Six months ago, Scott made reservations to spend the weekend at the Little Mt. Hoffman Lookout. I was all ready to cross this item off my 40 x 40 list. Then three days before we were to leave, we got an email cancellation notice. The snow was too deep and the weather hadn't warmed enough to clear the road leading up to the lookout. Time to change our plans.
We had already taken the time off work so we decided to cash in our gift certificate for a dinner cruise on the Sternwheeler and headed north to towards the Columbia Gorge. I was completely ok with giving up my weekend in the lookout for a weekend at a bed and breakfast!
On our way, we stopped off at the State Fire Marshal's office to congratulate Bruce Armstrong on his retirement. Bruce is one of a kind and we will miss working with him.
It's always nice to catch up with the girls and get all the latest gossip.
The Columbia Gorge is a beautiful part of this country. The weather has been very rainy lately, which just made everything more green and brillant.
The clouds also made for an amazing sunset. Thursday was the only day that it wasn't absolutly pouring rain at sunset.
We stayed in Bridal Veil, which is on the Historic Columbia River Highway. The Columbia River Highway, later renamed the Historic Columbia River Highway, was a technical and civic achievement of its time, successfully marrying
ambitious engineering with sensitive treatment of the surrounding magnificent
landscape. The Historic Columbia River Highway has gained national significance
because it represents one of the earlier applications of cliff-face road
building utilizing modern highway construction technologies. It is also the
oldest scenic highway in the United States. The area is very popular with movie and tv production companies. The second day we were there they were filming a car commercial just down the road from where we stayed.
The Bridal Veil Bed and Breakfast is one of the original structures left along the highway. Built in the 1930's, it now has two guest rooms in the house and two cottage rooms. We took a cottage room. You can barely see the roof of the cottage just over the bushes to the left of the walkway arch.
On Friday we decided to take advantage of being in the big city of Portland by going downtown. We had no idea that it was Rose Festival week. The Navy fleet had arrived earlier in the week and the annual Rose Festival Parade was scheduled for the next day. We agreed that it would be easier to park and ride the MAX into downtown.
Our final destination was the Apple store at Pioneer Square. If you purchase an Apple product, you can go into the store at any time and get technical assistance. This was our chance to get our MacBook finally set up right, and maybe learn a thing or two.
This is Scot (with just one "t"). He and I spent about five hours together. He was really great with helping us to understand the "thought" behind Mac products. Once you get the basic concept, you can understand most of the products. He was definitly a tech geek, but he never treated us like we were stupid. With service like his, I am an Apple fan for life. Scott (with two "t"'s might take a little more convincing though.)
We had planned on touring all of the waterfalls on Saturday and doing some hiking. Again, it rained all day, which put a damper on seeing all the waterfalls. We, of course, went to Multnomah Falls. The one nice thing about the rain is that it kept a lot of people away. People, it's Oregon, I don't care that it's June, it's gonna rain. Buy a rain coat!
We enjoyed a great lunch at McMenamin's Historic Edgefield. McMenamin's have a knack for taking random historic buildings and making great restaurants and breweries out of them. Historic Edgefield, built in 1911 as the county poor farm, is a destination resort in the Pacific Northwest that blends Oregon's natural beauty with McMenamins' signature whimsy: original buildings carefully restored with cozy interiors, gardens grown using organic methods, great food and drink, live entertainment and more. It encompasses a 74-acre parcel of farmland at the mouth of the spectacular Columbia River Gorge Scenic Area.
Saturday night brought our whole reason for this trip, a dinner cruise for two on the Columbia River Gorge Sternwheeler. Again, you can see that it was cloudy, but we lucked out and it didn't rain at all during the cruise.
Scott made quick friends with the ship's Captain, and he was the first to drive the ship. He even got an official certificate at the end to prove it.
I was sad that I was not able to cross another thing off my 40 x 40 list, but the weekend we spent in the Gorge was worth it. There's alway next summer.
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