Thursday, August 20, 2015

Columbia Gorge Area

We are at a Columbia Sun RV Park in Kennewick, WA which is semi-close to the Columbia River. It's sorta central for this area wineries - Prosser area, Columbia Gorge and Walla Walla. Landed in our space yesterday around noon after an easy going 200 miles from Issaquah. After setup (which takes us only about 30 minutes) we headed out to experience the wineries in Prosser area, about 25 miles back up the road we came down on. Our first stop was Hogue Winery, which we have had their wines before. We had a pleasant tasting and walked out with several bottles.
 From there we went to Kestrel, which we have never heard of before, but had pleasant wines. Of course Jim liked the most expensive one, so we left with a couple bottles.
 Then onto 14 Hands Winery, which we have also tasted their commonly distributed wine. We opted to taste from their reserve list and ended up with 4 bottles. We did a few more tastings, but nothing else was any good. In fact, it went down hill quite fast, so headed back to the RV for a pleasant evening out on the patio.
This morning we left early for a long day on the road to site see the falls that are about 40 miles east of Portland. Yes we drove about 180 miles one way to see some falls. Call us crazy or what. But the last time we saw these falls was about 3 years ago on a freezing December day when the falls were all frozen, so wanted to view when the water is actually running.
This is the biggest and best falls.
Pictures just don't do it justice.
We drove down the Columbia River on the south side (Oregon) and drove back on the north side (Washington). With all the smoke in the area from all the fires, we were concerned that we would not be able to see Mt. Hood, but the wind picked up today to at times felt like 40mph, and cleared out the air, so we did get a glimpse of the beautiful mountain.
 We stopped at our favorite winery - Cascade Cliffs to purchase a couple of cases of our favorite wine. Well, we did purchase the wine, but little did we know that they have two different Reserve Barbaras, which they gave us the wrong one. When we got back to the RV we checked and found that we purchased the wrong wine. Maybe it's not our favorite winery anymore. Oh well, I'm sure we will suffer through each bottle.
We next stopped at Maryhill Winery, which we enjoyed their wines the last time we were here, but this time, didn't find anything we liked.
Here are some vineyards on the Columbia.
The RV park we are in is quite spacious, which makes it so much nicer. The last park in Issaquah was so tight quarters, I had to move the picnic table to the next lot over so Jim wouldn't run into it driving out of the lot, but then our RV is a "little" bigger than normal RVs.
We are now sitting out on our patio enjoying 80 degree weather with a light breeze having our evening glass of vino. Haven't discussed what we are doing tomorrow, in fact, I'm having a hard time knowing what day it is or what day of the week it is. Only my Apple Watch is keeping me on schedule.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please leave your comments. Enjoy hearing from our readers. If you do not have a Google account just select Name/ULR under "Comment As" and enter your name, then publish your comment.