Rolling along the Columbia River
Planning and Preperation
Ever since moving to Portland and seeing the Columbia River Gorge, and its old Historic Highway, I knew I wanted to bike through it in its entirety one day. Well a year and a half later and that day is finally here! Since the gorge is around 80 miles long we decided to also add in some biking around the Hood River Fruit Loop to extend the trip a little. You know because who doesn’t love fresh fruit when on a bike? (It also just so happened to be more convenient with the bus routes, since the furthest you can get on a single bus from Portland, OR is Hood River).
The general plan was to take the Columbia Area Transit bus (CAT) to Hood River on Day 1. Meet up with our friend Jackie who happens to live in the Hood River Valley (so yay real beds!). Day 2 would then be unloaded riding along a portion of the Hood River Fruit Loop. Day 3 we would catch an early bus to The Dalles**, then start making our way back to Portland. We have a campground goal for day 3, but with the expected triple digit temps, we also have a couple bailout campgrounds flagged as well. Day 4 would be wrapping up in the gorge and riding the rest of the way home. I’m hoping we ride all the way home, but we aren’t opposed to grabbing a bus/light rail to shorten our miles on our last day if need be!
**We can be flexible. Day 3 got tweaked slightly on the fly; no bus to The Dalles, instead we opted to just ride straight home from Hood River. We have previously ridden the portion between Hood River and The Dalles, and with the heat we didn’t want to over exert ourselves – we do ride to have fun after all!
So knowing us you would think we would have done some training in preparation for our bike tour through the Columbia River Gorge, but nah – who needs to be in shape? The only training we did was pedal palooza rides (so basically social rides that were 5-10ish miles long) maybe once a week and also our commutes. Which for me was at least 3 to 6 miles one way 4 to 5 days a week, but Andrew spent most of the summer working from home so yeah his “commute” was zero miles.
Day 1 - Friday Aug 5, 2022
Portland to Hood River Valley (Bus and Riding)
Miles: 19.4 (19.4mi total)
We awoke around our usual time as if it was a work day anxious to leave for out adventure. But we weren’t catching a bus out of Portland until 2:30 pm so that we would have all morning to get our stuff together. Except, the eager beavers that we are, we were basically ready to go by 9am so we ended up spending the morning cleaning the house and doing random things to kill time. Anxious to get going, we ended up leaving the house pretty early for our 8 mile ride to the transit center, partially out of eagerness, and partially because we weren’t sure how slow we’d be riding our loaded bikes for the first time in months. Turns out we weren’t that slow since we wound up at the bus stop an hour early! Too bad only every OTHER bus goes out to Hood River, or we could have hopped on the earlier bus!
When our bus rolled up, we were happy to see that it had lots of bike racks (the previous bus had only had two!) However, the bus’s front racks had 2 of the 3 racks missing the lock mechanism that holds the bike in place, so only my bike sat it front. Andrew’s had to go on the back of the bus which was a sort of rack neither of us had seen or used before. We had to awkwardly ask the driver how to use the back racks- apparently they attached by the handlebars with wheels out. After finally getting the bikes securely on the racks we grabbed our bags and boarded the bus (I’m sure entertaining all the people aboard in the process).
The bus ride itself was an anxious affair for me. I opted to leave my handlebar bag on the bike because it’s kind of a pain to take off. Normally a bouncy, loud bus wouldn’t have bothered me a bit, but every jangle made my heart skip a beat as I thought my bike or bag might jump off. I had to constantly remind myself it’s fine, and if not, there’s nothing I can do now. So I mostly distracted myself by starting on this blog post, and then enjoying the views of the gorge since I wasn’t the one driving through it for once.
Once in Hood River we decided we deserved ice cream-don’t judge. We opted to detour down to the waterfront for it which turned out to be a great place to cool off and enjoy our sweet treats. After our fill of river side views, it was time to start heading up the hill to our friend Jackie’s house where we’d be staying the next two nights (she lives about 10 miles south of the river with 1000 ft of climbing- did I mention we were out of shape?)
Actually, The climb up Highway 35 wasn’t too bad, the shoulders were pretty wide, and we had lots of lovely views of Mt Hood (Wy’east) ahead of us and Mt Adams (Pahto or Klickitat) behind us. We decided to break up the climb by getting dinner at the Gorge White House -which is one of the official Fruit Loop stops and was absolutely delicious!
