Mt. Hood and Environs

                      Mount Hood in North Central Oregon is a volcano.

                                    From up on its sloping sides, you can view its little sister Mt. Saint Helens, which is only about one hundred miles to the north. Both reside in the still scary (and active) Cascade Range. We all can remember the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens, (only forty-four years ago, a gnat’s life in geologic time) which measures its age with epochs and eons never mind years and centuries!

                                                Mount Hood is still venting, and the occasional whiff of escaped sulfur gases can be detected from time to time. The next eruption of this mountain is set for maybe some time next week, so we felt very comfortable visiting the old lodge and having a very nice lunch.

Only kidding!

Actually Mt. Hood is still monitored but Mt. St. Helens is considered the “Most Likely to Succeed” in an eruption any time soon.

Film at 11.

(I hope that someone in the class has noticed that I did not go into the Plate Tectonics of this region for fear of losing some newly acquired readers!)

                                                We are at our next stop after Spokane, and it is a bit further West. We are in both Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington which are directly across the HUGE Columbia River from each other.

We are visiting Steve and Sandi, friends from the World Cruise. You may recall we were with them this past February in Palm Springs where they stay in the winter. In the warmer weather they live up here directly on the Columbia River which provides a never-ending supply of passing ships, osprey sightings, and the occasional really fast speedboat!

Sandi and Steve have been our “Tours by Locals” tour guides for the past few days, and we keep joking about how many “Stars” they will be getting from us, the “Tourists”.

So far, so good!

This part of our country is dominated by a few notable natural features, namely, volcanoes, the combined river system of the Columbia and the Snake, and vast forested areas that are now prone to spontaneous combustion it seems.

                        We did visit Mount Hood, and it is quite impressive at over 11,000 feet in elevation. This elevation is more remarkable as the surrounding countryside has an elevation that is relatively low (about 1500’) and flat making Mt. Hood seem to just jump from the surrounding countryside. Mt. Hood also “makes” its own “weather” as evidenced by the stubborn clouds that hung just at the summit and quickly disappeared as they moved on. Still, seeing all-year-around-snow was impressive and this is the only spot in the country that offers skiing all year around. Many a ski-team ventures up here for a little practice in the off-season.

                        Clinging to the slopes is the Timberline Lodge which was dedicated by FDR in 1937. A combined project of the WPA and CCC, it was constructed using local materials, especially the giant wooded beams and posts. Local artisans weaved the rugs and sewed the curtains, it really was a labor of love that went into this exciting project.

A few years later, WWII broke out and of course the hotel deteriorated over that time. When the war was over and business resumed, bad management and questionable business practices brought the Lodge to its knees, and it was scheduled to be razed. Enter Richard L. Kohnst (RLK) a local guy who thought he could fix it all. Fix it he did because ever since that day in 1955 his company and family have guided this enterprise very successfully to international prominence. It’s interesting how one can tell that an establishment is not part of a “national” chain of management companies that vies for the business of running these great Lodges. That delicious lunch that I mentioned before was the key for me. The menu was not “cookie-cutter’ in any aspect and the offerings were unique enough to suggest that they were far from generic. I had a “French Dip” that was the best I’ve ever had, complete with that “dip” part being infused with a Bleu Cheese, which made it a tad creamy and very tasty. That’s how I could tell, and it was confirmed when I asked our waitress about the company that ran this Lodge.

                        There is nothing better than a family run operation.

                        The other prominent feature around here is the Columbia River. This thing is HUGE! We have over 2500 rivers in this country and the Columbia comes in at #8 for length at about 1240 miles but ups its game when calculating discharge…. It doubles its ranking and jumps up to #4!

                        The Columbia River Gorge is one of our Scenic Designations in the country. It was carved out a really long time ago when a really big inland sea suddenly lost its drain plug and carved its way out of Montana, Dakota, and Idaho areas and plunged down thru this expanse carving its way to the Pacific Ocean.

                        We plan on returning to the Pacific Northwest in the future. The opportunity to see the Snake River Gorge at over 8000’ deep is too tempting to miss. Plus, when we travel from Montana to Spokane we travel thru some really pretty parts of Idaho with beautiful lakes and pretty valleys all just waiting for us to set a spell in.

We’re here for two more days, so more to come!