For the Labor Day long weekend we went to Columbia River Gorge... I initially thought of writing a travelogue because it was an awesome trip. But half way through it, I thought it was getting boring. So I scrapped it.
Columbia River Gorge is place for waterfall lovers... such beautiful waterfalls and so many of them! We just covered 4-5 waterfalls of the lot. Two of them were superb - Punch Bowl Falls and Oneonta Falls. The hike to Punch Bowl falls was very unique. It was an easy 2 mile hike but the trail path was on the edge of the cliff. We missed the fork that takes you down to the falls and reached overlooking point. A guy and a girl were preparing to dive into the falls! And three of their friends were watching from where we were. People are crazy! It was almost 150 feet drop from where those two crazy kids where standing. We were desperate to go down to the falls from where you get a better view and in that desperation we were taking a very risky path down. It was then when a couple warned us not to take that path down. I am a little superstitious when someone says a "No" to something I am doing. I have had not very good experiences in such cases. So we turned back hoping that there might be an actual path down to the falls. On our way back, we saw a fork which took us down to the falls. See, that's why I am superstitious. :). The view from that place was amazing. We went late in the day so not may people at the falls. In fact just two other. We had some good time taking pictures and looking around that place.
That evening we went to the only brewery in White Salmon. White Salmon is the city where we stayed. They were celebrating their three year anniversary. We had a good burrito and enjoyed the live band... Next day was Rafting day! I was a little scared since it had been 5 years since I went rafting. But once on the raft it was fun. I wish I had gone on the Houston falls, which was 15 feet fall. The raft guide brain washed us so much saying how risky it was... but looking at it afterwards and seeing other people do it, I was sad that I did not go. Next time, may be.
Sunday evening we wanted to do Oneonta Falls, but we ended up on a wrong trail! Went on a strenuous hike and ended up on a different falls. My knees started hurting... :(. We came back from the hike and went to see Crown Point, did some night photography trying to take pictures of stars. But the moon and continuous traffic did not help. :(
We went back to hotel and I did more research on the Oneonta Falls hike. There is no special trail for this falls. You have to scramble through big wooden logs and walk through the stream a website said. Next day morning we went back to the same place and this time we took the right trail. We walked through the stream and then made our way through the tree logs only to reach a 6 feet deep stream! We had our camera bag and tripod bag on top of it. Ashutosh, my husband, managed to carry the camera bag until he could touch his legs to the bottom of the stream. I swam across and then took the camera bag from him. While swimming my tripod fell from the bag into the stream. Super adventure! Ashutosh then had to do some under water diving to get the tripod. We successfully made it to the falls while keeping the camera dry. So much fun. We took some pictures, took bath in the waterfall and then got back to the car.
Oh I forgot to mention our trip to fruit farm... Apples, Green Apples, Pears, Peaches, Plums, Strawberry so many of them. Again took pictures and ate some fruits. The only sad part about the trip was, there was a fire near Mount Hood. So we could not get good view of the mountain. There is something about these mountains in northwest, they stand alone and hence so clearly visible! Mount Rainier, Mount Hood, Mount Helen, Mount Shuksan... I can already recognize these from the pictures.
Overall a super fun and adventurous trip. And if you have not heard Indian Ocean's Kandisa album, do check it out. It is so much fun singing the songs along. I wish they had more lyrics!
If you want to see some pictures they are here -
Punch Bowl Falls
Oneonta Falls
