8/29/2010
Let me add a comment here about photos. You can click on any one and it will enlarge to full screen size. Back arrow will return you to the blog. Secondly, adding photos in Blogger is a NIGHTMARE! Even if we had Internet aboard any ship, Blogger's interface is so cumbersome and slow and awkward that it would never be an option while on vacation and paying by the minute for Internet time. Rant over. You may proceed.
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| Approaching Bonneville Dam going up the Columbia River |
We were up early due to jet lag and time zones and also not wanting to miss anything the first morning. We love locks! We expected to go through Bonneville Dam lock before breakfast. They did not tell us about the sea lions on the island before the dam until we were on the other side of it! Huh! Oh well, it was beautiful scenery. They had an early bird continental spread from 6am to 9am in the lounge. It was well attended! Then sit down breakfast was served in the dining room at 7:30am. It was also well attended! Some of these people must be having hobbit breakfasts, first breakfast, second breakfast… and so on. I have found that I don’t like the dining room coffee mainly because it is not served hot, but I can make myself a fresh hot mocha in the lounge. So, I go up to have a look around forward first thing, check the navigation monitor by the door and get oriented geographically and then get my mocha, then after breakfast is announced in the dining room, we go there. Clay had eggs cooked to order and I had a malted Belgian waffle with strawberry compote. So, anyway, nice touch is that we docked immediately after passing through the Bonneville lock and then they served breakfast.
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| Fish chute - protects young Salmon going to sea from the dam and from predatory birds |
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| Entering Bonneville Dam Navigation Lock going up the Columbia River |
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| First Mate and Captain (in cap) in the lock |
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| Swinging Bridge is back in place and the gates are closing on lock |
Bonneville Lock raised us about 60 feet. In hindsight, it was one of the quickest we experienced. Of course, we did not see almost all of the locks on the Snake River, so we don’t actually know!
Below is some information that was provided in a photocopied handout aboard Spirit of '98 on the last day. I am inserting data about the dams and locks here for anyone interested in it. From the Pacific Ocean to Lewiston, Idaho, eight locks and dams (4 on Columbia River and 4 on Snake River) enable navigation 465 miles and provide vessels an elevation change of 738 feet.
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| Cruise West's Spirit of '98 docked above Bonneville Dam |
Bonneville Mile 145.5 Columbia River
Average elevation change of 64 feet.
The Dalles Mile 192 Columbia River
Average elevation change of 90 feet.
John Day Mile 217 Columbia River
Average elevation change of 113 feet. This is the tallest single-lift lock in the world. This is the kind of information that would have been appreciated upfront by this passenger as I would have made a special effort to see this one even though it was dark each time we went through this one!
McNary Mile 292 Columbia River
Average elevation change of 83 feet.
Ice Harbor Mile 9.7 Snake River
Average elevation change of 100 feet. We were asleep crossing all the Snake River Dams going in both directions!
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| Me in my favorite spot onboard! |
Lower Monumental Mile 41.6 Snake River
Average elevation change of 98 feet.
Little Goose Mile 70.3 Snake River
Average elevation change of 100 feet.
Lower Granite Mile 107.5 Snake River
Average elevation change of 100 feet.
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| Underwater view of the Bonneville Dam Fish Ladder |
After breakfast we left the boat and walked across the parking lot to the Bonneville Dam visitor center. The gangway today was on deck one, where our cabin is. When we boarded the first time, it was on the top Sun Deck, Deck 4. We split in 2 groups and got a tour with rangers in Smokey Bear hats! We got to see lots of 2 species of salmon going through the fish ladder and one sturgeon. Ugly! Our ranger guide Danielle said that is really a special event. There is a fish counter down there at the underwater viewing area. How cool a job is that? Fish counter! Really, there are 2 of them covering most of the hours of the day and night. They also have a live webcam! It should be able to be found at the following web address which they were handling out on little paper slips.
http://www.nwp.usace.army.mil/op/b/fishcam.asp So, here I am on 9/14/10 adding photos and I try the link they were handing out and it is incomplete. I Googled it and it should work now, but it looks like the annual fish run is over! I did not see any fish, also the webpage says they plan to remove it, so if you are looking for it, try this:
http://www.nwp.usace.army.mil/home.asp or they have up a YouTube of an active period.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiBHUu_wnUE I looked at it and it was not as exciting as the morning we were there when we saw one 5 foot or so sturgeon along with thousands of salmon. Unfortunately, I also found out that Clay was so enthralled with the sturgeon and so upset over getting busted by the Ranger for smacking his gum that he did not get a photo!
