Troutdale
After just 20 minutes on Interstate 84, take Exit 17 for Troutdale, a 100-year-old town where even a tattoo parlor fits seamlessly into the main street of antiques shops and art galleries. Pick up some brewed ice tea and a mammoth apple-maple muffin at the Troutdale General Store (289 E. Historic Columbia River Hwy.) and marvel at the big bronze moose outside wildlife sculptor Rip Caswell's gallery. Head eastward out of Troutdale on the Historic Columbia River Highway (HCRH). The gently winding road—constructed from 1913 to 1922—is still an impressive feat of engineering. Driving this portion, where the bridges and guardrails have been restored to their original appearance, you'll feel you have detoured to a slower, simpler time.

Crown Point
After about ten miles (16 kilometers), the road reaches a peak at Crown Point, a scenic overlook 733 feet above the Columbia River. The monumental Vista House (www.vistahouse.com), built here in 1918 from sandstone and Alaskan marble to honor the Oregon pioneers, serves as a combination rest stop and observatory. Gaze down from Vista House on the Columbia River as it runs through the Columbia River Gorge, an 80-mile-long (130-kilometer-long) channel hewn through walls of basalt that rise up to 4,000 feet (1,220 meters) by millennia of glaciers, floods, and the rushing river. Continuing east, the Historic Columbia River Highway passes one ethereal waterfall after another. Multnomah Falls (620 feet/189 meters), the second-highest year-round waterfall in the States, gets most of the press—and most of the visitors (two million per year). By all means make a stop at Multnomah, but you may get a more meaningful, less-crowded experience at one of the other waterfalls. For example, the short hike on a paved path down a slope to Latourell Falls deters most tourists and lets you discover the wispy beauty of the water in relatively silent wonder. The whole region is threaded with hiking trails for those wanting a deeper walk in the woods.

Bonneville Dam
Continue east on the Historic Columbia River Highway until it reconnects with Interstate 84, then hop off at Exit 40 to check out Bonneville Dam, a major hydropower station opened in 1938. From April to November, viewing windows by the fish ladder allow visitors to watch as salmon and steelhead trout make their way upstream to spawn.