Columbia River Gorge and Portland City Tour

For my last day in Oregon, I decided to take an all day tour of the Columbia River Gorge and the City of Portland. We started making our way east. Our first stop was Troutdale, the "Gateway to the Gorge". It was a typical PNW one street town, but very cute.

This is a view of the gorge. Oregon is on the south side of the river, and Washington is on the north. The river separates the two states for 330 miles.

Next, we stopped at the Vista House. It is an outlook which was built in 1917. Here I am, leaning against the basalt stone walls. it cost $98,000 to build. That was a fortune. It served as a rest stop for pioneers traveling the Columbia Highway.

Here are two more views of the river gorge. It really is beautiful. The Vista House is 733 feet above the river.

Next, we went to the Latourelle Falls. They were a wealthy French Canadian family who donated the land to the city of Portland. They are 239 feet high.

The part where the water hits the ground is called the punch bowl.

Then we went to the Wahkeena Falls, which are around 170 feet high, and much calmer and more serene than the Latourelle Falls.

The third falls that we saw were the famous Multnomah Falls. These are 620 feet high and there is a foot bridge across the lower part. It is called the Benson Bridge, after Samuel Benson, who is the same guy who built The Benson Hotel, where we stayed. He was a lumber baron and built the bridge in 1914.

Here are the upper cascades of the falls. They are fed by a glacier that is on Larch Mountain. They spill over the precipice all year round.

Here is the lodge. In 1915, Benson donated 300 acres and architect AE Doyle built the lodge in 1925. I could not rotate the picture, so look sideways. Sorry !!!

This large rock is where the water hits the bottom. It is covered in lime green lichen.

Here is another picture of the scenic beauty of the gorge. This 80 mile stretch was created by huge floods about 12000 years ago that carved the basalt cliffs and made the waterfalls.

The last falls were the Horsetail Falls. It was a 0.4 mile hike up to the platform from which they could be viewed. They are 176 feet tall. There are also Horsetail Falls in Yosemite, but they are 1540 feet tall.

After that, we headed back to the city for lunch at the famous food trucks. I had lamb gyros. They were delicious. We sat in a park and ate. Then we went again to the Lan Su Gardens. I took a picture of some embroidered robes there.

I also tried my hand at calligraphy and wrote the word dog. It really wasn't all that similar to the correct one, as you can see. There was a Chinese lady from LA on the tour with me, and she showed me how she could write her name in Chinese characters.

I also took a picture of a beautiful mandala, which reminds me of the adult coloring books, only vastly superior.

Then we went to the Pittock Mansion. It is in a part of town known as Washington Park. Henry Pittock made his fortune as the publisher of The Oregonian since 1850. The mansion was built in 1914. Sadly, Henry died in 1918 and his wife Georgiana in 1919. The last remaining Pittock left the house in 1958. It was abandoned and destroyed by a violent storm on Columbus Day in 1962. it has now been restored due to a fundraising effort by many Portlanders.

This is the Grand Staircase. The mansion has four floors, three above ground and one beneath.

This room is called the library, as you can see, but also served as the parlor for greeting guests.

Here are two views of the Music Room. This was a big source of entertainment for Victorian families, and both Pittock daughters studied music and voice in Philadelphia prior to their marriages.

This is the Turkish Smoking Room, named because of the ceiling. After dinner, men would go in there to drink and smoke, and women would go to the Music Room to talk and sing.

This is the formal dining room. There were nine members of the Pittock family, since they took in some orphaned nieces. There was a mirror over the sideboard, so that everyone at the table had the same magnificent view of the city below them. I will show you that later.

This is the sideboard in the butler's pantry. All of the fine china was stored and washed here.

They had a nice modern white enamel stove in their kitchen. It was the fashion of the day, since it was believed that the old fashioned iron stoves were hotbeds of germs, and the enamel ones could be scrubbed until they sparkled.

This is the cold storage pantry, where canned goods and fruits and veggies were railed up from California. The Pittocks also had a large garden and a greenhouse, but the storm destroyed both, and they were not rebuilt.

This is the Breakfast Room. It was much smaller than the dining room, because people got up at different times, and the older married ladies took their breakfast in their rooms.

I thought the shower looked pretty interesting and pretty modern for 1914. The rest of the bathroom fixtures - tub, toilet and sink have been replaced many times, and look like the ones we all have in our houses.

Then we move to the second floor. This floor has mostly bedrooms and the sewing room. All of the women sewed and mended out of necessity and also did needlepoint and embroidery to illustrate their skills and talents.

The bedrooms are all the same. You can tell which is the master by the canopied bed, and which are the children's room by the buggy.

This is the mansion from the back. It was obviously designed to maximize the view of the city far below. All the windows looked out onto this back lawn.

Here I am, posing in front of the spectacular vista.

The last stop was the international Rose Test Gardens. They were acquired by the city in 1917, and were used to test the viability of new varieties. The first Gold medal was awarded in 1919.

All of the roses that have won gold medals have a separate garden within the garden, built in 1969. The gardens test about 200 hybrids and cultivars per year and judge them on color, vigor, fragrance, flower production, disease resistance, form and foilage.

There are miniature rose sections, climbing rose sections, and floribunda sections.

There is also a Shakespeare Garden, built in 1945. It is composed of herbs, trees and flowers mentioned in Shakespeare's plays.

These last few pictures are of South Street Park, Jackson Tower, and a typical downtown district street. South Park is eleven city blocks donated by Daniel Lownsdale. It was later subdivided into North and South Parks, because the city forgot to get all the land rights, and buildings were built between the north and south blocks.

Jackson Tower was formerly the Oregon Journal building. It is currently being renovated. This was last done in 1972. The clock tower used to be covered in light bulbs and the clock chimed every 15 minutes. It doesn't have either of those features anymore. I don't know what it will be used for after it is renovated.

Well, I fly back tomorrow. I really miss Pandi, and can't wait to see her. In the meantime, bye bye Portland, you are a unique and beautiful rainy city on a huge river, with many bridges. The city is unlike any I have been to before.

See you all later !!!!