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| Clay at Spillway - no power is generated when young Salmon migrate to sea |
Then we visited the original power house where the turbines are. But, they don't run them when fish are running, so they were idle. It was a cool building though and was designed to be elegant Art Deco. We could have spent a lot more time at the fish ladder above and below, but we had to leave.
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| Osprey and nest on Powerhouse 1 at Bonneville Dam |
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| Inside Powerhouse 1 Bonneville Dam |
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| Multnomah Falls, Oregon |
We had to go get on the buses for Multnomah Falls! It was a short bus ride away. Wow! We had actually spotted it from the river since we were up before sunrise, but since from that lower angle we couldn't see the 2 levels and the bridge, we weren't sure it was it and we saw a few other waterfalls too. Anyway, it was actually Multnomah that we spotted earlier. It was great. It is a 620 foot plunge! It is the second highest year-round waterfall in the United States. (I believe the first highest is Yosemite.) We walked up the trail to the bridge, but did not have enough time to go to the top of the falls. Too bad, the view from up there should have been amazing.
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| Sign on rail bridge over trail to Multnomah Falls |
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| Me & ship's zodiac on Sun Deck, in front of Beacon Rock |
On the bus ride there and back they pointed out Beacon Rock. It was a Lewis and Clark landmark. It is a monolithic basalt formation. It is the 2nd largest in the Northern Hemisphere at 848 feet in height. The first highest is the Rock of Gibraltar according to our special Guest Expedition Leader Don. It doesn't look anywhere close to the size of Gibraltar!? It must be a very distant second. (Just checked online and Gibraltar is highest monolithic promontory at 1,398 ft. Still my sense of scale must be way off, or else Rock of Gibraltar is a lot wider and bigger around than Beacon Rock.) I hope we have a better photo of Beacon Rock on the trip back down the river, the light was a better angle then and the skies clearer. If I find a better photo on that day, I will be sure to post it on that day's blog entry!
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| Just a Columbia River Gorge view! |
We got back onboard the boat and shortly were called to a BBQ lunch buffet in the dining room by deck number. Deck one was called 30 minutes after deck 4. So we were last to eat. But, it was worth the wait. Either I got my appetite back or it was all really good. They served Salmon that was better than last night’s dinner according to all who had both. They had ribs, wurst, chopped beef barbecue, roasted vegetables, pasta salad, salad, and baked beans. I can’t remember what dessert was, but they serve freshly baked cookies in the lounge every afternoon anyway. We cast off and started sailing again right after we sat to eat.
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| Windsurfers in the Columbia River Gorge |
We are going on a Wheelhouse tour soon. That is the same as a bridge on a regular cruise ship. This afternoon is all sailing between Bonneville Dam and The Dalles. (We heard this pronounced the dolls and also the dalls. Supposedly, it is French and means something about rock cliffs.) What else? Oh, the Bonneville Dam is 145 miles upriver from the Pacific and Lewis and Clark documented tide effects all the way to the Beacon Rock! But, the lesson here is that the river from Bonneville Dam to Astoria is as it was when Lewis & Clark were on it. This afternoon we were afforded a rare clear view of Mt. Hood. We sailed past the Hood River intersection which is very windy and it was full of parasails and windsurfers. Then we saw these really amazingly weird basalt anticline (I think that is what he was saying.) formations. They were like solidified lava tubes in clusters. (Yep, inserting a Google search result here with everything you never wanted to know about basalt anticlines.
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| Basalt anticlines or lava tubes in the Columbia River Gorge |
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| Mt. Hood from the Columbia River |
We turned a corner and we had left the temperate zone and now we are in transitional zone to high desert! Still a little bit of green trees, but mostly brown. Amazing. Also, this part of the Columbia River Gorge is like a big wind tunnel, which explains on the windsurfers and parasailers. Once we turned the corner the wind dropped way off. Well, gotta go, group 3 is being called to the wheelhouse tour. More later.
Only day one on the boat! It is not luxury cruising but we are rather enjoying it. Is it a good value? Hard to say. For the same money per diem, we could have been on RSSC Voyager. Hard argument and 2 very different experiences. I think it is important to remember that it is costlier to do business in the US. We have not heard anything onboard about Cruise west having any financial difficulties.
