Friday, June 23, 2017

Multnomah Falls

START:                              TODAY:        82 Miles
END:     Stevenson, WA    TOTAL:   5,128  Miles



It was a lazy morning, late to rise and a breakfast of blueberry pancakes on the picnic table.  By the time we arrived at Multnomah Falls the sun was high in the sky making it difficult to photograph.   The upper falls is a 620 ft cascade with a bridge that spans the ridge over the lower falls.  A young man proposed to his girlfriend while we were there and the crowd broke into applause. 

The sound at the Bonneville Dam spillway was deafening.  The original dam was completed in 1938 as an Army Corps of Engineers project under the New Deal.  The construction brought thousands of jobs to the area after The Great Depression as well as electricity.


  The tour of the dam was interesting, but the most surprising element was the innovative allowances they made for the salmon.      Great care was taken to allow the fingerlings through the slow-turning turbines and spillways to get to the Pacific; then fish ladders mimic the upstream swim back into the gorge to spawn.
There were fish-viewing windows on the underwater level, so we headed down the stairs.  


Our only disappointment was that this week has been unusual in that there has been very little wind.  The Gorge is the wind surfing capital of the world, but not these two days. 
  
We caught another glimpse of Mount Hood as we returned to camp – a nice end to the day. 



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