Last week’s frenzy of packing up and moving out of our East Wenatchee home was followed by one of my favorite road trips: a drive down the Columbia River Gorge. This journey provides a balm to my mind and spirit that never fails me; no matter the state my life is in at the time, and no matter how many times I drive it, the wide-open vistas and eternal nature of the landscapes soothe, refresh and delight me.

An easy daytrip from Portland, it can just as easily provide more than enough in sidetrips and activities to fill up a long weekend and more. I recommend it to visitors to the city over a drive to the coast for the diversity of ecosystems and prospects it provides. The 200-mile-or-so loop upriver and back takes one from urban center to forest-clad river gorges and snowcapped mountain peaks to basalt lava flows and high desert sagelands.

On my one-way trip south and west, I enter the Gorge just outside of Goldendale, Wa., on US Highway 97. Generally, traffic crosses the Columbia at Biggs Junction here, but refurbishment of the bridge this winter detours one along State Highway 14 on the Washington side some 20 miles west to a crossing just below The Dalles Dam. What it adds to driving time vs. Interstate 84 on the Oregon side is more than compensated for by the far better views. Just here is the Maryhill Museum and Sam Hill’s Stonehenge, a replica of England’s, erected as a memorial to WWI soldiers. Although closed from mid-November to mid-March, the museum has a surprisingly impressive permanent collection and numerous special exhibits–and killer views.

The highway rides along the upper edge of the basalt cliffs, curving along past grazeland, vineyards, wineries and orchards. One’s eye drops to the Columbia far below and then is raised up to jaw-dropping images of Mt. Hood posed regally on the western horizon. There are  spots where one can safely pull over and drink in the views of river, cliffs, mountains and wheat- and rangeland stretching away on high plateaus to the south and east. One of the great appeals to me is that the changing angle of the light due to time of day or year, the season, the weather and the wind (stirring up the river below or leaving it like a sheet of glass) all interact to provide a dynamically different picture each time I travel this way. The natural forces which shaped this terrain–numerous lava flows, some hundreds of feet thick, followed by equally numerous ice-age floods–leave me feeling more than a little awed–and small.

Approaching The Dalles, one has the opportunity to study evidence of human history at Horsethief Lake State Park, where petroglyphs and some of the oldest pictographs in the Northwest can be seen. This area has been a center for trade for over 10,000 years. Up until the dam, completed in 1957, flooded the upper reaches, Celilo Falls, a series of rocky cascades on the river, were prized fishing grounds for several tribes. They harvested salmon with nets and spears from the rocks and rickety-looking platforms and successfully defended their rights to do so even after the white men (Lewis and Clark being the first) arrived. The Dalles itself was the official end of the historic Oregon Trail, where those who traversed the Plains in covered wagons ended their journey by barging the rest of the way to Oregon City and the Willamette Valley down the Columbia. These days, aside from barges loaded with wheat bound downriver, the most often-seen craft are windsurf boards, piloted by (to me) insane people drawn to the sunny climate and almost-constant winds of the Gorge. Even on this chill, early December day, I spot a few brightly colored sails skimming over the water and bouncing across the whitecaps at speeds that approach 35 miles an hour. Like I said, insane.

More on the journey tomorrow.

Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader