

 

 

 

I proceeded through Pendleton and southward into the Umatilla National Forest as darkness fell. At Ritter Butte Summit I stopped and observed a sky filled with countless stars...

 

I made it to the small town of Mount Vernon by around 9:00pm. In the hundred plus miles from Pendleton to Mount Venom I passed barely a dozen other vehicles and lights were far and few in between. At Mount Vernon I parked beside the City Hall and found a watering hole next door called The Wheel...