George Discovery Center & Wasco Co. Museum - Vancouver, WA

More clouds today and some rain as we visited the Gorge Discovery Center and Wasco County Museum in The Dalles. It was wonderfully done with GREAT displays, excellent movies and very nice reproductions of buildings filled with lots of original items. This Interpretive Center went from the Great Mazoola Floods thousands of years ago to the Indian tribes that lived in this area and their customs and living modes to the Lewis and Clark Expedition that came through the area and then the Co. Museum covered the human history since the county was formed as the largest co in the US. It went all the way down to Yellowstone. It was outstanding. Then we headed for the bridge to cross over into Washington and took Rt. 14 back down the gorge. Very different over on that side, not as dramatic and not the waterfalls that we had on the Oregon side. We stopped in Stevenson at their Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center which covered the history in this particular area.

Baskets woven and used by Indians before Lewis and Clark arrived.

Life-size diorama of an Indian Dip Net Fisher

Full-scale replicate of 19th century fish wheel which
almost dessimated the salmon population in the area.

We then headed to Vancouver, WA which is basically a suburb of Portland. Connected with Debbie Durham (we used to work together at One World Market) who lives in Portland now and we're meeting for breakfast tomorrow. Watched a little baseball and a little football and caught up on the blog. About time to hit the sack. We're glad this Pacific Northwest weather waited to visit us until the end of our trip!