Finished Lewis and Clark!

We finished our Lewis and Clark Expedition with Adventure Caravans on June 26th and immediately headed out of Warrenton, Oregon, with our friends Bobby & Marcia to visit with their friends Pat and Alice, who live in Forest Grove, Oregon.

Pat and Alice have a very good sense of humor. I love “their friends.”

Our plan was just to stay one or two nights, but we needed to have a part shipped for our “D Brake” so we needed to hang around for a UPS delivery. While visiting their neighbors, we couldn’t resist having our pictures taken with John Wayne.

So, we took the opportunity to visit the Saturday Market, which we didn’t have time to do while on the caravan. What a wonderful place. We had a beautiful motorcycle ride and spent most of the day there. When we arrived, there was a long line for something. We just had to find out what. It was a place called Voodoo Donuts. We decided we didn’t want to wait in a long line, so we would hit it after the market. The market had all kinds of interesting items.

On our way out, the Voodoo Donuts still had a line, but it wasn’t quite as long. I don’t remember how long we waited, but it didn’t seem too long. We were amazed at the kinds of donuts they had. We opted for the Monster Mafia, which is a banana donut topped with chocolate chips and peanut butter sauce (pictured on the right). Hmmmmmmmmm

We walked over to the Chinese Gardens, where we found a very interesting guide. The stories she told! It was most interesting. We learned that the Chinese make their bridges in the gardens with turns, instead of straight, so that you slow down, take your time and smell the roses.

She also said that Chinese little girls were never allowed to go outside on their own and they always begged to be taken to the market, so the second story of the house was built so that the girls can “see” the market instead of having to take them to the market.

So if you ever see a second story, that means they have girls.

On our ride home, we stopped at the Pittock Mansion, since we couldn’t do it on our tour because the bus could not get up the hill to it. What a beautiful view! We could not tour the mansion because it was already closed, but we managed to get pictures through the window.

It was so nice to walk around the property. We could even seen Mt. Hood in the distance.
Once Bill installed the new part for our truck, we bid Pat and Alice farewell and off to our next destination. Grand Cooley Dam! Fortunately on our way to the next campground, Bobby’s GPS routed us to Mt. St. Helen’s which gave us the opportunity to see the mountain on a beautiful clear day!

After we got back on tract, we could see Mt. Rainier. I tried to take pictures, but it was too far in the distance. But I can tell you it’s a beautiful site.

Warrenton, Oregon

Day 40, Our last stop for the Lewis and Clark tour. How sad we began to feel as our trip was near ending. We began the last leg of our trip with a chili dinner that we prepared for the guests. At our orientation meeting, one of our guests, who had been on many Adventure Caravan trips, mentioned that he had everything “AC” accept a pair of underwear. We also used this opportunity to present him with his own“Adventure Caravan Boxers.”

Day 41, We visited Fort Clatsop, where we saw a short film and toured a recreation of the original Fort. Actually, it’s the third fort. The first one was the original, the second one was a recreation, which burned down, so this is the third one. Fort Clatsop is where the Lewis & Clark Expedition spent 4 “rainy” months preparing for their return home. Three sergeants and 24 men squeezed into three small enlisted men’s quarters. Lewis & Clark shared a room, Charbonneau, the interpreter, and his Shoshone wife, Sacagawea, and their baby shared a room. York, may have lived near Lewis & Clark.

Salt Works was an area close to the Pacific Ocean where pots were set up to boil the ocean water to extract the salt. Back then, salt was a highly sought commodity.


Then we FINALLY got to see the Pacific Ocean! What a sight that was! We were so glad to finally reach our destination, just as I’m sure Lewis and Clark and his men felt when they reached this area on November 18, 1805.

We stopped at the Astoria Column, which we could not go up because they had not finished rebuilding the stairs, and the Peter Iredale Ship Wreck, which is the most photographed shipwreck.

The Maritime Museum is located in the quaint town of Astoria. We had a guided tour which was very informative on the ships of the area. This area was one of the largest salmon packing industry. One section was devoted to this industry. Do you recognize any of the labels below?

In the Maritime Museum, we found a plague of the shipbuilder of some of the older ships from England. It was Wm. Hamilton & Co., Ship Builders, Port Glasgow. Since Bill’s family is from that area, we think we might be related. We’ll have to check on that.

We found a nice restaurant near the Maritime Museum for a lunch and returned to the campground in time to prepare for our farewell dinner. We provided beautiful steaks and let our guests grill them to their perfection. We also had baked potato and lots of fixins, salad, rolls, many of our guests brought munchies, apple pie, ice cream, beverages and wine. What a feast! After dinner, everyone reported their most memorable and humorous memories of the trip. What a wonderful walk down memory lane!

Day 42 was a free day!!! Bobby, Marcia, Bill and I set out early for a great motorcycle ride to visit some places we would like to add to future tours. We started out at Cape Disappointment and Waikiki Beach.

We found that Cape Disappointment was named because of Capt. Gray from England. He came to the area seeking the same things as Lewis and Clark, a river passage across the United States. But by the time he arrived in this area, his men were so sick with scurvy that he could not send them out in smaller boats to search for the passage. He had to leave the area without exploring. We also found that this is the most hazardous river entrances in the world because of the Columbia River Bar. “The Bar” is a shifting sandbar where strong currents and wind-born waves meet shallow water. “Shifting sand sinks ships”

Day 43 was the last day of the tour where we gave our hugs and said our goodbyes at our hitch-up breakfast. It was so difficult to say goodbye to people we had such a wonderful time with for the past 42 days, but we can now say we have some new-found friends.

