Thursday, June 20, 2002

2002 Oregon/Montana/Yellowstone summer trip

This was a very different summer Oregon trip for us.  Dad entered a National Bowling Tournament in Billings, Montana, with my brother, and he asked us to ride along with him.  So we did---making DH, Ken, drive, of course.  It was fun seeing a totally different part of the USA.  We made it a touring trip, stopping at many places along the way.  Even some new places for us in Oregon!

Not new to us, but along the way is the Historic Columbia River Highway.  I-84 would have been quicker, but if I have the choice of a scenic drive, I'd much rather take it.  The Historic Columbia River Highway is an approximately 75 mile  scenic highway in Oregon built through the Columbia River Gorge between 1913 and 1922. It is the first planned scenic roadway in the United States.  There are many pull outs and viewpoints along the way. 
Here are just a few of them:
View of the Vista House from the  Portland Women's Forum State Park viewpoint.
Vista House is an observatory at Crown Point in Multnomah County.  It serves as a memorial to Oregon pioneers and as a viewpoint for travelers on the Historic Columbia River Highway.  It was completed in 1918.  When we were there, it was fenced off for restorations which ended up taking 5 years.

But we were still able to get a nice view from there of the Columbia River gorge.  This was looking east with Washington State on the other side of the Columbia River.

There are also lots of waterfalls near this highway.  We even stopped at a couple of them.