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Jantzen Beach Campground, Portland, Oregon. Odometer – 9003

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We had a short distance to cover today, but it was beautiful and scenic. Even the overcast weather did not ruin the beauty.

After a noisy night (train tracks right next to the campground, and trains blasting their horns as soon as they saw our RV) we got up and slowly prepared for the new day. We left the campground and our first stop was after 10 minutes of driving. We reached Bonneville Dam, which uses water from the Columbia River to power Portland and many other cities in Oregon California and Washington.

The Columbia River is the 3^rd largest in the US and actually starts off in the Canadian Rockies (we were there). It is very important to salmon and other fish that swim hundreds or thousands of miles upstream to spawn. The dam has a great visitor center and we saw through underwater viewing windows the fish swimming against the current through special “fish ladders” to climb up the 20 meter dam.

After that we had a tour of the power plant and a ranger explained in a very animated way how water turns to electricity in our homes. Ron was mesmerized.

After lunch we drove to a sturgeon hatchery nearby to see Herman the Sturgeon, a 75 year old fish that is 3.5 meters long and weighs around 200kg. Sturgeons are the fish that give us caviar, and are an animal that has not much evolved in over 200 million years. Too bad Orr and Shir fell asleep, only Ron saw the attraction. Ron also fed some rainbow trout which are also hatched there.

We continued east along the Columbia River, stopping at several beautiful waterfalls along the way. The most famous is Multinomah falls, over 100m in height. Paola likes to remind me that we don’t need to work hard and hike 3 miles just to see a fall when we can just park the car and take a picture by rolling down the window. We drove along the old highway, surrounded by lush green forest.

In the afternoon we reached Crow’s Nest, a nice resting spot with great views (not so much today) that was the sight of great controversy in 1916 when it was decided to build a luxurious building to house restrooms for weary travelers. The marble toilets are impressive.

In the evening we arrived in Portland and met Eyal, my brother in law who is in town for a conference. We had a fun dinner and exchanged gifts for our respective kids. Ron really looked forward to seeing Eyal and playing together for a bit. Ron also got a present from Savta Rachel – new underwear. The boy is growing and needs more room…

Now we are at a campground 10 minutes from downtown and as I write this, once again I hear a train passing nearby. Oy Vey…

Good night,

-Hemi

This entry was posted on Monday, August 6th, 2007 at 11:57 pm and is filed under Big Trip, North America RV 2007, Oregon. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.