April 2014: Seeing the Pacific Northwest by train

Despite living in California for more than two decades, there are a couple of major west coast cities that we hadn't visited before this year: Portland and Seattle. We did pass through Portland (and even had dinner there with friends) on our Oregon trip in 2012, but we didn't see much of the city. And we had never gotten any closer to Seattle than Sea-Tac Airport.

This year, we decided to rectify those omissions, as well as a third one: the fact that we had never been north of the San Francisco Bay area on Amtrak's Coast Starlight. The Los Angeles-Seattle Starlight has long been known as Amtrak's premier long-distance train, both for the beautiful territory it covers and for the quality of its on-board service. We had accumulated enough Amtrak Rewards points to pay for a sleeping car in both directions, so early this year we booked a ten-day trip that would take us to both Seattle and Portland, with a side trip to visit a friend in Coos Bay, Oregon.

We planned our trip for the first half of April. As our departure date of April 6 approached, we began to get nervous watching the weather reports from the Pacific Northwest: rain day after day and week after week. Tom said, "let's wait until May." Marcia said, "what makes you think May will be any better?" So we stuck with our original plans.

April 6 finally came, and we drove 45 minutes from our house to San Luis Obispo, where we boarded the northbound Starlight under a blue California sky.

One of the train's features is the Pacific Parlour Car, a lounge car available just for sleeping car passengers, and assigned exclusively to the Starlight. We spent many hours here during our trip, watching the scenery from the lounge on the second level of this bi-level car.

As we left San Luis Obispo we began the long climb up Cuesta Grade, north of town, gaining more than 1,000 feet of elevation in our first 14 miles. A few weeks earlier, these hills had been brown thanks to California's long-running drought. But in March we had a few good soaking rains, and so as we began our journey the hills were covered in many shades of green.

We reached San Jose shortly after 8:00 P.M., and from that point we traveled through darkness as we stopped at Oakland, Sacramento, Chico and other California cities and towns en route to Oregon and Washington. Our sleeping accommodations consisted of a roomette with two bunk beds. There are larger, more expensive bedrooms on Amtrak overnight trains, but the roomette is a workable alternative for two people.

Marcia took the lower bunk while Tom took the upper, which had very limited clearance between the mattress and the ceiling. Somehow he got in and out of it without injuring himself. With the train's movement and noise, it wasn't a restful night, but we both got a few hours of sleep, and certainly felt better in the morning than if we had spent the night in a coach seat.

Tom was up early, watching the scenery from the lounge car. We were almost into Oregon when 14,179-foot Mount Shasta came into view over a nearby ridge.

Our first stop in Oregon was Klamath Falls. From there, our route took us over the Cascade Mountains toward Eugene. We had hoped to see more snow in the Cascades, but recent rains followed by some warm days had left just a tiny amount of snow at the highest elevations.

We traveled through Oregon's pastoral Willamette Valley, under sunny skies, before reaching Portland Union Station in mid-afternoon. This was a major stop for the Starlight, so Tom got off the train and walked around the station, under the sign encouraging travelers to Go By Train.

Judging by how busy the station was, there did seem to be a lot of people going by train.

A few minutes after leaving Portland, we crossed the Columbia River, getting a nice view of Mount Hood, which rises to 11,250 feet above sea level. These floating homes are on Hayden Island, between Oregon and Washington.

We could tell that we were getting close to the end of our journey a few hours later when the twin suspension bridges spanning the Tacoma Narrows came into view. The original bridge at this site opened in July 1940 and collapsed four months later thanks to its inability to withstand the local winds. These two bridges, built in 1950 and 2007, have proved sturdier.

We could also see 14,411-foot Mount Rainier, 50 miles to the southeast

We arrived in Seattle about 8:30 P.M., having been on the train for 29 hours since leaving San Luis Obispo. One of the things we most enjoyed about the trip, both coming and going, was meeting new people, particularly at mealtime in the dining car. Tables are set for four, and you never know who will be seated across from you. At different meals we met people from Philadelpha, Seattle, and Germany, as well as a couple, both teachers, from southern California; they had taught in several other countries earlier in their careers. The food in the dining car was surprisingly good, too.

