This past month Emee and I made two visits to the Columbia River Gorge, one of my favorite places to visit. We had a spring break trip for the Eastern Gorge planned for awhile (which will be featured as Part Two), but the visit to Hood River was more spur-of-the-moment. Emee works in event planning, and one of the things she needs to do is visit venues to see if they would be suitable for future weddings or meetings. We had a site tour at the Columbia Gorge Hotel in Hood River lined up for Wednesday March 16. Hood River is close enough (an hour drive) that it easily can be a day trip, but we decided to make it an overnight stay.
This would be my first visit to the Columbia Gorge Hotel, a historic Mission style resort built in 1921 to accommodate travelers on the then new (Historic) Columbia River Highway. While the building itself is impressive enough, the most impressive feature to me is the waterfall right on the property! Wah Gwin Gwin Falls drops 207 feet (63 m) from the back of the hotel to the Columbia River below. The area is renowned for its waterfalls, but this is the only one I know that’s adjacent to a hotel.
After the site tour, we hung around Hood River. Mount Hood Railway is a short-line railroad that branches from the Union Pacific Railroad mainline and travels 20 miles south to the community of Parkdale. There’s a few freight customers along the line, this is an area of orchards. But most of the business comes from excursion trains. The cars are parked downtown, and Emee and I poked around looking at the vintage cars.
We returned home on Thursday March 17, but would be back for a more extensive exploration the following week…
Urban Adventure League 
I loved your pictures from Columbia Gorge Hotel. I’ve never ever been there, even though it’s not so super far away–I think because in my head it’s just too fancy or something that it hasn’t really been on my radar to even wonder about it, but man! Those grounds (and the waterfall:) are so cool!