A while back I saw a friend’s facebook pictures of Oneonta gorge and immediately put it on my mental bucket list for the PNW. When I was brainstorming places to visit for Labor Day weekend, a trip to Portland and the Columbia River Gorge seemed perfect. We decided to leave late Saturday morning, spend some time exploring downtown Portland that night, and then do the hike in the gorge Sunday morning.
It’s about a five hour drive from our house to Portland, and it was Blair’s first time in Oregon! We parked at the Powell’s garage and walked from there to Killer Burger for dinner. The burger was good but honestly not amazing, and the fries were just okay. It seems like breakfast/brunch and Asian food are all the rage right now in Portland, not burgers. After that I really wanted to try Voodoo donuts (a Portland classic), but the line was very long and I have no patience for that. So we walked back to the bookstore to browse for a bit and ended up buying a few books. Powell’s is also a Portland classic and a huge bookstore with an interesting mix of new and used books. There’s multiple color-coded rooms (like the Red Room) with different genres. As a book-lover, I could probably spend all day in there! However, we wanted to get out of the city and head to our hotel.
We reserved a night in a Comfort Inn on the outskirts of town about 20 minutes from Oneonta Gorge. On the way we stopped by a game store; it was more of a board game store so Blair was unimpressed by their video game selection. I bought a scrabble game that we played in the hotel that night. I’m not much of a city person, so it was nice to break away from the urban environment. Unfortunately, the gorgeous waterfalls in such close proximity to the city bring out crowds almost as dense as downtown on holiday weekends. I’m not sure if it’s a result of social media or what, but interest in the outdoors has spiked lately. I’m conflicted between being happy that more people are getting out and feeling like the insane crowds ruin the experience.
That said, I knew the crowds would be crazy this weekend and we tried to get going early-ish while also sleeping in as much as possible. We arrived around 8:45, and ended up leaving just as the huge crowds were descending. Supposedly if you get there around 7:00 AM on a weekday you can have the place to yourself (reason #3,006 to retire early). Anyways, I don’t feel like I need to describe this place in words when the pictures do a perfectly good job. It’s about a mile back to the waterfall but feels like less than that, perhaps because it’s so beautiful. Definitely one of my all-time favorite places I’ve ever been! The water is freezing but you get used to it after a few minutes.
After Oneonta gorge, we drove along the scenic highway past a few other beautiful waterfalls. This area is chock-full of them and there’s quite a few right next to the road. We didn’t stop at iconic Multnomah falls because the crowds were unbelievable and parking was nonexistent. We did stop at Latourell Falls because I had seen a video of it that looked amazing, and yep, it was amazing! It was surprisingly not crowded but one of the coolest waterfalls I’ve ever seen! After that we had enough time to go back to the hotel and shower before checkout. We don’t like to leave out cat for more than one night, so we started the drive back up to Washington. Oregon is definitely a really amazing place and I would love to have more time to explore everything!