***Note: anyone wanting to do this trip who doesn’t have friends near the Hood River Fruit Loop, there are at least two campgrounds, Tucker County Park and Toll Bridge County Park that both seemed like they’d work well.
Day 2 - Saturday Aug 6, 2022
We opted to hit the road relatively early -so around 9am – in an attempt to beat some of the heat expected later. The early morning start did mean that we passed a couple fruit loop stops that had yet to open. C’est la vie. For our route we stuck to the upper half of the fruit loop since most of the downtown stops are wineries, and Andrew has recently stopped drinking. This also gave us more time to enjoy our stops, and less elevation climbing than if we had done the whole loop. Our first open stop on the fruit loop was the Apple Valley Country Store and Bakery. I’m sure we surprised the cashier by requesting a huckleberry milkshake at 10am, but is it really ever too early for a huckleberry milkshake? Not for a couple of bike riders it isn’t. It was perfect; just what we needed.
The Apple Valley Country store was our lowest elevation stop, so it was time to start climbing up highway 281. There weren’t a whole lot of places to stop along this portion of the route (the Old Trunk Antique store, another official fruit loop stop, was mysteriously closed) but the weather was still nice so we got some good riding miles in. And of course lots of photos of Mt Hood (Wy’East).
Our planned lunch stop was at the Grateful Vineyard for some delicious pear pizzas complete with amazing views. I’m not sure if I misunderstood them or what, but apparently we had to order at least one glass of wine with our pizza (you know since it’s a vineyard I guess) and since Andrew isn’t drinking alcohol these days that meant it was all for me. While it was lovely wine – maybe not the BEST idea for drinking while out on a now hot afternoon bike ride.
Grateful Vineyard didn’t open until noon, and we had arrived around 11:30am, so we did have to take a forced break before we could eat. Luckily Mt View Orchards shared a driveway with Grateful Vineyard, so we were able to enjoy some lovely mountain views while eating fresh blueberries as an appetizer. They even have a mascot, a steer named Carlos, who we got to say hello to – although he wasn’t very interested in us.
It was only another 4 miles to our next stop, Kiyokawa Family Orchards, but man was it brutal. Being the middle of the day there wasn’t a whole lot of shade, and it was still uphill! Kiyokawa Family Orchards is a Japanese American family owned farm that specializes in apple varieties, seriously like over a hundred varieties. Being August, apples weren’t yet in season, but they did have about 10 different types of cherries for us to sample. After trying every flavor, we opted to by a bag of Regina cherries which were a lovely post lunch snack. While at the farm we ended up taking a nice long break to cool off, and I took advantage of their restrooms and soaked my hat and shirt in their sink to help keep me cool for our next bit of riding.
Kiyokawa was the fruit stand at the highest elevation on the loop, so the rest of the day was *mostly* glorious downhills (it’s like we planned it that way or something). There was one annoyingly long uphill on highway 35 we had to contend with, but the previous long downhill had rejuvenated some of our energy at least. We zipped past a couple other fruit stands on our way to the Hood River Lavender Farms. I just love the smell of lavender. We took a nice long break in the shade near the lavender fields. Stave and Stone Winery is also right next door to the lavender farm, so we wandered around their beer garden a little as well. If we hadn’t been so concerned about the heat it would have been a really lovely place to enjoy another glass of wine or a beer. Apparently they also have amazing chocolate truffles that we missed out on – next time I guess. We did end up buying some tasty lavender chocolates from the lavender farm though. Oh I should also mention, this was the only place we stopped at with actual bike racks for us to use, so that was a nice bonus!
Believe it or not, after we had our fill of lavender scents we opted to skip Packers Orchard where we could have gotten cheap and delicious ice cream. I think the heat was getting to us, and Jackie had promised us root beer float anyways, so we weren’t completely giving up our daily ice cream dose. The rest of the day was very chill, after cleaning ourselves up we mostly just lounged around Jackie’s place avoiding the heat.
