A change of pace after the headliner falls: the road stops showing off and climbs through deep, quiet woods toward the grandest view of the drive. This is a true Pacific Northwest rainforest, Douglas-firs pushing two hundred feet, bigleaf maples shaggy with moss, and licorice fern growing right on the bark. With the window down, listeners are invited to catch the single ringing note of the varied thrush, watch for banana slugs easing across the wet road, and learn where golden chanterelles hide in the autumn duff. The historic highway curls with the land rather than bulldozing through it. A slow, immersive forest interlude that lets the woods have the last word before the road hands over the biggest view in the Columbia Gorge.
Roll your window down for this part, if the weather lets you. The waterfalls are behind you now — you've met the headliners — and for these
next few miles the road does something different. It stops showing off and just climbs, winding up through deep, quiet woods toward the
grandest view of the whole drive. Take this stretch slow. It's the forest's turn to talk.
All this green around you is Guy Talbot State Park, set aside long ago to stay exactly the way you see it — and what you're rolling through is
a true Pacific Northwest rainforest. Look up. Those towering trunks are Douglas-fir, some of them pushing two hundred feet, and tucked in
among them the broad pale leaves of bigleaf maple, every limb shaggy with moss and with ferns that grow right on the bark, drinking the damp
air. One of them they call licorice fern — snap off a bit of the root and it tastes faintly of licorice, a trick the Indigenous people of this
river knew long before any of us.
Listen, with the window down. Out of this kind of dark, wet timber you'll sometimes hear the strangest sound in all these woods — a
single long, ringing note, like somebody drew a bow once across one string of a fiddle and let it hang there in the air. That's the varied
thrush, a shy orange-and-slate bird that loves exactly this gloom. Once you've heard it, you never quite forget it. And down at your tires, if
it's been raining, watch for a banana slug easing across the road — bright yellow, big as your finger, in no hurry at all, doing the slow
work of turning fallen leaves back into soil. Come autumn, the duff under these firs hides golden chanterelles that folks have hunted here for
generations.
The road itself is part of the wonder. Notice how it bends — it never bulldozes straight through, it curls with the shape of the land, easing
around every rise so the forest stays whole on both sides of you. Somewhere off to your right, down through the trees, little Latourell Creek
is sliding north toward the river, and beyond it the marshes spread out gold and green along the water.
But here's the thing to feel as you climb. Every turn is winding you up and out, toward the lip of a great basalt headland where the trees
finally fall away and the whole gorge swings open in front of you — and there's a little stone house standing right on the edge of it. That's
where this road is taking you, and it's close now. So enjoy the green tunnel while you've got it. Breathe the cool. Let the forest have the
last word, right before the road hands you the biggest view in the Columbia Gorge.
