Deschutes, river barges

June, 2024

This blog post is titled “Deschutes, river barges”. But the photos are actually of boats and barges on the Columbia River, not on the Deschutes River. I’m camped at the Deschutes River campground so that’s why the title is what it is. But this blog post and the photos (and one video) are about a few barges and tug boats that ply the Columbia River. So don’t be fooled. The photos do NOT show the Deschutes River … they show you the mighty Columbia River.

Remember from the maps that the Deschutes River empties into the Columbia River. And the campground where I’m staying is immediately next to both rivers.

So every time I drove in or out of the Deschutes River Campground this whole week here, anytime I would go anywhere, I would drive along side the Columbia River. And several times I pulled off the road in order to photograph tug boats and barges heading up or down the Columbia River. So, in this blog post, I’m including a few of those photos taken over several days.

As well, one day I spent a bunch of time at the Dalles Locks and just my luck, a barge was coming through the locks. So I’ll share that with you too.

First, here’s a photo of the Columbia River where I’m looking west, down river, west towards the Pacific Ocean (though it’s many miles away). I took this photo from the edge of the river, really close to where the Deschutes River empties into the Columbia.

Don’t be fooled by this calm “little” river. At this point, where I’m standing, the Columbia River is almost a mile wide. Distances across flat water are exceptionally deceiving. It’s a huge river.

The Columbia River is the largest river in the world that flows into the Pacific Ocean. The second largest is the Mamberamo River in Papua, New Guinea. The third largest is the Fraser River in British Columbia, Canada. The Columbia River empties almost 8,000 cubic meters of water per second into the Pacific Ocean. Yes, I’ve double checked that number and it’s not a typo. My 3-bedroom, 2-bath home is about 1,300 square feet or about 360 cubic meters. That means that the Columbia rivers dumps about 23 of my homes into the Pacific Ocean every second! In the community where I live, there are 101 homes, most of them a bit smaller than mine … that means this entire community would be dumped into the Pacific Ocean in 4 seconds. Gone. In 24 hours, 21,600 of my communities would be dumped into the Pacific Ocean. With 160 people living in my one community, that means the homes/communities of about 3,500,000 people are dumped every 24 hours. That’s one heck of a lot of water!

There are a great number of commercial boats and tugs and barges, and passenger tour boats, and private recreational boats that ply this river, up and down, throughout the year. They just need to watch the weather. Today was gorgeous!

So, you’ll notice in the photo above that there’s a bridge in the distance that spans the river, and it’s not far above the water level. What’s with that? How do boats get past that? Well there is a lift bridge over on the Oregon side of that bridge. Here’s a closeup photo of the lift-bridge that allows the tallest of commercial river boats to pass underneath. In fact, this is the train bridge across the Columbia. The “lift” portion is always “up” so boats can pass underneath any time without asking that the lift be lifted. 🙂 If a train is coming (I heard them that first night!) then THEY have to ask that the bridge lift be lowered so they can cross the river. As soon as they’ve crossed, the lift bridge lifts again for boats to pass underneath. Here’s a closeup of the lift bridge that’s over on the Oregon side of the Columbia.

I jumped back in the big white truck and headed down river, but I got just a few feet down the road, even before I got in line with the lift bridge, when I noticed a tug and barge heading down-river, westward. I was on the local road 206, so I simply pulled the truck off to the side of the road and got out to take photos. You can see the rail lines … and you can see a semi-truck coming from the left on that big interstate highway I-84. Roads racing left and right, train tracks whizzing past too, and now big barges and tugs! Wow. 🙂

 

 

 

The “wheelhouse” on these river tugs (where the skipper is located, to steer the boat) is so high, so tall, so the skipper/captain can see over the barges. These tugs don’t tow barges with long lines pulling the barge behind the tug like they do on Puget Sound and in other, more open, waters … these tugs push the barges and are extremely seriously tied/fastened to the barge/s, as if they are one vessel. Boats are fascinating, aren’t they? 🙂

And so then finally I got back in my truck and headed down the road to The Dalles and to the locks there, which is what I wanted to see today. I just wanted to get close and see how big the locks are, what the waterway looks like on the upriver side and the downriver side, things like that. I had no idea a tug and barge would show up minutes after I arrived and give me a first hand look at how these vessels transit these locks. This was so cool!

