October, 2025
We don’t call it the Columbia River … we call it the mighty Columbia River. It’s huge, it’s gorgeous, it’s so powerful, it means so much to so many people.
I thought, in this blog post, that I would share my photos of the Columbia River from my camping trip to Beacon Rock State Park where I’m camped right next to the mighty Columbia River. But I’ve decided to share a video with you instead, not one I created, a video created by someone else.
Mossback (Knute Berger) is well known in the Pacific NW of the USA for his fascinating tales of local history, people, geography, geology, Seattle stuff, details of Puget Sound and the islands here, business info, financial info, history of towns and native tribes, and yet current events too. Fair warning, he tells the truth, so the information he shares isn’t always fun to listen to. Immigrants (mostly from Europe) were sometimes extremely destructive. But mostly Mossback’s stories are a lot of fun and very interesting. This fellow knows a lot and is so good at telling the stories … one blog post of his relates the history (from 1938 and still going strong today) of Ivar’s Restaurants … Ivar’s acres of clams! 🙂
The other fellow in the video below is Nick Zentner who knows geology and geography like you don’t even know your left hand! He’s amazing and has many videos on line as well.
Ok, buckle up, pay attention!, and let’s go take a look at the mighty Columbia River. These two people will tell you about basalt rocks right along the east side of the river that are “only” 16 million years old (its the NEW volcano stuff) … versus the migmatite rocks on the west (older) side of the river that are 160 million years old! Turns out a volcano in Oregon shoved billions of gallons of Columbia river water over to the west, many miles. So the new volcanic rock is on one side of the river, and the old migmatite rock is still on the other side of the river. Ok, enough from me. Turn your sound on, sit back, and enjoy this video.
Here’s a link to my visit to the remains of the Peter Iredale, when I was camped on the Oregon Coast just south of the Columbia River bar, right next to the Pacific Ocean. The Peter Iredale was one of so many ships lost off the Columbia bar in horrible weather.
This camping trip, to Beacon Rock State Park, is my fourth camping trip along the mighty Columbia River. I could spend the rest of my life camping along the Columbia and still not see all of it. But I do intend to see a great deal more of it. 🙂
As we also say hereabouts … roll on Columbia … you beautiful river, roll on!