If you ever get the opportunity to travel with Adventure Caravans, the Lewis and Clark tour runs every 2 years and is well worth it. We have made some changes to the schedule and feel the trip in 2011 will be exceptional.

Portland, Oregon

Day 36, the drive to Portland was very pretty. If you look close on the left, you will see a tractor trailer. I took this picture to put the size of the hills into perspective.

The last 100 miles of our trip, we stayed on interstate, as opposed to the scenic route the rest of the group followed, in order to get to the camping world to pick up our fridge. Well, they didn’t have it… Now we are being promised it will be there on Monday, so another weekend without a refrigerator.

Enroute, we stopped at what is known as a replica of Stonehenge. Stonehenge is a world famous prehistoric monument in the English county of Wiltshire.

It is believed that Stonehenge served as a burial ground from its earliest beginnings, dating as early as 3000 BC, when the first ditches were being constructed around the monument. Burials continued at Stonehenge for at least another 500 years.

Day 37, we visited the Japanese Garden for a guided tour. The goal of a Japanese garden is that upon entering you should realize peace, harmony, and tranquility. The three primary elements of every Japanese Garden are stone, water and plants.

The Rose Gardens are world famous. They were just beautiful. I was surprised that out of many of the roses I smelled, only a few had a fragrance.

Day 38, we had a beautiful drive through the Columbia Gorge with a lead car, because some of the road it was necessary with a huge tour bus. The Crown Point Vista House was our first stop where we had a beautiful view of the Columbia River and Beacon Rock off in a distance.

The Vista House was built in memory of the men who built the road that got us there, through the town of Corbin.

At Multnomah Falls we had a wonderful buffet brunch. We were so stuffed, we didn’t eat the rest of the day. The area has a total of 10 falls. In the 1980s a 400 ton rock fell from the Falls into the area just above the bridge.

Someone got a picture of it; you could barely see the bridge. We understand that 4 people, who were standing on the bridge at the time, were sent to the hospital. I looked closely at the Falls before I decided to take a look from the bridge.
Bonneville Lock and Dam, built in 1933, was the first federal locks and dam on the Columbia and Snake Rivers. We did not tour the dam, but we did check out the fish hatchery and fish ladder, shown below.

This fishway allows migratory adult fish to continue their migration from the sea upstream to tributaries of the Columbia and Snake Rivers. At each fishway, a worker counts the various species of adult fish moving up the fish ladder. This information has been recorded at Bonneville since 1938 and helps the biologists track increases and decreases in fish runs. Between 700,000 and 1.5 million upstream migrant adult salmon and steelhead, and an estimated 24 to 43 million downstream migrant salmon and steelhead fingerlings, pass Bonneville Dam in an average year. Shad, sturgeon, lamprey and other species are also seen. In the hatchery they have some huge sturgeons, which they have named “Herb.”

We ended our day at Oregon City’s Oregon Trail Interpretive Center. They had a great movie and a guide who showed us some of the items the wagon trains would have loaded. The wagons would have carried a few thousand pounds, but as they traveled and the horses, oxen, or mules were injured, things had to be tossed out of the wagon. It must have been heartbreaking to discard a family heirloom.


Day 39, we met early to board our luxury motor coach with our wonderful driver, Cindy. She did a fantastic detour the night before to get us home. Seems someone was on the bridge that we needed to cross to get to our campground. He had a knife, gun, and bow and arrow. The bridge was closed for hours, but Cindy found a way to get us to our destination with only 1 hour delay.

We had a beautiful drive to Mt. St. Helen, stopping off at the visitor’s center, where we saw a film about the 1980 eruption. The eruption knocked trees down for 17 miles and the ash actually floated around the world. The force was so great that it forced the waters from Spirit Lake to form 2 other lakes and raised Spirit Lake 200 feet.

Most of the damage from the eruption has been restored somewhat by plantings,

however, at a certain elevation at the tops of the hills, plantings were not allowed so that they could see what happens naturally. It’s been 28 years and no much as grown…..

It’s an amazing site.

The lightening from the Mt. St. Helen eruption was shooting across at the other mountains. The eruption caused a hill slide on the north side. The hill slide down into the lake and Snake River. I was like an avalanche of huge trees and mud. People on the other side of the mountain never heard a thing. The sound seem to only travel to the north side. As the rushing water, mud and threes rushed down Snake River, people who were fishing were caught by surprise. One person interviewed said he climbed onto a huge tree & road downstream for miles. He was fishing with his girlfriend. Sitting on the log, he searched for her, thought he lost her. Then all of a sudden he saw her hair. He grabbed it & pulled her onto the log. She fell of 3 times before they found safety downstream. A rescue unit on the river bank yelled at them to hurry & get out because another waive of water was 15 min. behind them. We understand the couple never married, I guess she didn’t like the date.

Harry Truman, 86 years old, was the owner of the lodge on Spirit Lake, at the bottom of the mountain. Authorities warned Harry that the mountain was going to erupt and he needed to evacuate. Harry said in an interview, which we saw on the film, that there was no way the mountain was going to erupt at the magnitude they were predicting, that he was a part of the mountain and he was staying there. Poor Harry’s body was never found. He is somewhere 200 feet beneath …..Below, left, is a picture of where the lake used to be at the foot of the mountain.

It’s hard to imagine how devastating it must have been to be there during the eruption.