Wow it was hot! As much as we loved our site at the county park in Moro,
there was no shade and we cooked in the sun! On our last day in the area we decided to drive up to Mt Hood and then come back through to the Gorge area, cross back over into Washington state, and see the gorge from that side.
Mt Hood, Oregon’s tallest peak at 11,245 feet, is a dormant volcano believed to
have been formed 11 to 14 million years ago. Mt Hood has had at least four major eruptions during the past 15,000 years, with the most recent eruption occurring shortly before the arrival of Lewis and Clark in 1805. Mt Hood has twelve glaciers and is the source of five main rivers which flow into the Columbia. It is the second most climbed glaciated mountain in the world with the first being Mt Fuji in Japan. We could see Mt Hood and Mt Adams from our campsite, though with the haze from the heat, it was not a clear view. With the grandeur of Mt Hood and the magnificence of the Columbia Gorge, this area is quite a jewel! We could only imagine what Lewis and Clark must have thought!
As we left the campground we continued to see the dry wheat fields and then canyons, but the farther we drove we began to see glacier carved valleys with trees and vineyards. We reached Timberline Lodge which at an elevation of 6,000 feet was the closest point we would get to Mt Hood. This area has the longest ski season in North America and has the most night ski acreage in the United States. We saw many people dressed for snowboarding and it seemed strange to see people in winter clothing on this very hot day. Timberline Lodge, built in the 1930’s by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and dedicated in 1937 by President Franklin Roosevelt, is a historical landmark and was featured in the movie “The Shining”.
The Hood Valley is a one of the finest fruit producing regions in the world due to the fertile volcanic soil and the area’s temperate climate. Over 50% of America’s winter pears, as well as a large number of Bartlett pears come from this area. It is also known for its magnificent Pippin apples. We passed many orchards of apple and pear trees, as well as bushes full of blackberries.
As we continued our drive back from Mt Hood we noticed a geocache with an unusual name. This geocache was in honor of a pioneer woman’s grave. She continues to be a reminder of those pioneers who traveled west in search of a better life. Today people still leave items in her honor at the gravesite. This was just another one of those fascinating finds we would have never known about had it not been for geocaching!
We crossed from Oregon back into Washington
to see the Gorge from the other side. The views were
magnificent. We came to Stonehenge Memorial, built by a local entrepreneur to honor the soldiers of that area who had lost their lives in WW1. It is a full scale replica of England’s Stonehenge and was completed between 1918 and 1929. There are also memorials there to local soldiers who lost their lives in WWII, Korea and Vietnam. We noticed that all the columns had plaques with the names of soldiers who died serving their country. This Stonehenge sat high on a bluff with magnificent views of the Columbia River Gorge.
We crossed the bridge back into Oregon and headed home for our final evening in Moro, marveling at what a beautiful area this turned out to be, knowing how glad we were to have made a stop here.