Tag Archives: Mount Hood

Hood River Hotel hosts 1959 graduates of Klamath Union High School for 21st annual reunion

20 Jun

Members of the Nifty to be 50 friends club — Linda, Teresa Potterf, Stella, Jancy Potterf and Stephie — relax during the Second Annual Wine & Pear Festival at the Western Antique Aeroplane & Automobile Museum in Hood River.

First, it was so nifty to be 50 that the four friends from the Klamath Union High School class of 1959 decided to get together, celebrate, then do it again in five years.

Fat chance they’d wait that long. They had so much fun the first year, they decided to do it again the following year. And the next. And the next.

And that’s pretty much how it’s been for the last 22 years. During that period, they’ve missed only one annual reunion, in 2011.

This year, they found their way to Hood River, and stayed a week at the Hood River Hotel. Now in their third decade of reunions, the friends have adjusted the name they casually use to describe themselves. Nifty to be Fifty became Nifty to be Sixty became Nifty to be Seventy.

Whooping it up outside the Full Sail Brewing tasting room, from left, Linda Lee, Stephie Pickett, Stella Rose, Teresa Potterf and her friend Julie.

Jancy Potterf, who lives in Eugene and organizes most of the events, picked Hood River for this year’s visit.

“I usually organize them,” she says, “and we usually do them in the fall.”

Because they missed the fall 2011 reunion, Potterf and friends decided to move up the date for the 2012 get-together.

Joining Potterf were Linda Lee from Los Angeles; Teresa Potterf (Jancy’s daughter), Eugene; Stella Rose, Santa Barbara; and Stephie Pickett, Gig Harbor, Wash.

They get around. Past visits have included Lake Shasta (“But the private house boat was so big,” Potterf says, “we never left the dock.”), Black Butte near Sisters in central Oregon, Santa Barbara three times, Hawaii, Crater Lake, Arizona, Lake Tahoe, Orcus Island in Washington’s Puget Sound, Lake of the Woods, Manzanita, Yachats twice, Seaside, Applegate/Jacksonville, the Bohemia Mountains, and Sunriver.

Hood River was on the radar. Potterf and her husband visited two years ago, spent a night, rode the Mt. Hood Railroad up the valley toward Mt. Hood, vowed to return.

From May 16 to 22, she and her friends booked one of the hotel’s suites, so all could stay in the same space.

“We were especially fond of our room,” she says. “It felt like a little apartment.”

Well, it is, kind of. Room 206 has queen and a double bed, a queen sofa bed, and the option of adding a roll-away. It has two bathrooms, and a kitchenette. During their visit, they attended the 2012 Columbia Gorge Wine & Pear Fest, staged at the Western Antique Aeroplane & Automobile Museum. They also took a drive to the Tom McCall Preserve at Rowena, but didn’t have time to visit Maryhill Museum and Skamania Lodge.

She’s thinking they may have to come back to Hood River, to finish seeing what they missed.

“I helped your economy a lot,” Potterf says, with a laugh. “We ate at every place in town that we could. I got to know Maureen at Pacifica real well.”

She had high praise for several staff members at the Hood River Hotel. One, Whitney Munoz, joined the ladies to watch “American Idol” on the big-screen TV on our mezzanine level.

“Everyone was so nice to us,” Potterf says.

Glad to hear it, Jancy. We’ll have your room ready when you and your buddies return.

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Have you heard about the corkscrew that traveled the world — and ended up in Paris?

1 Nov

Richard and Judy Ranson attempt the impossible on one of their travels.

Richard Ranson loved his Hood River Hotel commemorative corkscrew so much that he took it on a tour of the world.

Until the security agents in Paris (you know how tough they are) took it from him, so he wouldn’t inadvertently attempt to open a bag of peanuts with it.

After he returned to his home in Charlotte, N.C., he fired off an e-mail to the Hood River Hotel.

“I’m writing to ask if you still have these, and if so, would you send me another one?” Ranson wrote.

Well, sure, it’s on its way. End of story, right? Nope. We wanted to find out who this intrepid traveler was, and where he had dragged our promotional corkscrew.

You know the kind of corkscrew we’re discussing. It comes in two parts. The corkscrew shaft slips inside the handle. Pull it out, and the handle slips through a hole in the top of the shaft to give the operator some leverage.

