Columbia River Gorge - Day 2 Part 2

Tuesday, June 30, 2015    continued

 Next we headed eastward along the Columbia River to the city of Hood River.

We saw colorful sails in the sky so headed to the river side.
These are called kite boards.  We sat and watched for a bit.  It was fascinating.

This video is showing a few people kite boarding.

Then we saw a man starting the process.  I'll try not to put too many more pictures.

This man has a harness on and the kite is attached to him.  He is reaching for his board that has boots attached.

Here he is almost to the water's edge.  Once he reaches the water, he sits and puts his feet in the boots.

Here is a short video showing him finalizing getting his boots on and taking off.  Tic and I decided we could do this.

The guy at the end of the yellow kite is the same one in the pictures above.  We watched these 3 for a while.  It was fascinating.

One last picture......

See the guy in the air?  He let the kite pick him up and he did a flip.  It was fun watching everyone!  His board does not have boots on it, the way the other man's board did.

From the same spot we were watching the kite boarders, we could see this bridge.  There are not many bridges crossing the Columbia River.  This is a truss bridge with a vertical lift that is .85 of a mile long.  

There was a marina at this spot also.  

This catamaran was just inside the marina cove.

This marina was full of sail boats.  The wind was blowing well today, so we were surprised we did not see any boats sailing.

We decided to cross the Columbia at this bridge.  We are now in Washington state headed westward towards Vancouver.

Tic got this picture as we crossed the river on the bridge.  Awesome!

We stopped shortly after we were on the Washington side and took this picture.  Here you see the river with a kite boarder and Mount Hood in the background.  What a view!!

We pulled into a state park on the Washington side.  We sat and watched sail boarders while we ate our lunch.  Sail boarding looks a lot more difficult than kite boarding.  They looked like colorful little bugs all over the water.

As we were going down the road, we noticed a sign for a lake just inland from the river.  This is Drano Lake.  The internet says "Drano Lake is created by backwater from the impoundment of the Columbia River from the Bonneville Dam. The lake enters the Bonneville Reservoir at Columbia River Mile (RM) 162. The Little White Salmon River drains into Drano Lake, and slack water from the lake extends some distance up the Little White Salmon River."

This is a short video of the spillway at Bonneville Dam.  Bonneville Dam was created solely as a hydroelectric plant.

There is also a step ladder for the fish to continue up river.  This is the fish going up the step ladder.

Here at the Bonneville Dam they also count the fish.  There was a viewing area were you could see the fish swimming by the counting area.

However, the first window had these gross looking "things" attached to the window......

These are called Pacific Lamprey.  They are born in fresh water, go to the ocean where they grow to adulthood, and then return to freshwater to spawn.  They use their sucking action to attach themselves to rocks to rest while heading back upstream to spawn.  They live about 7 years or more.

This is some fish swimming by the viewing area.  The white lines are actually bubbles in the water.  They created a very strong current in this area.

This mural was on the outside wall of the visitors center.

After this we headed home.  It's been a hot and busy day.