We were surprised at how many families with young children were on the train. But we can certainly understand why they would travel this way, since it's far less stressful than a car trip.

We spent two nights in Seattle, and one of our first priorities was to visit Pike Place Market, which is full of vendors selling a variety of wares, with an emphasis on local foods, flowers and other products...

... and, of course, magnificent-looking fish and other seafood. On the day we were there, we saw several signs announcing that the first Alaskan halibut of the season had just arrived.

We had breakfast at the Crumpet Shop, a bakery near the market that specializes in its namesake product, and then spent more than an hour touring the market itself.

When we began to plan our trip, Marcia got in touch with her friend Liz, who we had gotten to know during our 2008 summer at Grand Teton National Park. Liz and Marcia worked together in the gift shop at Jackson Lake Lodge that summer, and though she's a generation younger than we are, she and Marcia had become close over those four months.

Liz grew up in Seattle, and is a big booster of her home town. When she learned that we would be visiting the city, she suggested that we contact her mother, Rayma, to see if she would be available to give us a tour. Rayma, it turned out, was not just available, she was willing, even enthusiastic, and she turned out to be a wonderful tour guide. She picked us up at our hotel and spent the next several hours driving us from one end of Seattle to the other, providing excellent narration along the way.

Among the more memorable stops were:

• The North Admiral neighborhood of West Seattle, where we had an excellent view of downtown Seattle, including the Space Needle and the Bainbridge Island ferry (which is something we'll take advantage of the next time we're in Seattle).

• The Volunteer Park Conservatory...

... a Victorian-style greenhouse in the Capitol Hill neighborhood with thousands of plant specimens, with an emphasis on palms, ferns, cacti and bromeliads (members of the pineapple family). Some of the specimens change with the seasons, while others remain in place year-round.

On the day we were there, it seemed that the most common color on display was pink. 

• The Ballard Locks Fish Ladder. The Seattle area has a complex network of lakes and waterways, both freshwater and saltwater. One of the freshwater lakes is Lake Union, which lies north of downtown Seattle and south of the University of Washington. It is home to a variety of maritime enterprises, as well as two seaplane bases and a number of floating homes.

The Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, known locally as the Ballard Locks, are the gateway between the Lake Washington Ship Canal and Lake Union to the east, and Puget Sound to the west. Because of the 20-foot difference in elevation between Lake Union and the sound, the Locks are used to raise eastbound vessels and lower those headed west. This is the spillway where fresh water from Lake Union pours into Puget Sound.

To allow salmon to return to Lake Union to spawn at the end of their life cycle, a fish ladder lets the fish get around the locks and dam en route to fresh water. On the day we visited, the fish ladder was not in heavy use, but it does provide a critical link in helping to maintain the salmon population.

And speaking of salmon, we enjoyed dinner a short distance from the Ballard Locks, at Chinook's restaurant (Chinook is the formal name for king salmon). Rayma's husband (and Liz's Dad), George, joined us for an excellent seafood dinner. Marcia went for the newly arrived Alaskan halibut and Tom chose the silver (coho) salmon. 

As we ate, we had a view of the small boat harbor adjacent to the restaurant. It was an authentically Pacific Northwest meal with great company.

It rained on and off during the last couple of hours of our Seattle tour, but that was the first and last rain we would see during our ten-day trip. Despite the wet weather that the region had endured for many weeks leading up to our trip, the weather gods smiled on us for 99 per cent of the time that we were in Washington and Oregon. We were very grateful.

Our stay in Seattle was short -- one full day, and part of the next morning before we boarded a train for Portland. George suggested that one thing we might want to see before we left town was Benaroya Hall, home to the Seattle Symphony. It is home to two huge chandeliers created by glass artist Dale Chihuly. They were magnificent.

Amtrak serves Seattle through King Street Station, built in 1906 and restored over the past four years. Waiting for our train here was much more pleasant than any airport.

