Wow. This is amazing. Come take this tramway if you can. It's worth it.
Good morning from eastern Oregon. We have made our way down south from the Mount Rainier area
in Washington to beautiful Wallowa Lake State Park. We were actually supposed to come here a
little earlier in the year, but the wildfire smoke was really bad. Now that it is fall it
has cleared out and it is beautiful here. The awesome thing about it, it has these wonderful
tree covered spots, there's a playground for the kids, lots of places to hike, a beautiful lodge,
and even better there's a river that goes up from the lake where the kokanee salmon are currently
spawning. I think we're kind of at the tail end of that, but there's still plenty of bright red
salmon in the river that we've had a very fun time watching. The internet connection has been
a little bit of a challenge here, but that might be a pro or a con depending on how you look at it.
Today we're gonna take you just around the corner. We're gonna do a gondola ride. Let's go.
Two adults and two youths. Great, thank you. All right. So we've made it to the
Wallowa Lake Tramway. We're down here at 4450 feet. And we're going 3700 vertical feet,
all the way up to 8150 (feet). We'll be at the top of Mount Howard. When you look up there,
I mean it already looks pretty high, but you can only see to here. I mean that doesn't even look
like halfway. And we keep going all the way to the top. 25 towers. 19300 feet in total length.
You're gonna be on this thing for 15 minutes. We're really excited about this. Let's go.
This is gonna be amazing. What do you think Klara? Yeah. Ooh! Here we go.
That was just a little bumpy. So we're really enjoying this already. The views are phenomenal.
It's really steep. Yeah. Going up I felt my ears popping. It's probably the steepest
gondola ride I've ever been on, and it's kind of interesting too because the gondola itself is so
small I feel like it rocks a little bit more than what I was expecting. It's really cool. But it's
just the perfect fit for the four of us, for our family. Views all around of the Wallowa Mountains,
of Wallowa Lake, campground down below. I love it because I feel like this is the best way to
get all the views out here, because down in the campground you don't really see a whole lot. It's
a beautiful campground, but you don't get these views of the mountains. And most of the hikes
down from the bottom are like backpacking out into the wilderness kind of thing. So, gotta stop to
pop my ears a little bit there. But wow. This is amazing. Come take this tramway if you can. It's
worth it. And we're gonna do some hikes at the top. So enjoy the view. We'll see you up there.
We made it. We're at the top. 8150 feet. Wow. The views up here are really really nice. I don't
think we were quite prepared for how bright it was gonna be in the snow up here. So if I'm squinting
at you it's because I can't really see you very well. And there's more snow than expected. We
could look up from the campground and see that there was some snow up here. It almost looked
like a bit more fell just last night from what we could tell. I think for the kids
like snow boots or something probably are gonna be necessary here before too long.
Yeah we're getting there. Since we've never been up here before,
everybody keeps recommending the Royal Purple Overlook so that is where we are headed to first.
So it was beautiful when we first arrived at Wallowa State Park,
but with the snow on the mountains it's even more striking. This is better than I was expecting when
we took the ride up here. It's like we've been transported to winter. It's a little bit funny
to think that just a couple of days ago we had 75 degree weather in the Columbia River Gorge.
So this is a little bit of a temperature shock.
On a sign when you got off the gondola, there was an arrow pointing this way and said
wedding venue. So I wonder, maybe that's it. It'd be a beautiful place to get married.
So the Royal Purple Overlook definitely gets the thumbs up from us. This is pretty great.
We've been standing here for quite a while now just enjoying the 360 views. You see the
mountains. You can look back to where the gondola drops you off. You can look over the valley.
But there is an even higher overlook where we can peek in the other direction to the Summit
Overlook, the Highlands Overlook, and the Seven Devils. I think that's what they said. Another
nice thing out here is that the trail is pretty short. If you do the entire loop they said it was
two and a half miles. But I really don't feel like you have to go and see all the different
stops to get the same views. So every overlook is pretty short. It doesn't take you very long
to get some really spectacular views out here. I think the longest overlook is walking out
to the Valley Overlooks and those are actually the ones we're gonna skip today because we can
see that going up and down the gondola, looking out this way. Let's head up. All right, onward.
On to the next stop, the Summit Overlook. The rating of this portion of the trail
was called more difficult. Most other things are rated easy. So up we go.
So as to be expected, the Summit View here is by far the best. I think the Royal
Purple Viewpoint was just kind of a warm up for this one. And now behind us you can see
the Seven Devils way out in Idaho and all of Hells Canyon back there. This is an absolutely
stunning overlook. So you should definitely do both if you can because then you see both sides.
It's not a far walk but it is a little steeper up to this one. There was a
couple of little slip and slide spots that we had to make our way up through the snow here.
But we're also really really late in the season here. The tram's only open for a couple more days.
Tomorrow is the last day. So we made sure to come today just in case. I think we're gonna
enjoy the views up here a little longer and then head back down towards the Summit House.
Before we ride the gondola down, we're stopping at the Summit Grill Restaurant. We're just gonna have
some drinks. The kids have been looking forward to their hot chocolate the whole time.
On our way down. To us the ride down feels a little bit bumpier we've
all remarked, but I wonder maybe we were just too caught up in it on the way up,
didn't really notice. All in all an amazing excursion. we highly recommend it. check it out.
I will say it does feel like this particular gondola is a little bit more expensive than maybe
it should be. I was a little bit surprised by the price, but considering it is like the thing to do
in the area here and it's the only way to get the best views, unless I imagine you go backpacking
in the wilderness, it is worth the price. It is a lot. You should just plan for that.
The views are stunning. You really just can't miss this even with the price. Just plan for it.
Thanks again for joining us on the Wallowa Tramway. It was amazing. We loved every
minute of it, and next time we're gonna actually show you maybe an even more unique way to see
the area. So stay tuned for that. Just kidding. Today was the day we were supposed to go on that
really amazing excursion that we teased you about a moment ago. We were supposed to go with Joseph
Branch Railriders, which if you've never heard of it, you get on this little cart, on an old railway
line, and you pedal your way across the valley with amazing views of the Wallowa Mountains.
That was supposed to be today, but it is raining horribly so we ended up canceling because they
sent us an email that offered a refund. Yeah they were really open about it. They actually
encouraged everybody to cancel the trip because they knew the weather was going to be bad,
and they actually said in the email that it would make for a miserable experience.
Yeah which we appreciate from them because they didn't want us having a miserable experience. This
is supposed to be fun. So we are disappointed, and we think we either might come back someday
to do it again or find another similar experience elsewhere in the country. So if you know of any,
let us know. We really want to do this at some point. It would have been a ton of fun,
just not today. But there will be other exciting things, so we encourage you guys to subscribe,
and we'll see you for the next adventure. Bye. Bye.
Is that another mountain range? I'm not sure. We're gonna go find out. Whatever that is. We'll
go check it out. Is it gonna be snowy up here forever? Most of the Wallowa Mountain Range...
I can't say it. My lips are kind of cold and numb. It's hard to enunciate. And there was a
couple of little slippidy... Slippidy. Slippidy. So we did some research to figure out if we were
saying it correctly. So we are fairly confident that Wallowa is the right way to pronounce it.
Initially we pronounced it Wallowa, and then we heard it Wallowa, and then we watched a video
to try to find the correct pronunciation. We do believe it is pronounced Wallowa. And if it's not,
our apologies. Yeah if it's not we've said Wallowa in the entire video. Leave us a comment and let
us know is that right, is that wrong. We're doing our best. In this video it's Wallowa.