days 15 - 19 – hood river, oregon

Hood River or “The Gorge” as it is affectionately known by windsurfers, was our first real stop where we get to relax and spend multiple nights in one place. It’s nice to get back to regular day stuff like getting groceries, doing laundry, and poking around a few nice shops each day instead of trying to cram it all into one or two days. We’ll spend a total of six nights here in the Gorge before heading to Washington to see Dave Matthews.

The Gorge is an outdoors person’s dream. It’s got hiking, mountain biking, snowboarding and of course windsurfing on the Columbia River Gorge, where it’s consistently windy almost every day of the summer. The town of Hood River is also a really funky spot with shops galore, microbrews, tons of local wineries and 300 or so days a year of sunshine. AND did we mention that there is no sales tax whatsoever in Oregon!?

Chris has been windsurfing a few times here and we went on a bike ride at the local mountain biking hotspot, which is said to be amongst the best. From what we saw, it was really fun – a hard packed dirt/clay track through the woods with lots of jumps and stunts thrown in. Chris had the misfortune of bending his front wheel on one of the jumps and that was the end of the mountain biking in Hood River. We also had the opportunity to do a hike up one on the local mountains, which provided stunning views of Mount Hood (and also apparently Mount Adams and Mount St. Helens if we hadn’t quit before getting to the top) and the Hood River Valley.

Where's Chris? A stunning view of Mount Hood on our hike

Another spectacular view (of Mt Hood silly :)

Oooh! Looky looky at all the pretty kites!

Chris doing a body drag

Hello from The Gorge!

Oregon wine - mmm mmm good!

The infamous jump where Chris busted his bike