Columbia River

with Lindblad Special Expeditions

October 9-15, 1999

Alice and Kurt Wolfsberg

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It was raining hard in Portland, Oregon, when we arrived, a typical weather pattern we were told. The cab ride to the River Place Hotel took us through a series of highway interchanges, high off the ground, and across a bridge or bridges spanning the wide Willamette River. The hotel, while on the river with the dock for the Lindblad Sea Bird virtually just out the door, was nothing special for $189 plus tax for the night. We walked down the Esplanade to a Pub-Restaurant called the Pilsner Room of the Harborside Restaurant for lunch, raincoats on, umbrellas up. We had some excellent fish as we sat looking out of the window at the view of the river and the Esplanade.

The rain was still falling so we decided to eat dinner at the hotel. I ordered a shrimp dish with a lobster shepherd's pie. The service was very slow and my shrimp, when they arrived, were raw. The waiter had spooned some of the lobster shepherd's pie onto my plate. I sent the shrimp back to the kitchen to be cooked and when the plate came back, the shrimp were just barely cooked and the helping of lobster was gone. I should have complained since the entree was priced at $23, but Kurt was already done with his meal and I was losing enthusiasm for the whole dinner rapidly. Back in the room for the night before embarking on the Sea Bird, we watched the movie "Titanic."

A Continental Breakfast was part of the room rate. It was so slow in coming, we almost walked out. As it was, we got a glass of juice, one cup of coffee, and a couple of pieces of a kind of coffee cake. After breakfast we walked along the Willamette River past a number of bridges to the Saturday market. This is a group of fifty to a hundred stalls selling clothing, crafts, and assorted other merchandise. Kurt and I each bought a polartec face-mask hat.

We picked up a couple of sandwiches on the Esplanade near the hotel, ate them in our room, checked out, and boarded a bus for an afternoon tour of the City of Portland, also called the Goretex Vortex for the waterproof clothing necessary if you live here. We drove along the Tom McCall Park along the river. We passed the world's smallest park, 24" square. The fronts of the buildings in the old part of Portland are Terra Cotta or Ironfronts. We were told that Pinot Noir wines are the specialty of Oregon. We passed a very beautiful gate to Chinatown and noted that the street lamps in this part of the city are oriental looking and painted bright red and yellow.

We visited the Pittock Mansion, which was built in 1914 by Henry Pittock, who was the early owner of The Oregonian Newspaper. The house contained creative plumbing, central vacuum system, intercoms, and indirect lighting. Henry Pittock is credited with being in the first party to climb Mt. Hood. Paintings of the scenery of the area are hung throughout the mansion. Many were featured at the first Lewis and Clark Centennial.

We next visited the Japanese Gardens, which included strolling garden with a five-tiered stone pagoda lantern. The Upper Pond had crane sculptures and was crossed by the Moon Bridge. The garden is lovely, serene, and tranquil. I found the music of the water running over stones, through pipes, dropping, falling, trickling, and running was particularly enjoyable.

We stopped for only a few minutes to see the Portland Rose Garden. Very new hybrid roses are shown. I guess there is competition among people who are developing new roses.

We were returned to the dock by the River Place Hotel and we walked down and got on board. There was champagne and snacks waiting for us, big juicy shrimp and other nibbles. We had a delicious dinner of poached salmon and were underway, down the river "in the wake of Lewis and Clark."

From the Willamette River, we went up the Columbia river through the night and went under bridges and through two locks. The first dam and lock were the Bonneville Dam, the first dam built on the Columbia River. The second dam was The Dalles. We would see them on the way back

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Sunday, October 10

Our first full day on the boat was a beautiful day as we headed up the Columbia River. We could see Mt. Hood off our side.

We passed a very nice pictograph of an elk carved on the rock.

We went through the third lock, the John Day Dam. We watched one of the guillotine blades come down and the water came in and the boat went up with the water level. We exited the lock onto Lake Umatilla. We went through the lock with a tugboat and some barges

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We rode to shore on the Zodiacs and were bussed to the McNary Dam Mitigation Area for wildlife. The Sea Bird was to follow down the river and we would reboard at the McNary Dam.