Now 69, Ranson retired from a career in accounting and corporate finance 13 years ago. He and his wife, Judy, wanted to travel, and boy, have they — up to 21 weeks a year.

“We’ve been to 46 countries, and we’re not finished,” Ranson says.

“We were traveling to Oregon in the summer of 2007, and I saw that corkscrew in our room at the Hood River Hotel, so I asked the guy at the front desk if I could take it with me,” Ranson recalls. “He said, ‘Sure.’ Well, that corkscrew has been halfway around the world.”

Cuba, Spain and Egypt. Turkey and France.

“On our recent trip, I just forgot that it was in my dopp kit, and I had it in my carry-on luggage,” Ranson recalls. “They stopped me in the Paris airport and confiscated it.”

It wasn’t the first time airport security had pilfered serious weaponry from Ranson. “They took nail clippers from me one time,” he says. “The little file was ‘a sharp object.’ And I had them take a big tube of toothpaste another time.”

Yes, yes, it’s the three-ounce rule. But admit it: Haven’t you had a similarly absurd shake-down, thinking they’re protecting us from the inevitable moment when some idiot stands up in the aisle of plane and shouts: “Stand back, or I brush the pilot’s teeth, and it won’t be pretty!”

Richard and Judy Ranson ... thinking about using Hood River Hotel corkscrew.

Ranson is hard-pressed to say which destination he liked most. “We enjoyed the Columbia River Gorge very much,” he says. “We went up to Mt. Hood — we were there in August, and there were people skiing up there. That was lovely.”

He says India is the one place he would never visit again. He says it was dirty — too much cow manure everywhere — and he felt constantly at risk in whatever mode of transit they were using — plane, train, bus and automobile.

That said, India dished up a major Woo-hoo! moment for him

“I think the biggest ‘Wow!’ experience I ever had was when we went to the Taj Mahal in India,” he says. “I don’t care how many pictures you’ve seen, you come around this corner on a small street, and there it is – and it’s the the most gorgeous building I’ve ever seen.”

Still, as much as one might enjoy the trip, there’s no place like home.

“When we got back to Charlotte,” Ranson recalls, “I got down on the ground and kissed the floor.”

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Yes, for sale; No, not yet sold

5 Oct

Here’s a little note from Cathy Butterfield, our general manager:

” Yes, the Hood River Hotel is for sale, but no, it has not yet sold. We felt the need to clarify that point, based on several recent contacts in which people expressed sympathy, concern, distress, or maybe it was just swamp gas.

“Who knows, but the rumor mill is grinding away out there, and we wanted to set the record straight. Meanwhile, if you would like to own a lovely old historic hotel, we would be happy to discuss it with you. Call our listing agent, Greg Colt, at 541-490-1175. Act quickly: Rumor has it that space aliens have acquired the hotel and will turn it into a Wookiee Crash Pad. Just kidding.

“For future reference, if we reach a sale agreement, we will be sure to let everyone know – on our blog (uh, that would be here), web page, facebook page, and Twitter feed.”

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Whatta you mean, you can’t find good Gorge wines?

4 Oct

We occasionally will hear people cop the disparaging attitude that you can’t find good wines in the Gorge. Huh? Have they … LOOKED? We disagree, strongly, but maybe that’s because we’ve actually tasted Gorge wines, instead of assuming that they couldn’t possibly compare with something bearing the Napa-Sonoma-Mendocino-Willamette Valley-Walla Walla stamps. To the snobs, we say, Get over yourselves — and have a glass.

When guests ask us about wine tasting in the Gorge, we like to suggest approaching it as a wine grower would … as clusters. For starters, there’s the ground zero cluster. Hood River now has seven wine tasting rooms downtown. Within walking distance of the Hood River Hotel, BTW.

Across Oak Avenue lies the Quenett tasting room. Turn left at 2nd Street and go one block to The Pines 1852 tasting room. Turn right at 2nd and go one block to the Naked Winery Tasting room. Continue west on Oak half a block to the Cascade Cliffs tasting room. Another block brings you to the Cerulean tasting room. Two more blocks west and a block south bring you to the Stoltz tasting room. Head a block north and walk east through the Mt. Hood Railroad parking lot, and you reach the Springhouse Cellar tasting room.

