I am sitting here in our friends’ house on Orcas Island (WA).  They are up high on a hill viewing the Pacific Ocean.  We have seen such beauty since I last wrote.  After leaving Twin Falls, we headed northwest and joined the Columbia River in Oregon. The river is massive as it flows to the Pacific Ocean.  At The Dalles (strange name for a town) we saw the longest dam in the world.  I think the town was named for some really bad rapids that were there before the dam was built.  From there we left the river and headed for Mount Hood.  We passed through vineyards and orchards.  Unfortunately, it was too early for the fruit to be ripe.  The view of the mountain was spectacular:

What you see here is also something called a “snow park.”  We weren’t sure what that meant, but on that day there were people playing the snow field.  On the way back down, we stopped at the little stream where Doug collected some “river rocks” for the flower bed.  This was one of the few streams that we saw that was shallow enough to expose the rocks.

Then we continued along the Columbia River Gorge to get to the place where there were several waterfalls.  Unfortunately, this was Sunday afternoon, and people were everywhere.  This was a place where you could go free and take your children and have picnics, so it was hard to find places to park by these falls.  Here is a picture of the bottom of one of them.