The station is a local landmark thanks to its 242-foot tower, modeled after the Campanile di San Marco in Venice.

Our train, like the one above, was part of Amtrak's Cascades service, using low-slung, European-style cars designed by a Spanish company. We reached speeds as high as 79 mph when we were moving, but heavy freight traffic meant we also spent a lot of time sitting. Still, it was a pleasant ride, and we arrived in Portland close to our scheduled mid-afternoon arrival time.

We rented a car and drove to our hotel in suburban Beaverton. The next morning, we connected with our friend Margie, who had been one of Marcia's college roommates. She and her husband Ken had migrated from New Jersey to Portland a few years ago. They liked it but still felt the pull of the east coast, where their son and daughter live. But after a one-year return to the east, they decided that they really were westerners, so earlier this year they moved back to Portland, where they plan to buy a house. Ken wasn't able to join us, but Margie spent the entire day guiding us around downtown Portland.

We started with a light rail ride from Hillsboro into the city. Portland has been the leader among U.S. cities in making investments over the past 30 years in light rail systems designed to get people out of their cars. The MAX system now has four lines totalling 53 miles, reaching from the center city into the most heavily populated suburbs, including a line to the Portland airport.

Augmenting the MAX system are a couple of streetcar lines within downtown Portland, like the one below. The sign in the distance reads "Go By Streetcar," and many Portlandians do exactly that.

Our good luck with the weather continued, and we walked from one end of downtown Portland to the other, in addition to a couple of streetcar and MAX rides to go longer distances. One of our first destinations was Powell's, which was the largest bookstore we had ever been in.

After a coffee-and-pastries stop on the north side of downtown, we boarded a MAX train to get to the Portland Aerial Tram. Its mission is to serve the Oregon Health and Science University hospital complex, which is on a hill overlooking downtown Portland and the Willamette River.

The tram's web site is gobytram.com. At the lower tram station is a "bike valet," promoting itself with the slogan "Go By Bike." On its web site, its owner says his belief is that "to make the world a better place it is going to require a lot more people riding bicycles."

So, in Portland you're encouraged to go by train, streetcar, tram or bike. We didn't see any signs encouraging us to go by car.

Aside from serving the OSHU community, the tram is a tourist attraction. From the upper station you get views of Mount Hood...

... as well as the city and, in the distance, Mount St. Helens.

After we returned to the lower station, we took a long walk along the Waterfront Park Trail, followed by dinner at a local brewpub. By then it was time for us to get back on the MAX train and return to Hillsboro, near our hotel. It had been a pleasant and informative day; we felt as though we had learned a lot about Portland. Thank you, Margie!

The next day, we headed our rental car south through the Willamette Valley toward Eugene, where we would spend the night before continuing on to Coos Bay. The valley is dotted with wineries, but we wanted to get close to Eugene before stopping at any. Our friend Tom Foster in Coos Bay suggested that we stop at Silvan Ridge Winery, just outside Eugene, and it was perfect. It's in a beautiful setting, and we enjoyed the wine and hospitality in the tasting room before continuing on to Eugene for the night.

The following morning, we completed our trip to Coos Bay, a couple of hours from Eugene. Our friend Tom has been in Coos Bay for close to three years, helping to restart service on a 134-mile rail line that had been dormant for several years. We had seen him during our 2012 trip, and enjoyed our visit so much that we wanted to get back there before he decides to move on to other endeavors.

We spent the weekend with Tom, and on the second day we visited the historic town of Florence, whose boat harbor was full of both pleasure craft and working vessels.

This is a view of one of the railroad's many bridges, between Coos Bay and Florence. The scenery is breathtaking, but great scenery often makes for challenging railroading. The many rivers and creeks that the Coos Bay Rail Link has to span, the heavily forested area it traverses, and the region's wet winters combine to require constant vigilance by train crews as well as a high budget for maintenance.

