Portland Adventures Part 5: Columbia River Gorge

 Road trip with Emily and Jade to the Columbia River Gorge! So most of this post will be pictures! I took so many pictures! And yes that's another creeper shot from the back of the car as we drove towards the scenic gorge.

The first site we went to was Vista House at Crown Point. It was first built in 1917 as a place for weekend goers to "refresh themselves" on their way down the the Historic Columbia River Highway and the Columbia River Gorge.
Today it is a coffee shop, gift shop, and information stop with educational exhibits.
It's a lovely house with gorgeous views! 

Then we went to Latourell Falls! We had to go up a steep little trail to reach this opening. It was so beautiful to see through the canopy with the trees framing the waterfall.

We stopped at a few places in between before going to Multnomah Falls - the third largest waterfall in the nation! It comprises of two levels of waterfall - an upper fall that is 542ft and a lower fall that is 69 ft as seen by the pictures on the left and right.

Here's the view from the bridge just above the lower fall. It was mesmerizing to just stare out at the scenery. And here's the three of us on the bridge!

We went a bit up past the bridge to this overlook. Where we could look down a grassy ravine onto where the waterfall came crashing down. There was this sign about falling rocks too! A bus sized boulder came down once! That must have caused a huge splash!

After going though the Columbia Gorge, we went to an ice cream place that Jade's family goes to every time they bike around the gorge. We stood in that line for an hour at least. But when I got my raspberry flavor burst ice cream, it was so worth it. The ice cream I'm holding is a small! Someone before me in line got a large it was so ridiculous, it comes with its own cup because it's so prone to falling over!

That ice cream was my last adventure in Portland, I was dropped off at the airport on the way back. I took that teeny tiny plane to SanFran to connect to Philly where I took an Amtrak to New Carrollton where I was picked up to go to SERC (the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Maryland for those new to this blog or who haven't heard me rave about it.) I'm currently at SERC and will continue blogging about my SERC adventures as I did last summer! Stay tuned!