The Pacific Coast: Oregon

On Wednesday, March 3rd, we added our 39th state, Oregon, and continued our adventure up the Pacific Coast. We had spent the night in Eureka, in Northern California, and had an interesting drive up to the Oregon border. We saw SNOW on the side of the road in the Siskiyous (Siskiyou National Forest). Fortunately it was just evidence of an overnight snow shower, and it hadn't warmed up enough yet to melt. We didn't have any difficulty on the road, fortunately.

We came down out of the mountain pass, and into the last notable civilization in California before you pass into Oregon. The Pacific coastline seems to get rockier and more forbidding as one travels north as the image below taken just south of Crescent City demonstrates. Crescent City is known for a very notable tsunami that hit there in 1964 as a result of a 9.2 Richter scale earthquake that happened in Alaska. They are very tsunami prepared now!

After you pass the California-Oregon state line the road moves inland a bit as the coastline is too abrupt to have built a road, but then returns and is beautiful as it heads north to Coos Bay, Lincoln City, Cannon Beach, and finally to Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River. We traveled 250 miles along the coast from the California border, and then at Otis turned northeast to Portland. I had difficulty getting the right angle from the motorhome to show you an impressive picture of the rockiness of the coast .... I have a feeling the better shots would be taken when traveling south .... so on the left below you will see my awkward attempt at showing you that (with Buster's driver's side framing the left side of the photo!). I think the introductory photo to this blog entry captures the feeling of the Oregon coast as best as I could get!

Counting the mileage in California, and the additional 80+ miles to Portland from Otis, it was a huge driving day of 350+ miles, and none of it Interstate. But we were anxious to get to West Linn, Oregon, and the home of my dear cousins, Don and Doris Schuld. Don is the son of my mother's sister, Helen, and is retired from the Clackamas County Sheriff's office where he worked in youth corrections. Doris Sheldon Schuld is a fabulous nurse, and was the house supervisor at the Oregon City Hospital for years .... now retired. They are THE best!

We parked Buster in this great little park right across the street from their home. They live in the same house on Willamette Drive (a busy thoroughfare from West Linn to Oswego) that Don grew up in. I have had so many wonderful visits there since my childhood, when my Aunt Helen and Uncle Ben lived there. They had some of our favorite foods ready (I LOVE Doris' potato salad), and we had such a nice time just relaxing and catching up. Fortunately for us, their daughter Jennifer, a nurse in Seattle, was visiting for a week, so we got to visit with her as well. Their other daughter, Suzanne, lives nearby and is ALSO a nurse and works in Oregon City. It was great to see them all!

Thursday, March 4

Don and Doris suggested a trip to OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) which is a beautiful facility right on the Willamette River as it flows through the heart of Portland. They had a special exhibit on Samson, the dinosaur, which put us in mind of our visit to Sue at the Field Museum in Chicago. There were great brain teaser puzzles that were both gratifying and alarming: sometimes we would get them quickly and would be rather proud of our aptitudes, but then we would struggle and not be able to solve something that seemed so simple when we watched an 8 year old solve it in just a few moments!

One of the most fun things was a set where you could video yourself against a blue screen, and then it superimposed you on a computer screen, i.e.: Lizzie League, the weather"girl!"

There was also a human anatomy section and we couldn't resist putting Liz in the giant ear!

We had a very good lunch in the museum Cafe, and then made our way over to the Oregon Health Sciences Center and their tram. Apparently the medical center hospital is up on one of bluffs overlooking the Willamette River, and as the facility has grown, there was no way to expand. So they built a beautiful faculty office building down by the river, and a big parking facility, and now staff and patients move easily between the two parts of the campus. It was a great way to see Portland from the air, and the medical center is beautiful, and I know provides just excellent care to folks in the region.

Don and Doris treated us (and their two great girls) to an exquisite dinner at their local Italian restaurant, Bugatti's. It was divine .... and we had such a lovely evening. I enjoyed it so.

The next day, Friday, March 5, we decided to take a trip up the Columbia Gorge. This is always a favorite when we visit Portland. After my father died in 1968, my mother frequently drove from Southern California back to her home to see her two sisters in Oregon City, and we always enjoyed this side of the family. Both her sisters only had one child, though her brother had three, but the Donnelly's are basically a small family. My grandmother, Myrtle Bottler Donnelly, was a native Oregonian but her husband, Alan Donnelly, was Canadian, from Winnipeg. Myrtle's family, though, had homesteaded in downtown Portland, but apparently didn't hold onto the land long enough to become land barons! She had numerous siblings, but the one I remember hearing about most was my mother's Uncle Hood. Apparently Mt. Hood looked so beautiful on the morning he was born that he was named Mt. Hood. His signature was an outline sketch of the mountain, with Hood written on it, I'm told.

We stopped at Crown Point on our way up Highway 84 to Multnomah Falls. Liz snapped a pretty good picture of the other six of us:

Multnomah Falls is an iconic Oregon image associated with the Columbia River Gorge. The double falls is 620 feet high, 540 of it dropping in the upper falls. It is fed year around by underground springs. It is awesome, and many folks include it in their Oregon visit. Liz got further practice helping other people capture their memories.

We drove further up the Gorge to the Bonneville Lock and Dam, and the fish ladders.

Locks were first built on the Columbia River in 1896, called The Cascades Lock. Next the Bonneville Lock was completed in 1938 and enlarged in 1993. These were the first locks and dam on the Columbia, and the hydroelectricity generating dam was dedicated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in September, 1937. The Columbia River, of course, is a major route for salmon and other fish that are returning to the sea to spawn, and the fish ladders enabling the fish to get past the dam are very interesting to see. Fish were not moving much during March, but they have a viewing station underwater where you can see them moving up the ladder during the season. Between 700,000 and 1.5 millions upstream migrant adult salmon and steelhead, and an estimated 24 to 43 million downstream migrant salmon and steelhead fingerlings pass Bonneville Dam in an average year.

We drove just slightly further to the Bridge of the Gods, and had lunch at Char Burger.

That evening we met more family at a family favorite spot: Tebo's. This is a cafeteria style restaurant with a great grill, and they always make a mean burger as well a delicious pie. We met my other cousins, Dorothy Anderson (daughter of my mother's sister, Dorothy), and Mary Ann Barlow (daughter of my mother's brother, Ed), as well as Dorothy's son Scott, his wife Jan, and her dad. Dorothy and Mary Ann are both retired, and live together. They share a passion for nature and hiking, and are very active and vital septuagenarians.

We were a jolly group, enjoying our dinner and reliving stories our mothers had told us or lived. Liz had fun playing with her "cousin" Jennifer!

We loved our visit with our Oregon cousins, and it was too short. But we were ever mindful of the time imperative, and we had lots to see in Washington before the 12th. So we said our good-byes on Saturday morning, March 6th, and continued up Interstate 5.

We were headed to Mt. St. Helens!

Thanks for reading,

Julie, Gary and Liz