 

Like the railroad, the area's highways have to contend with nature's obstacles. For U.S. Highway 101, which runs the length of the Oregon coastline, that means many bridges like the one below over the Siuslaw River. Fortunately this one, like several others along the state's coast, was built during the Great Depression when Art Deco was in vogue.

As we knew we would, we had a fun weekend visiting Tom, but on Monday morning it was time to leave Coos Bay. We drove back to Eugene, where we boarded the southbound Coast Starlight to return to California. Thanks to the hospitality of all of our hosts, and to our good luck with the weather, we had had a memorable ten days. And the next time we visit Portland or Seattle, we'll have a list of things to do that we missed during our short visits on this trip.

July 2012: Oregon road trip

We have lived in California for more than 20 years, but prior to this trip we had spent very little time in nearby Oregon. A few months ago we decided that this would be our year to visit the state, mainly because we have friends currently living in both Coos Bay and Portland.

Our itinerary would take us first to the San Francisco area, where our daughter Lindy lives; through the Napa and Sonoma wine country; into the redwood country of northern California and then on to southeastern Oregon for a weekend stop at Coos Bay; and, after a drive further north along the Oregon coast, eastward across the Coast Range and into the Portland area. We would return to California by way of central Oregon (with a stop at Crater Lake National Park). We set aside two weeks for the trip, trying to schedule enough time to see the sights along the way without feeling pressured into driving too far each day. 

After visiting Lindy in Walnut Creek, we headed north through wine country. We spent one night in Napa, and while the travel booker (Tom) claims it was just coincidence, we did end up in a Marriott property on the route of the Napa Valley Wine Train.

(Click on any photo to enlarge. All photos © 2012 Tom Murray)

We had pleasant visits at a couple of wineries, one in the Carneros region and one in the Napa Valley, and left the area with an ample supply of wine for our trip. This scene is near Kenwood in the Sonoma Valley (a.k.a. the Valley of the Moon), where many of the hillsides are covered with vines, as is most of the valley floor.

Heading north, we joined coastal Highway 1 at Jenner, near the mouth of the Russian River, where the marine layer was doing its best to move inland. But as we drove along the Sonoma coast, we had a bright sunny afternoon, and the fog stayed just off shore.

Our destination for that night was St. Orres, a rustic lodging place on Highway 1 in Gualala, in the southwest corner of Mendocino County. This part of the California coast was once occupied by Russia, and the architecture at St. Orres reflects this heritage.

St. Orres has a few rooms in the main lodge, but we stayed in one of several cabins on the property. In fact, we were able to reserve the same cabin (Sorrel Glen, located on the edge of a large grove of redwood trees) where had stayed on our first visit several years ago.

After an excellent dinner in the St. Orres dining room we settled down in our cabin, feeling far from civilization. In the morning, breakfast (a rice pudding custard wedge, fruit, gingerbread, homemade granola and juice) was delivered to us in a large wooden box, and we enjoyed eating on the rear deck of our cabin, with the redwoods towering above us.

From Gualala, we drove north through Mendocino and Fort Bragg, passing many scenic spots like this one near Port Arena.

About 25 miles north of Fort Bragg, Highway 1 leaves the coast and turns inland, where it becomes a winding, up-and-down road with many sharp turns. For several miles we followed a driver who was apparently unnerved by the many transitions and adjustments he had to make (our guess was that he may have been one of the many overseas visitors we noticed during our trip). Once we got past him, we made better progress and finally reached the north end of Highway 1, at a junction with U.S. 101.

Our destination for this night was Ferndale, California, a quaint Humboldt County town with a population of just over 1,000, several miles off Highway 101. It is full of Victorian homes and commercial buildings, and we stayed in one of them, aptly named the Victorian Inn. The town had been severely damaged in a magnitude 7.2 earthquake in 1992, causing more than $10 million in damage in Ferndale alone, but twenty years later the town seems to have fully recovered.

In fact, we were quite impressed with the condition of most of the town's older homes. The one below was typical, with fresh paint all around and a nicely maintained garden.

