Vacation Day 1: Columbia River Gorge

Posted June 7, 2012, 10:30 p.m.

Melissa and I (and many members of my extended family) have gathered at a rented vacation house in Hood River, Oregon, for a Bradford family reunion. Obviously the main purpose of the trip is to catch up with family we haven’t seen in many years, but we also have ample opportunity to travel around the area and see the sights. Hood River is nestled in the Columbia River Gorge about sixty miles east of Portland, and the whole area is rich with natural beauty.

We arrived on Monday and had a good night’s sleep. Then Melissa and I spent much of Tuesday traveling the Historic Columbia River Highway and stopping at the various sights along the way, including a number of waterfalls, the Vista House, and the Bonneville Fish Hatchery. Enjoy the photos below:

Sequential

Imposing

Stairs

Obedient

Tired Dog #2

Welder

Looking

Tired Dog #1

Dogs

Keep Off

Fish Tower

Duck Fishing

Perplexed Duck

Netting Duck

Planning Ducks

Authorized

Oz

Trout

Ducks

Sturgeon Man

Confusing

Decay

Interpreting the Sturgeon

Baby Farm

Welcoming Doors

Sounds Dirty

As Opposed To?

Fish Dancing

Welcome Sign

Fishy

Don’t Steal Trashcan

Weirdo

Stairs

Misty

Horsetail Falls

Horsetail Falls Sign

Locked

Post

Through

Old Highway Tunnel

Puddle Jumper

Trailhead

Upper Multnomah Falls

Looking Down

Switchback

Cliff

Fence

Joy

Sluggy

Cables

Holy

Metallic Nature

Useful Information

Sticky

Multnomah Falls

Multnomah Falls

Multnomah Falls Sign

More Running Water

Running Water

Wahkeena Falls

Wahkeena Falls Sign

Snaily

Pipey

Woody

Bridal Veil Falls

Rivery

Trail

Tubey

It’s a Sign

New Highway and River

Domed

Weather Center

Vista House Close

Through the Arch

New Highway

Old Highway Vista

Vista House

Old Highway

Columbia River

Not Maintained

Trail Sign

Can

Stumped

Pipe

Cube

Cold Forest

Snowy Stairs

Foggy Mountain Lot

View From the House

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.

Quotes

There is much truth in that saying: A man will do little by firing off his gun if he has not learned to take aim.

Therefore the wise know themselves but make no show, have self-respect but are not arrogant.

If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the unlimited authority of the majority, which may at some future time urge the minorities to desperation, and oblige them to have recourse to physical force.

It is very easy to change a free government into an arbitrary one, but that it is very difficult to convert tyranny into freedom.

Today we need a nation of minute men; citizens who are not only prepared to take up arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as a basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom.

Every group feels strong once it has found a scapegoat.

I’m an American, and most of the time proud of it. Even when I am displeased with what my country is doing, I am still an American who is displeased.

He who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains proves that he has no brains of his own!

It is important to distinguish between ‘schooling’ and ‘education.’ Not all schooling is education nor all education, schooling.

In the last instance, men must act on what they believe right, not on what they believe probable.

My brethren, if any one among you wanders from the truth and some one brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

Any one who goes ahead and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God; he who abides in the doctrine has both the Father and the Son.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . . .

For he will render to every man according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. . . .

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

Thy eyes beheld my unformed substance; in thy book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

Jesus bluntly calls the evil person evil. If I am assailed, I am not to condone or justify aggression. Patient endurance of evil does not mean a recognition of its rights. That is sheer sentimentality, and Jesus will have nothing to do with it.

The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.

It makes me mad when people say I turned and ran like a scared rabbit. Maybe it was like an angry rabbit, who was going to fight in another fight, away from the first fight.

When I say ‘follow your heart,’ it’s actually shorthand for ‘follow your heart unless your brain makes a reasonable objection.’