August 23, 2016 - Vancouver, Camas, Washougal (WA) & Portland, OR

We woke up before 9 am, took things easy for a bit, then cleaned up the Lil' Home.  The weather was great, sunny with few clouds in the sky.

Edith walked over to the office to check if we could stay in the same site for one additional day. “No, it is already booked”, the receptionist replied.  We realized that 3 days of sightseeing in Portland and neighboring areas was not enough.  We will figure it out tomorrow morning.

Edith wanted to check out two cemeteries today, but the first one was not even there as shown on the Google map, so we went to another cemetery called Lone Fir Cemetery. It is a beautiful place and has lots of tombstones dating back to mid 1800's. The first burial was in 1846; however, the cemetery was established in 1855.  There are over 25,000 burials! There were many tombstones with Russian epitaph and photos. There is one Douglas fir tree that is 150 years old and is still standing. The cemetery was appropriately named after this lone fir tree. There was a guy picking up trash while walking his bicycle.  There were lots of beer cans lying all over the cemetery. How sad.  

We had lunch at Noho's Hawaiian Cafe, per Keri's rcommendation.  The dining place is at the corner of SE Clinton St. and NE 26th Ave. It is not a very big dining place inside and its decor was very interesting.  They serve authentic Hawaiian style meals. Erwin went with Kahula Pork and Edith had Phil's Ono Chicken.  Each dish came with two scoops of sticky rice and one scoop of macaroni salad.  The portions were bigger than we expected, even though we asked for regular size.  We knew that we were not going to finish all of it.  Of course, we took the rest home. 

After leaving the restaurant we went back to Jantzen Beach RV Park because Erwin forgot his IPhone and wanted to have it before we head north to Washington.

We took I-5 North, entered Washington state line, then exited to get on Washington 14. We meandered through the towns of Camas and Washougal.  We pulled over at Cape Horn scenic overlook. The pullout is not very long, can hold no more than 4 cars.  The view of the Columbia River and the mountains was stunning. An excellent spot to see the Columbia Gorge.

Good view of Mt Hood

We turned around and went back west on WA 14, stopped at Steigerwald Lake National Wildlife Refuge.  There were not many birds around. We saw only one purple martin.  

In Washougal Edith told Erwin to get on the side street because she wanted to see if there was anywhere there that we could get a better view of Mt. Hood.  While cruising we saw several white egrets and one Great Blue Heron in the creek.  We came to a dead end and there was a fairly good view of Mt Hood. The air looked much better now. Edith was happy to be able to get some good pictures of it.

While we were scouting around we spotted model airplanes being flown around and we decided to go in Fern Prairie Modelers area.  It is a place where modelers can fly their model airplanes.  We stayed a while to watch few model planes in flight and talked with the modelers.  We asked them questions and they graciously answered us.

Erwin and the modelers

Mt. Hood as seen from Fern Prairie area

Earlier today we made an arrangement to visit with Keri’s friends, Querida and Eric at 6:30 pm on our way back to Jantzen Beach RV Park.  We visited with them until 8 pm. They have two adorable kids, aged 4 (soon 5) and 3. 

It was a good day and the weather was very pleasant. A lovely drive today.