But the real showpiece in town was a B & B, the Gingerbread Mansion, which was nearing the end of a top-to-bottom renovation. A sign on the door said that it would reopen on July 1, although we were there in mid-July and it appeared that construction workers were not quite done.

Aside from Victorian buildings, one of Ferndale's tourist attractions is its cemetery. According to a sign, the site was chosen because its terrain made it unsuitable for commercial or farming purposes. There are numerous family burial plots, and the graves continue up the hillside.

One of the headstones provided a reminder of the perils of travel in the nineteenth century (Boland was a passenger on the ill-fated steamer Chilkat).

On our way to Ferndale, we started our exploration of the north coast redwoods with the Avenue of the Giants, a 31-mile road that connects with Highway 101 at both ends but offers a slower route through Humboldt Redwoods State Park. We made several stops to admire these magnificent trees, which are striking not just because of their size (the park has many trees greater than 350 feet in height) and age (many are estimated to be more than 1,000 years old) but also because they seem to grow so close to each other. Although we had seen coastal redwoods before, these seemed even more impressive. We watched in amazement as the distant tops of some of the trees swayed in the breeze.

The next day, we drove past the town of Eureka and into Redwood National Park, which binds together three smaller state parks, all of them home to large redwood groves. Near the south end of the park, we drove up a long hill to the Lady Bird Johnson Grove, site of a popular loop trail.

The grove's 1,200-foot elevation put it into the cloud cover, and after a short walk through the fog we decided to see what other trails might be available at a lower elevation. But we were impressed with the lush vegetation in this area, and particularly with the heavy layer of moss that covered trees both living and dead.

At the Big Tree wayside in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park we found a circle trail that gave us some nice views of the redwoods...

... as well as the lush forest floor.

 

It's been estimated that the old-growth California redwoods still in existence represent only about five per cent of the trees that were alive in the mid-nineteenth century. Still, while the loss to logging and other human activities has been staggering, we can be grateful to have these few majestic groves still in existence. "Awesome" is an overused word, but an appropriate one for these magnificent trees.

After spending the better part of two days seeing the redwoods, we were within 40 miles of the Oregon state line. We had tried to get a reservation for the night at the Requa Inn, a historic property on the banks of the Klamath River, but they were full so we stayed at a nearby motel.

However, we were able to eat dinner at the Requa that night, and it was a memorable experience. They have one communal seating for dinner, and the menu consists of whatever fresh ingredients the inn's two chefs have been able to obtain that day. One of the chefs comes to the table before each course to describe it and answer any questions, and then both chefs act as servers.

We had four courses, some plated, some serve-yourself and some multi-part. We started with spinach soup and ended with a dessert plate of homemade strawberry sorbet with fried basil and sugar, a soft meringue brick and olive oil sponge cake. In between we enjoyed broth with clams, baby new potatoes and carrots, and a main course of tuna fillet, accompanied by smelts, fried bread and summer squash salad. Everything was delicious and beautifully presented.

The next day, we started our drive up the Oregon coast. In some places, U.S. 101 hugs the coast, while in others it's located farther inland. Today as every day in our coastal drive, we had several stops for construction. Highway 101 is constantly under attack from nature as it erodes along the edges or develops bumps or depressions depending on the base below the surface. In one area, the placement of the highway was being moved inland because the ground under the road was crumbling into the Pacific.

After passing through the town of Brookings, we got some great views of the coastline, like this one at the Arch Rock turnout, part of the Samuel H. Boardman State Scenic Corridor.

At Cape Sebastian State Park, where the wind seemed to be blowing in excess of 40 miles per hour, we stopped for the excellent views both northward...

 ... and southward.

The most striking difference between the Oregon Coast and the coastline we are more familiar with in California is that Oregon's is simply much greener. In California, where there is vegetation, much of it is brown (or golden, as the state's publicists would call it) during the summer. Not so in Oregon!

We took some time to tour the lighthouse at Cape Blanco, which once claimed the title of the westernmost point in the lower 48. That title has been challenged on behalf of a couple of points in Washington State, but in any case we knew that we were as far west as we would get on this trip.

