EDITOR'S NOTE: With gas prices in the stratosphere, we're looking for excursions that will keep the summer fun rolling, but not break the bank. Today, the P-I launches a new feature aimed at short trips around the Puget Sound that can be taken on one tankful or less in a typical family car.
PORT GAMBLE -- On a typical day, some 6,500 cars breeze by this historic mill town on their way to the Hood Canal Bridge, not realizing they're passing up one of the prettiest, best-preserved little main streets in Western Washington.
By Cecelia Goodnow | June 29, 2006
Short Trips
MOUNT HOOD, Ore. - When President Franklin Roosevelt dedicated Timberline Lodge in September 1937, he praised the skilled workers who assembled the extraordinary building in record time under the auspices of a federal Depression-era work program.
Just 40 miles away, on the banks of the Columbia River in Hood River, Ore., the once proud Columbia Gorge Hotel, which opened with much fanfare in 1921, languished at its spectacular site as a retirement home during most of the Depression. It wasn't until 1977 that work began to restore its original luster.
By Jeff Larsen | December 11, 2003
MOUNT HOOD, Ore. - My dislike for being cold is nearly as severe as my wife's disdain for the dentist.
My cold phobia can be traced to Mount Hood and the time, about 35 years ago, when my brother's car conked out halfway down the road from Timberline. Before Dad came to the rescue late that night, we thought we were going to freeze to death - or die of exhaustion from kicking the unreliable '54 Ford.
Revisiting wind-swept, snow-swept, cold-swept Timberline on Oregon's highest peak has never been on my "A" list for weekend getaways.
By Steve Pierce | July 26, 2000