Did we miss anyone? Yikes, they’re like mushrooms — popping up all over the place.

But we’re not done. Grab the car keys and head south — to the valley cluster. (This is where we stop including individual links; get the full list at the web site of the Columbia Gorge Wine Growers Association). It includes Cathedral Ridge on the west side of town, Phelps Creek farther west, Marchesi Vineyards a bit south, Pheasant Valley farther south, and Wy’east, Mt. Hood and Viento out along Oregon 35 toward the east side of the valley.

Head across the Columbia River into Washington, and you have a whole different scene. The Underwood Mountain cluster includes  AniChe, Ziegler and Gorge Crest. Head east and you first hit the Lyle cluster — a collaborative group that calls itself “the young guns of the old highway.” Yes, they’re young. Yes, they’re gunning for your tastebuds. They include James Mantone of Syncline, Luke Bradford of COR, Brian McCormick of Memaloose, and Alexis Pouillon of Domaine Pouillon. The Lyle area also includes the Bordeaux reds of Jacob Williams.

Jacob Williams is consolidating its facilities farther east, out near the Cascade Cliffs winery, and not quite as far out as Maryhill and Waving Tree.

That’s the list. Then you check out the wines. And the awards they’re winning. And what the stuff actually tastes like in the glass. And you wonder why anyone who purports to love wine wouldn’t just love living here, where the stuff is rockin’ the glass, brah. Just sayin’.

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Salving the wounds of not making the Top 25 Hotels list

28 Sep
Sun set at hood river, Columbia river
Image via Wikipedia

Awww, we didn’t make Sunset magazine’s list of the 25 best hotels in the west. Believe us, we would tell you about it if we did. So why are we telling you about it because we didn’t?

Because we’ve got better prices? Well, sure.

Because we’re in downtown Hood River — and none of the others are? Definitely a plus.

Because we’ve eschewed the chi-chi glitz for down-home comfort and great, friendly customer service? That would be another reason.

Heck, there was a hotel on that Sunset list that didn’t have a restaurant or a fitness center. We’ve got both. Both, we tell you, and hot running water.

And we’re walking distance from eight wine tasting rooms and two rivers — the Hood and the Columbia. No hotel on that Sunset list can offer that.

So, maybe we’re on their B list, but B’s will get you into college. We are what we are — and that’s just fine, thank you very much. Besides, nobody else can say they’re 26th, because we claimed it first. We’re 26th, we’re 26th … YES!

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Hotel server takes a break — to run to the top of California’s Mt. Baldy

20 Sep

Mike Ellingson, fifth from left with the letter L, joined his family for the Run to the Top of Mt. Baldy -- then rushed back to Hood River to resume his serving gig with the Hood River Hotel.

Even though Mike Ellingson now calls Hood River home, and spends many an afternoon skiing the snow fields above Timberline Lodge on nearby Mt. Hood, he had to take a break in early September so he could join his family and run to the top of the tallest mountain in Los Angeles County.
This being his second entry in the Run to the Top, you could say it’s about tradition — or at least the start of one. And it’s about family. Fourteen members of the Ellingson clan started the Run to the Top of 10,068-foot Mt. San Antonio (also known as Mt. Baldy), and 12 finished — sort of.

“They called off the race half-way through, because they were concerned about lightning,” Mike says.

Of the 700 people who started out from the 6,000-foot elevation, 200 finished anyway. “They never really had any lightning, but they were trying to be safe,” Mike says.

Mike, who has worked as a server with the Hotel for the past year, grew up on the ski slopes of Mt. Baldy, which his family runs. He played football and swam competitively in high school, and after graduation, found his way downslope to the sand and surf of Huntington Beach. To help his mother battle lymphoma into remission, he moved for two years to Wisconsin.

“Beautiful snow, but no hills,” Mike says, shaking his head.

His cousin Tom Ellingson kept dinging on Mike to think about relocating to the slopes of the iconic Mt. Hood, Oregon‘s tallest peak. Mike liked the idea. He had been working for several years with the Claim Jumper restaurant chain, so he negotiated a gig with its Portland franchise. From there, a shift to Hood River was easy.

Now, when he isn’t skiing, he’s out on the Columbia River with his standup paddleboard, or swimming, or biking.

“Livin’ the life,” he says. “I’m thinking this is a great base for me.”

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