Honestly I’m surprised the Hood River Fruit Loop isn’t marketed to cyclists a little more. It was great. There were definitely portions of roads with skinny shoulders, but even on a Saturday the traffic wasn’t bad. The busy roads always had decent shoulders (excluding one skinny bridge on Hwy 35). So you definitely need to be comfortable with road riding if you decide tackle this route. But, by biking between fruit stands it meant we were always hungry for something new (although we did spend a lot more money than we usually do on bike trips – but yay supporting local businesses!) And in hind sight, it may have been smarter to have ended our bike adventure with the fruit loop and then bused home so that we could have bought more take home goods without having to worry about the added weight.
Day 3 - Sunday Aug 7, 2022
So originally the plan was going to be to catch the 7:30 am bus from downtown Hood River out to The Dalles and then we would ride back to Portland from there. With how we felt after the heat of our second day, and the fact that we had already ridden the portion between Hood River and The Dalles the previous year, we decided it would be better for us to just ride back to Portland from where we were in Hood River County, saving us about 25 miles of riding in the heat.
We still left Jackie’s place fairly early (6:45am I think) in an attempt to ride as much as we could in the nicer cooler weather. The downhill to downtown Hood River was actually a little chilly! Too bad that chill couldn’t last all day for us.
We swung by the Safeway on our way out of town for restrooms and provisions. Just west of Hood River the old highway route isn’t quite complete so we had to swing onto I-84 for 6 miles. Surprisingly riding on the interstate was pretty easy- don’t get me wrong I was very happy when we were off and done with the interstate riding, but traffic was low and it was basically all downhill for us. Thankfully that portion of the missing trail is under construction right now and should be done by next summer (2023)! They’re rebuilding the Mitchel Point tunnels with side windows into the gorge. We even got to see some of the new tunnel windows from the interstate.
Todays riding had a lot more bike trails than I was expecting which was a pleasant surprise. We stopped for a break outside of Starvation Creek Falls enjoying the scenery to ourselves. About a mile west of Starvation Creek we found another waterfall, Hole in the Wall Falls, which provided us a nice chance to to get off the bikes and explore the base of the falls a little.
We did lose our bike trail at the Wyeth Trailhead, but honestly the road between Wyeth and most of the way to Cascade Locks, didn’t seem to have any reason for anyone to drive on it so it was basically just cyclists (and the one car that passed us). We did run into a trio of riders out for a day ride. We chatted with them a bit, and ended up following them up our only major climb for the day. They turned around at the top of the hill and headed back east while we carried on into Cascade Locks. The downhill was well worth the climb.
As we rolled into Cascade Locks, there was some minor construction but it didn’t affect us too much. What did affect us was that apparently the Bridge of the Gods half-marathon was that same day. We wanted to have lunch down by the river which just so happened to be where the race ended and we timed it perfectly with when a good portion of runners were finishing up. So lots of traffic to get through, but we were still able to find a decent picnic table to eat lunch at. I had already set my heart upon getting an ice cream at Eastwind Drive-in after lunch because you can’t just ride your bike through Cascade Locks and NOT get one of their giant soft serve ice creams! (Cascade Locks/Bridge of the Gods is along the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), and Eastwind Drive-in just so happens to be where Cheryl Strayed from ‘Wild’ got her celebratory ice cream) The marathon ending had brought in quite the crowd and line to the walk up window; so rather than wait we snuck over to the drive though side – Eastwind was happy to serve us on our bikes (unlike some double arched chains we’ve tried to do the same at). Giant quickly melting ice cream cones in hand, we awkwardly peddled our bikes over to the Columbia Market joining several PCT thru hikers who were resting in the shade eating other various goodies.
After grabbing some Gatorades for the road we continued down the Historic Columbia River path passing several more PCT hikers as we went – so I guess technically we’ve now done part of the PCT trail – go us!. Luckily the aforementioned marathon which happened to follow the same trail we were taking was mostly wrapped up. We even passed by one of the aid stations that was packing up and they were more than happy to give us some of their leftover cold water and bananas.
The next several miles of trail brought us awesome views and peaceful riding. We even stopped at a small fish hatchery. Although just past the fish hatchery we found ourselves at the base of a daunting set of stairs! It was on the map, but I guess we had conveniently chosen to ignore that warning, so were very upset when we saw we would have to push our loaded bikes up all those steps. (And no, we weren’t smart enough to take the bags off the bikes).
