East of Portland

Viento State Park, Oregon

These last few days had their ups and downs. Jared was feeling under the weather so we slept in and stayed around the campsite. The toll of moving, working, and preparing finally caught up to him.

We were finally able to put up the lights and a welcome sign out front because we were going to be there for three nights.

It was our first back-in sight and I just want to say, “We did amazing!” We were backing up like pros.

We used our new little grill for some dogs.

While we were at Viento, we were able to see Multnomah Falls – the tallest waterfall in Oregon. This in itself was an adventure. After driving 30 minutes to the trailhead, we turned right back around because there were roadblocks and closed signs everywhere. We went back to camp and got on our phones for a quick Google search (on the slowest internet connection ever). Jared found out we could hop on a shuttle from Cascade Locks to Multnomah Falls. We decided to try it again later the following day. We didn’t have too much planned out for that day and didn’t want to wear ourselves thin. We started our drive to Cascade Locks and arrived at about 12:16PM and finally found the bus stop. We found parking and rushed over because the bus stop mentioned the next bus would be there at 12:18PM. We rushed into the community center and ran (I really mean walked in a hurried manner) back to the bus stop. By the time we got there (12:20PM), there was no bus. We waited a bit to see if the bus was running late but after 10 minutes of waiting, we knew. We would have to wait for the next bus that left from Cascade Locks at 2:28PM.

It wasn’t the worst thing ever because there were a few things we could do to occupy our time.

We walked to Thunder Island which was a short distance from the parking lot. Historical information boards on the Columbia Gorge were on display and there were some great views of Washington on the other side.

We took pictures by the hand made “Bridge of the Gods”. It was very windy!

 

It was about 2PM when we started to think about how we would get back to the Suburban. We did see that there was a later ride back to Cascade Locks but realized the last return ride was at 3PM. This wouldn’t leave us enough time to see Multnomah Falls.

This is when we’re panicking.

We called the bus operator and they told us that information is correct. We would not be able to even see the falls if we left for the falls at 2:28PM and got back on a bus at 3PM.

We ended up driving to a whole different park – Rooster Rock – and got on the shuttle there (there were frequent bus times for coming and going). There was also plenty of parking. When we arrived, our parking pass for our campsite got us into the park for free and there was already a bus waiting for us and we didn’t have to worry about being stranded at Multnomah Falls.

When we got to the falls, there was plenty of parking – the Internet told us there would be no parking and to definitely take a shuttle. We forgot that we were going on a Tuesday.

All-in-all, we made it to Multnomah Falls!

After the falls, we headed back and stopped by a vista point.

The sun was starting to set so it was a great opportunity to take in the sights after a stressful afternoon.

The morning of our departure, we find another little problem with Aljo. His awning was just filled with water. It was probably from the AC dripping on the already ripping awning and getting in between the top and bottom layer. This was not a good start to our drive to Mount Rainier but we rolled it in and hit the road.

We didn’t actually make it to Portland because we were recently there, but we enjoyed our relaxing yet stressful stay in Viento State Park.