Sleepy Stevenson
Stevenson is one of those stereotypical small towns where there are only two streets and everything shuts down after sunset. I’m not kidding, after we docked at Stevenson. WA last night I took a walk around the town (around 9:30pm) and found that all of the shops were closed and even the bars were done serving. The only things that were still open were the local grocery and a Subway sandwich shop. Stevenson despite being a small town at only two real streets in the downtown area is a picturesque little town with a beautiful view over the waters of the Columbia, and is centrally located to a lot of national historic sites.
We started out the day in the rain, I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but being the true Texan I am when I planned for this trip my mind said It’s June, it’ll be warm so there’s no need for a jacket. Apparently I was wrong as it was probably 50 degrees and rainy most of the morning. I toughed it out with a loaner shirt from one of the other passengers that my mother insisted on my accepting.
Our excursion for the day was a trip to Multnomah falls, a beautiful waterfall located on the Oregon side of the river that drops about 500 ft from the top to the bottom. This also lead to our first problem in the trip, apparently the bus company that the cruise line normally uses only had one bus available for today and we needed two so they scheduled a second company to provide the other bus. That company decided not to send the bus, and so we ended up out in the rain with a full bus and several people still waiting. Thankfully we were able to get it worked out by having the bus make multiple trips and everything was fine in the end, just a minor hitch in our plans.
This was our first trip into Oregon, and to be honest I couldn’t tell much difference except for the lack of sales tax. The falls were very impressive and they had a nice trail that we could walk up to get multiple different views.
It’s amazing to think that this whole river gorge was carved and shaped by water eroding away rock, the power of water is truly mighty. After touring the falls we got to visit a small museum with demonstrations of a fish wheel used during salmon spawning season in the early 1900s as well as a single piston steam engine that ran a saw mill along the river. Just looking at the engine makes me marvel at the many achievements of the human race to have come from simple horse drawn beginnings, to steam power and automobiles, and now to computers, air/space travel, and more it’s really impressive what our minds can do when we put them to work.
In the afternoon I took another stroll around town, in my quest to sample more local brews I attempted to visit the Walking Man Brewpub but of course they were closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. Thankfully I found a bar in town that had their IPA on tap and got a sample of it there. It was probably one of the most bitter IPAs that I have had, with strong citrus and pine notes and a very dry aftertaste. I would probably only recommend it to those who really enjoy IPAs, thankfully I’m one of those people.
In the evening we were entertained by a Portland banjo player and guitarist who played hits from the 60s, none of which I was familiar with but the rest of the passengers enjoyed the tunes quite a lot. Tomorrow we head out to Rainer, OR for a trip to Mt. St. Helens so stay tuned for images and more exciting tales from the river.