Highway is quite a rush

TROUTDALE, Ore. – We took the convertible.

I’d never upgraded my rental car before. But we landed in the Pacific Northwest with a forecast for three straight days of sunny skies.

“It’s been raining for three weeks,” the agent said in Portland. “But they’re talking about 90 degrees on Friday.”

Properly stocked with trail mix, bottled water and one new Oregon map, we set out.

Amy – the Clark to my Lewis on this reverse expedition up the Columbia River – navigated us east on U.S. 84 to Troutdale, where the end of Portland’s suburbs overlaps the beginning of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area.

It’s also where U.S. 30 becomes the Historic Columbia River Highway, diverging from the interstate.

The highway was built between 1913 and 1920 and remains a thing of beauty. It was constructed without modern machinery at the beginning of the Automotive Age, a marvel of engineering, and was the first major paved road in the Pacific Northwest.

The full 74-mile highway stretched from Troutdale to The Dalles, but its glory was short-lived. As early as the 1950s, segments of the King of Roads were built over to accommodate the growing need to move goods across the state. By 1969, a four-lane highway covered the same route, in some cases overlaying and otherwise bypassing the historic road.

But the surviving (and restored) 22-mile section still reaches many of the “beauty spots” that engineer Samuel Lancaster said he wanted to emphasize to motorists.

The Vista House on Crown Point is one. The octagonal stone structure resembles a chapel more than a rest stop – its original purpose. The point, about 600 feet up from the river, provides 360-degree views.

Equally elegant are the figure-eight loops that Lancaster carved into the hillside at a gentle grade. Negotiating them unrushed in a convertible on a warm summer evening is as close as one might get to nirvana behind the wheel.

The stretch that followed felt a century removed. The guard rails are whitewashed wood or arched stone walls.

We soon reached the first of the 70-plus waterfalls that rush out of the gorge’s basalt cliffs down to the mighty Columbia: Horsetail Falls, Bridal Veil Falls. We stopped at Multnomah Falls, the highest in the state at 620 feet in two cascades. An arching bridge crosses the lower cascade, from which a paved path winds another steep mile up to the very top.

We backtracked to Troutdale for the evening to stay at Edgefield, an offbeat resort run by the McMenamins. Brothers Mike and Brian have transformed dozens of old buildings in Washington and Oregon into lively social campuses that combine accommodations with brewpubs, restaurants and more.

The McMenamins bought Edgefield Manor – a onetime county poor farm and later a nursing home – in 1990. One of the comfortable and inventive rooms with a shared bath in the Georgian Revival building is only $50. Pictures and tales of Edgefield’s former residents are painted on the doors and walls. It is a bit like stepping into a children’s book.

There are no phones or TVs, all the more motivation to pass the time visiting the winery or hoisting a pint of the Hammerhead Ale (brewed on the premises) in the Power Station Pub.

The next day, we picked up the trail at Hood River, surely the windiest city west of Chicago. Its stretch of the Columbia is a destination for sail boarding and windsurfing.

Another restored segment of the historic highway just east of Hood River has been turned into a trail for walking and biking. Clinging to the cliffs, the trail snakes above the railroad tracks, freeway and river. Eventually you pass through the Mosier twin tunnels, cut for motorists, but they would hardly accommodatea Mini, let alone a Ford Expedition.

In the five miles between Hood River and Mosier, the entire ecology of Oregon shifts from soggy forest to parched plateau. The black cliffs along the river are topped by golden dirt or wheat instead of trees, and the temperature seems to rise with each mile.

In Dufur, we turned toward Mount Hood. Like all volcanic mountains, it stands apart, aloof. It’s the highest point in Oregon, more than 11,000 feet, so when we couldn’t find a single sign for Highway 44, we simply steered toward its snowy peak.

The climb was deceptively slow upward into Mount Hood National Forest. Cool drafts of air slipped into the car and swirled around my sandaled feet. When the pines put the road in permanent shadow, we turned on the heat.

At the Timberline Lodge, we wrapped ourselves in our insufficient jackets and jogged into its warm embrace. If we’d planned better, we would have checked into this historic lodge, built as a Works Progress Administration project in the 1930s.

As it was, we settled into the restaurant-bar that wraps around the fireplace lounge like a balcony. We warmed ourselves with coffee and tea and a plate of fruit and cheese, glad to be looking out the window at Mount Hood and no longer on it.