There were three walks, and we chose not the 3-mile power walk or the leisurely stroll, but rather an in-between nature hike. On the Nature Walk we saw Wood Ducks, Mallards, night herons, crested heron, kingfisher, assorted plants and insects.

From there we were bussed to the McNary Dam and waited for the Sea Bird to catch up with us.

When the boat came up in the lock, we crossed over on a gangplank from the walk at the side of the lock to the ship. It was kind of an unusual thing to do. It was almost dark when this picture was taken.

In the early evening there was a wine tasting with some appetizers. After dinner we watched a video of two competing barge company operators in the days before there were dams and locks. We saw how difficult it was to push barges down the river through the ra

Monday, October 11.

After breakfast we saw a couple of videos on the geology of the region and the formation of some of the geological features due to cataclysmic floods and ice dams and the movement of tectonic plates that increased the size of the western coast of the United States over millions of years. Corals and fossils of sea animals are found high above sea level in some of the geological features and actually originated in equatorial coral islands. They were pulled under the plate and moved large distances before they were pushed up. We saw many groups of ducks flying south and at the wildlife mitigation area we saw a large flock of sandhill cranes, squawking loudly, forming up into a V, and heading south as well.

From a point very close to the Idaho border at Clarkston and Lewiston we boarded the jetboats at mid-morning, for a rest-of-the-day trip up Hell's Canyon of the Snake River. The Snake forms the border between Washington and Idaho and Oregon and Idaho.

We passed an area of columnar basalt and then saw several big horn sheep, including a big ram with curled horns. There were probably half a dozen of them. The jetboat was beached and we got off to see some petroglyphs. There was one section of numerous people drawings and sheep or antelope..

As we jetted down the river we had a narrow canyon with relatively high, brown, basaltic rocks of interesting shapes. There was very little vegetation. We saw big horn sheep,twice, mule deer, and many great blue heron. We did not see
that many birds. I thought we would see some raptors, but I didn't see any. There were lots of ducks in the air. We continued on down to the Nez Perce Crossing and then on past where the Salmon River joins the Snake. On the way back we stopped at Thasher's Landing, which is a Park Service house and space. There were some cookies on a picnic table for a snack. It was a very nice day. The jet boats go very fast and we covered 135 miles round trip. The rapids didn't seem like much in a Jet boat. I am sure they are more formidable in a raft or canoe.

In the evening we heard a talk and saw a video on the Nez Perce Indians, their history and their trials and tribulations by Hal Stern.

Tuesday, October 12. We went in the zodiacs up the Pales River, looking for birds and wildlife. Some of the people on the boat chose to go in two-man kayaks. The appaloosa horses come from the area of the Pales river and were originally bred and raised by the Nez Perce Indians. We looked at the wildlife, such as it was, the vegetation, swallows nests stuck quite low on the sides of rocks and the geologic formations. We saw Western grebes, a couple of mule deer, and what could have been a beaver den, but the beaver were gone. The were numerous flights of ducks in Vs flying south.

The area that we saw had been flooded repeatedly. Fifteen thousand years ago ice dams, which built up in Montana, held back huge amounts of water and then gave way. The floods, 500 cubic miles of water, swept across Montana, Idaho, and Eastern Washington 40 to 100 times scouring the land, up to 1000 feet in elevation. These were called the Bretz floods. We saw the effects of these floods in the braided effects on the Palouse River with teardrop shaped islands. A river simply cutting its bank would not create those.

After our raft trip on the Palouse River, we got on the buses for a ride to the Palouse Falls, which was an 185 foot falls. We saw a section of ground where we were told that there was a separation either by an earthquake or a straight line that was scoured out by the floods. There was a railroad track laid on the bed of this split.
We walked over to see an upper falls which were not that high, but fairly wide across.

Back aboard the Sea Bird we had a barbecue on the deck, accompanied by lots and lots of yellow jacket wasps. After we had shooed away most of the yellow jackets as we ate, encouraging them to go bother somebody else, we discovered that several people had taken their plates down to the lounge and had eaten in relative peace. The barbecue was very good -- the brownies were outstanding.