The western popular portion of the Columbia River Gorge Historic Highway is often referred to as the “waterfall corridor“. This year they started requiring time stamped permits for anyone wanting to drive on it to try and help with crowd control. As we came up to the permit checkpoint it was oh so satisfying to just roll past on our bikes since the permits only apply to cars (not that the permits are that hard to get or anything, it’s the principle!). Ainsworth Campground, our destination for the evening, is literally just past the checkpoint. We swung into the campground, claimed one of the hiker/biker sites, set up our tent and dropped off some bags. By this point it was only 2pm, and in the upper 90s; we needed to cool off. Conveniently we knew that Horsetail Falls was just another mile past the campground, and that waterfall, with stairs leading into the pool at its base, is just begging you to get in. The freezing cold mountain spring water did wonders to cool us off. If we had been smart we would have stayed longer, but after playing in the water for around an hour thinking we were sufficiently cooled down we decided to head back to our campsite, realizing immediately how much hotter it was away from the falls.
We ended up eating a quick dinner (fancy ramen) and just lounging around because it was too hot to do anything else. We both decided to take some cold showers to cool ourselves off again, but somehow I managed to find the one camp shower that somehow only had hot water (how is that even possible!?). Not having the energy to do anything else we ended up going to sleep really early (or attempting to at least).
Day 4 - Monday Aug 8, 2022
Wooh day 4 was along the scenic waterfall corridor! We got out of camp around 6:45 am hoping to beat the heat (and a secondary win, the crowds). We zipped past horsetail falls and beelined it to Multnomah Falls (Oregon’s tallest waterfall at 620ft). Even though I see Oregon’s tallest waterfall every week thanks to my job as a tour guide, I still wanted a picture with our bikes in front of the impressive falls. Although apparently 7am on a Monday still isn’t early enough to find an empty viewing platform. C’est la vie.
We rolled past several other familiar waterfalls taking in all the views as we went. After a quick break at Latourell Falls, we were ready to tackle the major climb for the day – the hill up to Vista House. The historic highway has a max grade of 5%, so while the climb was long it was very doable and conveniently shade. The views at the top, as always were amazing. Normally Vista House would be open on a Monday morning, but with the heat wave we were experiencing they didn’t want any of the staff/volunteers to get overheated so unfortunately it was closed when we got there. But, like I tell my tour guests when it’s closed, at least there’s no strangers hanging out on the balcony in any of our pictures.
After Vista House the rest of the ride was pretty uneventful. We followed the historic highway the rest of the way into Troutdale enjoying the downhill and took a break at the Sandy River. Rather than cut through the city on bikeways, we did opt to follow the Columbia River along the Marine Drive pass. Mt Hood was mostly hiding behind a heat haze, but the river views (and breeze) were still lovely. And following the river made for easier directions home (especially since part of that path is one of our regular routes for a day ride). We had our usual bean burrito lunch at Delta Park and ended up getting home by 1pm. Which was good because it meant we could veg out by our window unit A/C and recover from a hard and hot, yet fabulous, weekend.
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5 Comments
adventurepdx
A good trip! Biking in the Gorge is always lovely. And I have biked portions of the Fruit Loop, but it’s been years (2009?) and it was fall, where we had to worry a bit about rain.
And yeah, those rear racks on the bus are weird. Emee and I dealt with that on the way back from Cascade Locks this year. The bus driver was less than helpful in figuring out the rear setup, just insisting we’d figure it out. So I ended up getting both bikes on the front rack, using judicious straps and such to lash the bikes together. It worked, but it was a pain.
Angela
Oh man I’m glad we had a helpful driver than! ….. It still took us a while to get it sorted out (the driver couldn’t leave his seat so he could only attempt to talk us through it) …. They really should post instructions on their website somewhere (and probably get the front ones fixed haha)
Yeah the summer was great! Just wish we had done the ride like 2 weeks earlier BEFORE it hit those triple digits ….
adventurepdx
Yeah, I wish that CAT would have instructions for the rear racks on their website. It’s not standard transit equipment, so to assume that someone would know how to use it is a bit much. And yeah, why did they remove the two hooks from the front? Make it maximum capacity!
Angela
I did actually just look – they have a link to YouTube showing how to use the “Lolo rack” so woops, guess they did lol
adventurepdx
That’s good!
But I think for most of us, it would never occur to “check the website” for this info, as we’d just assume it’s the normal front-of-bus rack that we’re used to.