The lighthouse was built in 1870 and like all light stations of that era, was manned by a keeper who was responsible for keeping the light burning and for daily cleaning of the lens. In addition, as this sign notes, the remoteness of the location meant that the keeper had to supply his or her own food (yes, Cape Blanco did have a female keeper early in twentieth century). The light was electrified in 1936 and automated in 1980, and remains in service today.

The French-built lens in the Cape Blanco lighthouse (installed in 1936) measures 4’8" in diameter and 6’8" in height.

At the end of our first week on the road, we arrived in Coos Bay, Oregon, where our longtime friend Tom Foster is serving as general manager of Coos Bay Rail Link. The 137-mile rail line between Coos Bay and Eugene was opened in 1916 by Southern Pacific Railroad and closed in 2007 by its then-owner, RailAmerica, Inc. The Port of Coos Bay has since acquired the line and is working to revive rail service. Tom took us for a hi-rail ride over the southern portion of the line, as far as the town of Reedsport, where we had a lunch at a waterside café with a view of the railroad's bridge over the Umpqua River.

That evening, Tom invited us to a fund-raising dinner at the Coos Art Museum, where we enjoyed talking with supporters of the local arts community and viewing the maritime art on exhibit.

The next day, we visited Shore Acres State Park, west of Coos Bay, which offered a dramatic perspective on the geography of the coast...

... as well as acres of beautiful gardens...

... including an All-America rose garden, featuring many gorgeous varieties.

From Shore Acres, we drove a short distance to Cape Arago State Park for more great coastal views.

Along the way, we stopped at a turnout where a group of volunteer naturalists had set up scopes to view the islands just offshore, allowing us to view a variety of marine mammals (harbor seals, elephants seals, California sea lions, and Steller sea lions) hauling themselves out of the water and sunning themselves on the small island beaches. On the way back, we stopped for lunch (excellent crab cakes, and tuna and chips) in the fishing community of Charleston.

From our arrival on Friday evening to our departure on Monday morning, we had a great time visiting with Tom and getting acquainted with the area around Coos Bay.

After leaving Coos Bay, we continued north on U.S. 101, much of which was inland from the ocean. But we did reach the coast at Newport, which like many of the state's larger coastal communities, was built at a point where a river (in this case, the Yaquina) empties into the Pacific. And like other such towns along the Oregon coast, there is a large bridge carrying Highway 101 over the water.

Newport grew up as a fishing community, and while today tourism is an important part of the local economy, the two are very much interrelated, as the signs on this building suggest.

North of Newport, we stopped near Otter Rock, where we encountered the only surfing beach of our Oregon trip. We imagine that the water was quite cold, but of course all the surfers wore body suits to protect themselves.

Our destination that evening was the town of Garibaldi, on Tillamook Bay. Its port is home to many commercial and sport fishing vessels. Marcia wanted to stop at the local cannery to pick up some tuna, and while she was there she bought some fresh local shrimp, which we used as the main course for that night's dinner in our hotel room.

Garibaldi is also home to the Oregon Coast Scenic Railroad, and while we didn't take a train ride, we did make a quick photo stop on our way out of town.

Our route in and out of Garibaldi took us past the Tillamook Cheese factory, and so we had to stop once in each direction. This is a Disney-class tourist attraction in this part of Oregon. The parking lot was full of cars, RVs and buses from many states.

Part of the attraction is the viewing area where you can see large blocks of cheese entering on a conveyor, being cut into one-, two- and three-pound loaves, and then wrapped and packaged for distribution. You can also sample several varieties of Tillamook cheese.

But we think the real attraction is the ice cream counter, where you can purchase cones or dishes of any one (or more) of Tillamook's 30 flavors of ice cream. And high quality ice cream it is!  We understand that the other home-grown brand of Oregon ice cream (Umpqua) has its fans, but we were more than pleased with our samples of Tillamook. We had never tried this brand before, but now it's one of our favorites.

