While researching places to stay around Portland, we found this quiet looking town on the river about an hour’s drive from the Portland airport. Camas, Washington, boasted a historic, quaint hotel that we very much wanted to try out. Our local friends also recommended the wine tasting in Hood River, only another few hours down the gorge.
Unfortunately, I didn’t seem to have taken any pictures of the lovely places we ate or tasted those days in Camas, which is unusual for me since I always seem to be photographing my food. I did get tons of pictures of the gorge along the way as we headed to Hood River. The images definitely don’t do justice to the majesty of this landscape, as the scale is almost inhumanly incomprehensible.
Around the town of Cascade Locks, we crossed the Columbia River at a toll bridge called the “Bridge of the Gods.” This bridge dangles above the Gorge at at towering height. We made a pit stop at a small park near the bridge called Thunder Bridge. There were a couple of gorgeous wedding spots on the island that made us a bit wistful, as we had only gotten married a few months prior. As we walked around, we dove from wind break to wind break, as the wind blowing down the gorge had a sharp nip to it.
In Hood River, we grabbed lunch at a pizza place/brewery that I can’t remember the name of anymore, and then hit up a couple of surrounding wineries for tastings. We picked up bottles at most of them, as Alaska Airlines would check a whole case of wine from free if flying from the Portland Airport. We had picked up a carry on case at Argyle in Dundee, so we were determined to fill it. Cathedral Ridge had a great pinot noir and chardonnay, but the highlight of the day was a smokey pinot noir from Stave and Stone that they claimed came from grapes picked during the the Gorge Fire a few years previous.