Wonderful Waterfalls

As I was looking into things to do during our short time in Portland, a segway tour of the city sounded it could be really fun. But a segway tour of Portland in the cold and rain?

Not so much.

So, we moved on to Plan B for today: driving the scenic Historic Columbia River Highway. After finishing our breakfast this morning, we headed east on I-84 and took Exit 22 to make our way up to old US-30. Our first stop was the Portland Women's Forum State Scenic Viewpoint.

Looking east at the Columbia River and Vista House (right)

Just a little further down the road is the Vista House at Crown Point. There is also a passport stamp here for the Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail. We asked the volunteer at the information desk for recommendations on which waterfalls to see and whether the scenic byway had been reopened after the recent storms. Based on what he told us, the next stop we made was to see Latourell Falls.

So much water!

Unfortunately, the other half of what he told us was completely wrong. The road was closed just beyond Bridal Veil Falls, so we had to get back onto the interstate, but there was only a ramp to go west. Doh! We had to backtrack several miles to Rooster Rock State Park in order to get onto eastbound I-84.

Multnomah Falls is accessible from both old US-30 and I-84, so we parked in the huge parking area just off the interstate (it was almost full on a rainy weekday, so I imagine it must be crazy during weekends!) and walked over to the falls via the pedestrian tunnel.

We only hiked up to the bridge because it was raining (and we're soft). That's as far as we got the last time we visited in 2005 during our very first family road trip, too. Maybe one day we'll see what it looks like farther up!

My boys!

After a nice lunch at the Multnomah Falls Lodge, we decided against continuing east and headed back towards Portland. At J's request, we stopped at the corporate headquarters for Adidas to look for the "big shoes." But we couldn't talk our way in to shop at the employee store...

The Shoe Aficionado

Then we headed back to our hotel to relax for the rest of the afternoon. I had to catch up on some things for work anyway and find out more about the layoffs/relocations announced this morning. Not fun news to get while on vacation! (Yes, I'm still employed and not relocating, but having been through 4 of these, I think I've used up almost all of my lives.)

We ended our evening with dinner with one of our friends from college. It was so much fun to catch up and meet her family! And to cap everything off, we went out for Portland's famous Salt & Straw ice cream! Yum!