Our next destination was Beaverton, just outside Portland. On our way into the Portland area we stopped at a couple of wineries, including Shafer Vineyard Cellars, which has been in operation since 1978 (a long time by the standards of Oregon wineries). The co-owner, Miki, gave us a warm reception in the tasting room, and we enjoyed the great view across the vineyards toward the neighboring hills.

We were headed for Beaverton to visit our friends Margie and Ken. Margie was one of Marcia's roommates at Bates College in Maine, and Margie and Ken spent their working and family-raising years in New Jersey. Four years ago they drove their van west in search of adventure and a new environment. They ended up in Portland, at least for a while. We saw them briefly in California last year (for the first time in almost 30 years!) and decided then that we would try to visit them before they left Oregon.

Margie and Ken are active outdoors people. They've spent much of their time in Oregon working with the local Habitat for Humanity group, building and remodeling houses for people who otherwise couldn't afford them. They've also spent a lot of time hiking and exploring the local landscape, and they suggested that we spend a day with them taking a look at the Columbia River Gorge. That sounded good to us, so we set out across Portland and soon were on Interstate 84 entering the gorge.

Our first stop was at Multnomah Falls, whose 600-foot-plus total height makes it one of the tallest waterfalls in the United States (its exact rank is a matter of some debate). Regardless of exact height or rank it is a beautiful location. On Margie's and Ken's advice, we got an early start, because this is an extremely popular attraction and gets very crowded from mid-morning on. We did beat most of the crowd, and from the base of the falls we walked up a trail that took us close to the top.

The base of the main falls is a misty place, as the water splashes into a large pool. We were very glad to have a chance to spend some time here before it got crowded.

And, there was one added treat (for Tom, at least): frequent Union Pacific trains passing within sight of the falls.

After a picnic lunch near Cascade Locks, a few miles upriver, we spent some time visiting another major attraction, the Bonneville Lock and Dam. This is the dam's spillway, which controls the flow of water into the lower Columbia River; the land in the background is in the state of Washington.

Bonneville Lock and Dam was built in the 1930s, primarily as a way of producing inexpensive hydroelectric power for the northwest. It continues to do so today through two powerhouses: this one, on the Oregon side of the river, and a second one on the Washington side.

In the building and operation of this complex, much attention was given to the migration of fish upriver for spawning. A fish ladder – in effect, an elaborate stairway – was created that allows salmon and steelhead to move upstream, and employees are assigned to a fish viewing area to provide a daily count of fish moving up the ladder and assure that healthy populations are maintained.

After we left Bonneville we drove to Crown Point, overlooking the Gorge. This is the view upriver; Washington is on the left and Oregon on the right.

While we were in Portland, we also had a chance to visit our friend Liz from our 2008 summer in Grand Teton National Park. The four of us met Liz for dinner at McMenamins Kennedy School, a former elementary school that has been turned into a restaurant/pub/event venue with a unique character. (The McMenamin brothers have also taken other historic buildings in Oregon and Washington and given them new life as eating, drinking and lodging establishments.) Dinner was a lot of fun, both because of the setting and because we were able to renew acquaintance with Liz.

And we want to thank our friends Margie and Ken for being such gracious hosts and introducing us to the Portland area. (Note to Margie and Ken: we're eager to find out where you land next, so we can visit you there, too!)

We left Portland by again traveling through the Columbia River Gorge as far as Hood River, where we turned south toward Mount Hood. We stopped at the Mt. Hood Winery to taste their wines, and from their front door we had this wonderful view of the mountain.

We stayed in Bend, Oregon, that night. It’s a very appealing city with lovely green parks, nice cafés, shops and activities, and while we didn't have time to enjoy much of what the city had to offer, we liked it enough to put it on our return-visit list for our next trip to Oregon.

From Bend, we headed south toward Crater Lake, passing through miles and miles of forests. More than half of Oregon is government land of various categories. The U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management each control about one quarter of the state's land, with the remaining public land falling into a variety of categories: National Parks and Monuments, Wilderness Areas, Wildlife Refuges, State Parks and Forests, and other designations.