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| Windsurfers on Columbia River with Mt. Hood in background |
The wheelhouse tour was great. There were 6 passengers, the captain, his next in command at the big wheel and a young woman and young man mates. We sailed through the biggest cluster yet of windsurfers and it was crazy and a little terrifying! It turns out that windsurfers have fewer rights of way than fish! We learned that the Spirit of '98 has about a 10 foot draft. River depths on this cruise run from 15 feet to 200 feet. All the bridges are very high, or drawbridges. So, for those who might remember our catastrophic 2003 European river cruise debacle, no chance of that here! Good news.
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| Depressed area is Lewis & Clark's Rock Fort camp site |
As we approached The Dalles, we saw a large Google facility and a large processing plant for maraschino cherries. Apparently, this a world capital of maraschinos. We started seeing low rock cliffs on the Oregon, or right side as we sailed toward The Dalles. It turns out that one of the few remaining Lewis & Clark sites is there. It is called Rock Fort and is a depression in the rock cliff. When Lewis & Clark were here there were of course no dams, so the water was lower and there was a sand beach, now submerged. The L&C expedition, pulled their canoes up the beach, up the depression and they encamped for 3 days outbound and 3 days return to rest and repair canoes there. They picked it because they could easily scale the cliff there and thought it would be a high defensible point against possible hostile Indians.
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| Entering The Dalles lock |
We sailed to just outside The Dalles dam and turned sideways and sat still in the river for about an hour. There was a barge in the lock and we had to wait for it before we could get in. It shifted back the schedule for the rest of the evening. This lock at The Dalles is about 90 feet, so taller than the Bonneville Dam this morning. It also seemed to take a lot longer to fill and float out. After we got out whoever was driving the boat really floored it! We needed to make up lost time. The dining room was rocking and service seemed especially slow and chaotic. Past this point, it is all high, dry desert! We have left the transition zone. About the time they started serving soup, there was a sudden deceleration and we assume the kitchen complained to the bridge to slow down until the hot food service was complete. Anyway, dinner wound up taking over 2 hours and some people were still awaiting dessert as the evening’s enrichment program was to begin. We just went to the cabin directly from the dining room and crashed again. Tonight we had our Narration Box though and could listen in to the talk about Thomas Jefferson's multipage mandate to Meriwether Lewis on his mission to the Pacific.
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| Our Narration Box! |
We sailed all night last night! We hope that on the way back we sail this part in daylight to see what we missed! (Follow-up note here: No, most of what we sailed at night, we sailed at night twice. There was just a short portion that we got in daylight on the return.) Anyway, we passed through 2 dams/locks overnight, the John Day and the McNary. On the first deck of Spirit of ’98, when they use the bow thrusters we definitely knew when we entered a lock! The first was just as we had fallen asleep and was the John Day Dam. The second was about an hour and a half before wakeup call was scheduled and was the McNary Dam. We must have been sound asleep because neither of us heard the bow thrusters in the second, or McNary lock. We heard something hitting the wall beside the bed. That is my side, so I crawled to the foot of the bed and pulled back the curtains as they were removing the bumpers at the top of the lock! I sat there as we started sailing out of the lock. To my surprise, I saw an orange hard hat pop out of a window about 10 feet away. I waved at the guy as his jaw dropped. Clay asked me if was decent, and I told him since I was cross-legged, maybe he could see my panties but I thought I was, but he was probably just surprised to see anyone looking out. He waved back. Clay's comment was that it was the first human we had sighted working ashore at any of those locks.
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| Bob enjoying some local brews during social hour in the lounge. |
The above photo is out of order and was actually taken between 5:30pm and 6:30pm during Social Hour in the Lounge which is the day's Recap and Tomorrow's Highlights. I apologize for not being able to tell you what we paid for the root beer and beer pictured above, but Clay was on some kind of receipt-purging binge on this trip and he ripped up everyone he could get his hands on, which was most of them. So, I won't be posting a lot of information about what things cost for future travelers just because I don't know anymore! That said, as I recall both beverages were in the range between $3 and $4. Not unreasonable, but at this price point we would be more accustomed to not paying extra for things like this and it is the kind of little thing that gives a cruise experience a different and more gracious feel.
