Today is what on an ocean cruise is called a “sea day,” that is a day spent cruising from place to place. One not spent in tied up alongside in port. We are sailing upriver on the Columbia, and as I write this have just passed through the locks at John Day dam. We shared the lock with a pleasure craft - a cabin cruiser of maybe 30’.
Locks are a feature of river cruising, we’ll pass through eight on our way upstream to the Lewiston/Clarkston area - four each on the Columbia and Snake rivers. The most locks I’ve ever seen on one crossing is on the Rhine-Main Canal linking the Rhine and Danube rivers, we’ve passed through those on several trips from Amsterdam to Vienna.
We are having a lazy day, I slept in. The scenery continues to be excellent. Right now we are sailing beside a quite large mountain that is a mile or so north of the river. There are wind turbines atop it, as usual not turning. We will look back and marvel at how dumb those were.
I believe our next stop is near Pendleton. We see much evidence of long-ago vulcanism, outcrops of basaltic rock. This region continues to be a place where volcanoes lie hopefully dormant, but some clearly are not so quiet - Mt. St. Helens, for example.
The weather continues with overcast skies, the norm in this region. Atypically no rain so far, I expect some and will be surprised if the cruise ends having experienced no rain. Californians drive up here in summer and marvel at how green it is, compared to CA. Many don’t realize it has to rain a lot for that to occur.
