Toto meets the Columbia River Gorge

Hey, have you ever been to the Columbia River Gorge? If not, drop everything and get over there. It’s not just scenic, it’s a Designated Scenic Area, or something like that. Team Toto just spent three glorious nights at the east end of the Gorge, at Maryhill State Park, which is — no kidding — named for one Mary Hill. You can’t make this stuff up.

The park is right on Columbia River’s north (Washington side) bank. We snagged a “waterfront” site (by reserving exactly nine months in advance).

After a long haul over Snoqualmie Pass and some other hills, Toto relaxes by the Columbia.

At site #35, we had a wonderful view of the Columbia and all its whitecaps. Thousands and thousands of whitecaps, and of course lots of fresh air, coming at us at 35 miles per hour, unceasingly. It was the kind of breeze that helps one understand why the organizer of this rally reserved a campsite well away from the shoreline. Ah. Got it.

This saved me the hassle of putting up the awning, which surely would have been ripped apart like a cocktail napkin in a blender.

Good thing I have stakes for the patio mat.

A few steps out to the water (and the full force of the wind).

Does it look like a gorge? No, not here. This is, after all, the east end of the gorge. It gets more gorgelike when you head west. But the gorge has done its job, funneling the wind through from the west side of the Cascades.

Wind is a thing here. Also, lawns. Our fellow rally campers informed us that the park staff takes great pride in the campground lawns; in fact it’s supposed to be one of the real draws for the park. This year, there’s a drought in the west, so the lawns look a little parched. There is no shortage of wind, however.

These signs along the beach warn kite boarders and wind surfers to stow their sails. The park rangers may or may not care if your sail gets blown away or damaged; but they definitely care about their lawns.

This wind is good for more than recreating humanoids in wetsuits. It’s good for making electricity, too. The wind turbines look odd in an otherwise minimally developed area. But then so does everything else that wasn’t here before. Is it progress? I dunno. Visually striking, though, yes, that’s for sure.

Hundreds of these around. If you’re not a bird, you probably like them; they create a lot of electrons, voltrons, etc., without burning fossil fuels and creating hydrocarbons and all that. If you’re a bird, however, you might run into one of these, and then… well, come to think of it, after that you wouldn’t be caring about anything. However your friends and family would be bummed.

Here at Maryhill State Park, it doesn’t hurt to be interested in trains. Because there are lots of them, on both sides of the river, day and night. Most are freight trains, but twice a day there’s an Amtrak Empire Builder train racing through. They’re short — they’re just the Portland-to-Chicago addition to the Seattle-to-Chicago route — but let’s not discriminate against them for that.

After a few hours at Maryhill we learned to distinguish the Amtrak train horns from the BNSF (freight line) train horns. And then, having figured that out, I realized I was wrong and couldn’t tell the difference. So I looked up the Empire Builder schedule (train between Portland and Chicago) and went out to try for a shot. Not award-winning, but I got it.

There’s more to see and know about greater metropolitan Maryhill, and I’ll get right on it, tomorrow evening — from our next destination.