Day 6 -- 7/13/25 (Sunday) Hood River

 After a quick breakfast (buffet) we had to board buses for Multnomah Falls tour. It was about a 30 minute drive and when we arrived, the place was very crowded with summer and weekend tourists. The falls are very tall and quite beautiful. We walked up to the bridge, but decided not to climb to the top because the view from there is not exciting. The best view is actually from the bottom platform. We explored the visitor center, which had a lot of information about the fish in the Columbia River and what is being done to help them migrate up the river from the Pacific via the locks and dams. Each dam has a fish ladder and other means of assisting the fish. The Columbia River salmon migration is a remarkable journey where salmon return from the ocean to spawn in the freshwater streams where they were born. This cycle involves several runs of different salmon species, including coho,  Chinook, sockeye, and steelhead, each with its own timing and migration patterns. Surprisingly, they keep pretty good track of the numbers of all the fish that pass through the dams each days. The day we were there, most were coho salmon and chinook. 

The ship left Hood River early afternoon and we wents through two more locks/dams: the Dalles Lock and the John Day Lock, the deepest lock on the Columbia and one of the deepest in the world. 

Social score:

Lunch – big win – very fun lunch with the couple from Indianapolis we ate with before and a very handsome couple, Syd and Susan, currently from Florida, but previously from NYC. It turned out that Syd and Al both lived in the Bronx, went to the same high school and then to the same university (NYU). They were at the high school at roughly the same time so had a lot to talk about.

Dinner – loss – a couple from Tallahassee – she had a speech impediment (stroke?) and was very difficult to understand and her husband was a non-talker. It was like pulling teeth.

Entertainment – same girl as 2 days ago; she did better this time

A funny thing happened when we were walking back to our cabin after the show,  a door to another cabin opened and a man asked us if we drink alcohol. We didn’t know what to say so we said yes. Then his wife also appeared and they presented us with a chilled bottle of what they called “champagne” (in reality it was Cava) which they got from the ship crew for their wedding anniversary. They said they’d never had alcohol in their lives so they wanted to give it to someone who would enjoy it. We took it, but with unlimited alcohol from the bar, this gift was more of a burden…. 


















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