Today we took advantage of a low census day at work and traveled to Hood River.  Our first stop was on my list of must sees in Oregon, Multnomah Falls.  Part of this trail is still closed due to a huge fire the area suffered last year.  As a matter of fact, a couple of the hikes on my list of to do’s in Oregon won’t be reopened before we leave.  To get to this waterfall we had to walk under the highway and under a train trestle.  It just so happened that right as we were approaching the trestle, a train was coming.  Scott was excited to see the train so close and he went back under the trestle while the train was going over it.  He said it freaked him out a little bit because he could see it flexing as the train moved across.

 

After seeing the falls we continued in to Hood River to drive the Hood River County Fruit Loop.  The loop is a scenic drive that has lots of different fruit stands, wineries, flowers, and ciders.  On a clear day you can see Mt. Hood and Mt Adams really well.  There were lots of clouds today but we were able to see them intermittently.

There were so many orchards full of fruit trees on this loop.  The first place we stopped was called The Gorge White House.  They had fruit and flowers available for u-pick, a food truck, a gift shop, and a winery.  The property was beautiful.  We didn’t partake in any of the u-pick, but we did try a flight of their ciders.  And, we weren’t able to enjoy the food truck because it wasn’t quite open before we left this stop.

The best view we had of Mt Adams due to the clouds.

At the next place we stopped, Mt. Hood Winery, we found out there was a “passport” for the loop.  If you got a stamp from 10 of the stands on the loop you would get a canvas market bag.  So, of course we had to make sure that we stopped at 9 more places.

I just thought this was funny.  It was at one of our many stops.

A cool shot of Mt. Hood on our drive.

This stop had some loaded cherry trees and pretty views of Mt. Hood.

Next up was Lavender Valley.  This place is how I found out about the Fruit Loop.  I really wanted to see the fields of purple.  When looking for other things to do in the area (so we weren’t going so far just for a color) I found that this place was part of the loop.

We stopped for lunch at a little stop on the loop.  We sat outside and had a nice view of the mountains and a small airport across the street.  We were even able to watch a small plane come in for a landing.

One of the places we stopped had a bunch of grape vines with “baby grapes”.

We completed the loop and got the 10 stamps necessary to get the canvas market bag.  Mission complete!

When finished, we realized that we were super close to the Naked Winery of Hood River.  Because we are members and have been to 2 of the 4 locations in Oregon (as of yesterday) we thought it would be fun to stop at our 3rd Naked Winery in as many days.

One last stop on the way back to Seaside was Bridal Veil Falls.

We made it back to Seaside, unloaded the goods that we purchased throughout the day and headed out to the grocery store.  We wanted to make sure to have groceries as to avoid having to go out in all of the 4th of July traffic.  While driving to the store, I glanced down one of the side roads where Elk are often spotted and I saw them!  They were standing in the middle of the road!  I turned around in the first road I could and headed back.  Traffic had scared them out of the road but they were still pretty close and easy to see.  Some of them even had fuzzy antlers!  What a cool bonus to an awesome day!