On the way to Crater Lake we had light rain with dark clouds overhead; it looked ominous. We decided to drive around the lake on the Rim Drive, going in a clockwise direction starting in the northwest. Our first stop was disappointing because the lake's color was closer to slate than the vivid blue we had expected. However, within 15 minutes, the clouds had dispersed and at our next viewpoint the lake was as beautiful as advertised.

Crater Lake is actually a volcanic crater (and in fact, this is technically still an active volcano). About 7,700 years ago, there was a violent eruption here, after which the volcano's magma chamber emptied. This caused the volcano's peak to collapse, forming a deep caldera. The resulting basin filled with water over time, and today the lake's deepest point is 1,943 feet under the surface of the water.

We continued our drive toward the Rim Village, where Crater Lake Lodge and other visitor facilities are located, making many stops along the way to get different perspectives on the lake.

 At the village, we walked to an overlook that had a display with many helpful signs, like this one:

Looking down from the overlook, we could see some of that "unabsorbed green sunlight" being reflected at us from the water's edge.

We went into the lodge for lunch, which Marcia described in her travel diary as a typical “national park lodge restaurant” meal – good but not noteworthy. Still, it was fun to soak up the atmosphere of this 97-year old lodge.

There's more to Crater Lake National Park than the lake and the lodge, though. After lunch we stopped at the visitor center near the park's headquarters and then took a couple of nature walks, including one on the Castle Crest wildflower trail, where we were rewarded with a colorful variety of flowers in bloom.

Our stop that night was near Medford, in the town of Central Point. Prior to this trip, we couldn't have found Central Point on a map, but now we know that it is a small hub of gourmet delights, including a very good cheesemaker (Rogue Creamery), which happens to be just a few steps from a high-end chocolatier (Lillie Belle Farms). And to get from the cheese store to the chocolate shop you have to pass the Taste of Alaska food truck and the Ledger David wine tasting room.

But this part of Oregon is full of other interesting places to explore, too. For starters, Central Point is only a 25-minute drive from Ashland, site of the famous Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Ashland is also home to Southern Oregon University and to numerous shops, restaurants, and a terrific Saturday market, the Rogue Valley Growers and Crafters Market, which happened to coincide with our short visit there.

Nearby is another interesting though much smaller town, Jacksonville. It had begun as a mining camp in the 1850s and flourished over the next few decades but then waned in importance when the railroad bypassed the town in favor of Medford. That left the town somewhat frozen in time, so today it has a number of well-preserved nineteenth-century buildings lining its main street.

We had passed through here in 2008 but didn't have time to stop. This time, we did spend a while exploring the town, and had a very good lunch at the Jacksonville Inn, which was built in 1861. 

A few minutes away, we found the last Oregon winery we would visit on this trip, Caprice Vineyards.

We were attracted in part by the fact that Caprice billed itself not just as a winery, but also as an alpaca farm. The tasting room was full of alpaca products, and for ten dollars Marcia bought a large plastic bag of recently-shorn alpaca fleece. Outside, she found the animals that had sacrificed this fiber for her benefit.

When they were shorn, the hair on their heads was left untouched, giving them a punk look.

Later that afternoon, we returned to California along Interstate 5. Near the town of Yreka, 14,179-foot Mount Shasta, whose last eruption was in 1786, came into view.

By the time we returned to our home in Santa Maria, our little Honda Fit had recorded 2,380 miles over 16 days (and to its credit, averaged 41 miles per gallon, despite all the mountain roads it had to overcome in the course of this trip).

If you've read this far, you know that we had a great time exploring Oregon and northern California, and we found many reasons to make a return visit in the future.

We want to thank our friend Sarah (a colleague from our 2008 summer at Grand Teton) and her husband Tim, whose blog reports about their recent cross-country trip were very helpful to us in planning our trip.

And of course we thank our friends Tom, Margie and Ken for the hospitality they provided us, and for helping make this such a memorable trip!

Text and images ©2012 Tom and Marcia Murray 

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