In the evening we saw a video of the concept and building of Gorge."the Paradise Road," the road along the Columbia River

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Wednesday, October 13. We boarded the zodiacs for a very short ride to the nearby shore. There we boarded the buses for our ride on the replacement to "The Paradise Road" along the Columbia River Gorge. For a very short distance we did travel on the original highway. The "Road" was really beautiful. There were trees now, Douglas Fir and Broadleaf Maple, mostly, growing on and among the rocks. The maples are gold and orange in fall foliage. As we drove along a piece of this wonderful road that was designed by some of Europe's and the United States' best highway engineers, to move vehicles and commerce through a piece of strikingly lovely landscape. It was immediately so successful that the highway was glutted with transport, making the going very slow. A new multi-lane interstate has replaced most of it, but the interstate is not the work of art the old road was. They hope to restore some of the original highway for bicycle and hiking use only. We went to the top and stopped at a panoramic lookout.

We headed on down to catch the train which would take us through an area at the base, more or less of Mt. Hood. At the Parkland Grange, we were served and assortment of fruit and berry pies and ice cream by the ladies of the Grange, so we could have a snack before boarding the train. I had a piece of apricot pie and Kurt had some kind of a berry pie. They were both delicious. We boarded the train which went alongside miles of orchards until we got to Hood River. The train had three cars -- the "caboose" was standing room only and completely open; the car we choose had totally open windows down either side of the car; and the car in front of us was completely enclosed. We had unobstructed views and a place to sit down as well. From the train window we had a beautiful view of Mt. Hood. They grow mostly pears here, not apples. Some disease destroyed most of the apple trees some years ago and they were replaced by pears, which are more hardy. At the Grange, however, we saw boxes of apples that were the biggest apples that I have ever seen.

At Hood River, we had some time to walk around, because the Sea Bird had not caught up with us yet. Hood River was a nice little town, not many streets wide in either direction.

When we boarded the Sea Bird, we proceeded to sail down the Columbia River to the Bonneville Dam. The river had quite a few wind surfers who dared their skill and luck to sail in front of us and on our wake.

At the Bonneville Dam we walked beside the fish ladder and then went below ground to see salmon through a wall of windows working their way up and over the dam. We also saw a movie on the building of the Bonneville Dam. We

raced a tug and barges for a spot to be first going through the lock at the dam, and succeeded. As we "proceeded on" in the words of Merriweather Lewis, we saw horsetail falls and another waterfall, which was bigger, but I can't remember the name.

Thursday, October 14. We got up a little early to look at the sand bar which spans the mouth of the Columbia River at Astoria. The location of the bar was punctuated by the surf and breakers meeting it. They have to repeatedly dredge it. Breakfast was delayed because the surges coming in from the Pacific Ocean caused the Sea Bird to bounce quite a bit as we ventured a very short distance out into the ocean before turning around and regaining the calm surface of the river. We tied up at a dock in Astoria next to a Coast Guard cutter.

After breakfast we walked off the boat and walked over to the Astoria Maritime museum. A very good museum docent gave us a tour, showing us lights and bells, model ships and history of some of the wreck on the sandbar we had seen earlier in the morning.

After leaving the museum, we boarded the buses for a drive to Fort Clatsop, a replica of the fort built by Lewis and Clark, where they spent the wet and dismal winter of 1805-1806 after completing their trek to the Pacific Ocean.. There were some students who were dressed in the garb of the people who would have inhabited the fort in 1805. There was also a school class trying to do some of the activities of the explorers, like writing with quill pens, making candles, etc. We walked down to the canoe landing through rain forest and saw examples of dugout canoes.

We were bussed back to the Sea Bird and after lunch we were taken on another bus to Ft. Stephens park and beach. On the beach was what was left of the wreck of the Peter Iredale, numerous shore birds, and a low surf. The day was sunny and clear and we walked for an hour aways down the beach and back.

At the ship we settled up accounts, heard the rest of the story of Lewis and Clark, and enjoyed the Captain's farewell dinner. We shared the table with one of the chefs who told us his son was going to UCLA on a basketball scholarship.

Friday, October 15. Back to Portland during the night. The sun was shining as we disembarked. Then back to New Mexico. Great trip; great week.

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