Columbia River trip

It's hard to know where to start. We have a ton of beautiful pictures, so it's hard to know what to post. We left Friday afternoon and crossed the river into Oregon and drove the interstate right along the Columbia River, taking a couple of scenic detours along the way. One took us up to some beautiful views. Another took us right along a bunch of waterfalls, one of which you see behind us here. Ben was very scared at the first one. You get very close to these and they are very loud. You can also feel the spray from them. He relaxed as we went. Latourell falls was great. It was a short walk and there was nobody else there. See Jon's picture below. (You might want to click on the picture for a better view.)
We spent the night in Beaverton. We tried Ben in the big pool. It was a little cold and he wasn't altogether excited about it, but he did pretty well. (It's foggy because there was also a hot tub in there.) We had some ice cream to end the night.

Saturday we headed toward the Oregon coast and drove up the coast. We stopped At Ecola State Park, which is where they did some filming of The Goonies. They had a beach there and we walked a bit in the 55-degree water. The sand was hard and full of bugs, so we didn't let Ben crawl around at all.

We drove up the coast to Astoria, where we got a picture of The Goonies house, and drove back across the Columbia to the Washington side. We headed up to Mount St. Helens but the road was still closed. We drove back home along the Columbia River on the Washington side.