a gorgeous day

Our friends Anne and Edwin and their son Ian, came up to visit for a quick weekend visit. The forecast called for cold and rain, but fortunately all we got was the cold along with typically beautiful northwest clouds. So a drive up the Columbia River Gorge and hiking around the trails to see waterfalls was the agenda for the day.

Of course, with the winter snows beginning to melt and feed the streams that flow north from Mount Hood and fall over into the gorge, you can still get wet even on a sunny day :-). Multnomah Falls is over 600 feet high, and the spray travels quite a ways!

We decided that viewing the waterfalls from the bottom wasn’t enough, and set off on the trail that leads to the top of Multnomah Falls. It may only be 600 feet up, but it’s a mile long. Anne, Edwin, and Ian are in great shape and jogged part of the way up, while Nancy and I had a more leisurely pace to enjoy the views (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it! :-)

The view from the top was amazing, though twinges of acrophobia kept me from taking pictures. I did see an interesting bit of flotsam (jetsam?) where the spring-swollen stream had ripped away what looked like part of a hiking bridge from somewhere upstream.

While it is true that Nancy and I only seem to get out to the Gorge when people are visiting, so far we’ve had frequent enough visitors to keep us coming back pretty often!