From where I stood to take the photo above, the locks are on my right.

Here she comes! Man, that’s one huge barge!

Above, the tug/barge is approaching the locks. Below, I’m looking into the locks where that boat was headed.

Will she fit? Is she too wide?

Notice the fellow near the front of the barge, on the left side of it in the photo above. He’s wearing an orange life jacket, and he’s standing up near the front of the barge.

The captain is certainly a professional and knows exactly what she/he is doing.

 

As the barge started into the locks, and the front of the barge glided past where I was standing, that fellow saw me, waved, hollered a “hey, hi, great day, eh?” to me. I replied, “Sure is! Safe travels!” Turns out he had a cell phone or some kind of radio in his hands, so I’d bet he was in contact with the skipper of the tug, just in case.

The lines on the barge are huge. They are used to tie the barge to a dock or pier. They must be heavy, too. I wondered why the “deck hand” didn’t have a line handy near him to tie the barge to the side wall after they got in the locks, but I learned they do not tie these tug/barges inside the locks. The skipper uses the engines of the tug to hold the barge and tug in place.

Below, sliding into the locks … one big white tug, and the huge green barge.

And so maybe these vessels don’t look really super huge, right? Well, the tug, by itself, is 98.2 feet long, almost 100 feet long (my entire home is about 45 feet long!, half the length of just the white tug). And the green barge is 274 feet long. Together, they are about 372 feet long. That’s huge! And this skipper needs to maneuver the whole thing into the lock chamber that is barely wide enough for it, with maybe a foot or two on each side to spare.

So then! 🙂 As soon as the tug/barge was sliding into the locks and I couldn’t get any more photos, I jumped in the big white truck and RACED out on the road to the down river side of the locks. I parked as close to the bridge that crosses the river there as I could, then I jogged out onto the bridge to take the photos below. Perfect timing.

In the photo below, the locks are on the left (those big, tall iron doors), then some land to the right of that, and then the largest portion of the facilities here and the one that produces electricity from the water movement that spins the turbines.

You can see the white “wheelhouse” of the tug in the photos above and below.

Take a good look at the wheelhouse. The lock attendants have closed the large doors behind the tug, and are now going to let the water out of the locks so the tug and barge will be lowered to the level of the water on the down river side of the locks … kind of like an elevator.

Now you see the wheelhouse (above) … now you see just very top of it (below) …

… and now you don’t see the wheelhouse at all. The water level has dropped, and so has the tug and barge (very gently “dropped”). In the photo below, the tug/barge is behind the large lock doors, waiting for the doors to open so it can continue on down river. These lock doors are about 95 feet tall, from the water line up to the top of the doors.

Here’s a video below … it starts with the lock doors closed. I did not edit the video, I simply tried to time the moment when I started taking the video to coincide with what I thought might be the moment of the opening of the lock doors based on the many, many times that I had taken my 40-foot wooden power boat through the locks in Seattle, from Lake Union then out to Puget Sound and back again. You get a sense of things when you’ve done it so many times. And … I got lucky with this video. 🙂 Don’t mind the road noise; it’s the traffic driving across the bridge where I was standing to take this video and photos.

The name of the tug is “Granite Point”. I wished them well from my spot up on the bridge as they passed below.

And here’s a photo of the empty lock. It’s ready for a boat to come in, heading up river, or they will close the doors, fill the locks again, and the open the upper doors for another boat to head down river. This goes on all day long, and all night too.

I almost forgot to tell you … the green barge is a petroleum barge that carries almost 60,000 barrels of petroleum.

After all of this excitement, I tried to get inside the dam itself to tour the facilities where electricity is produced, but it was closed for the day. So back to the campground I went.

However, on another day out and about, I was again driving along the Columbia River when I spotted the tug and barge below. They were headed up river, east-bound. So I pulled over and took a few photos.

Obviously, one of the barges is an open grain barge. The green barge is a closed/covered grain barge.

 

But look at this! Photo below. This tug is the same one I saw a day or two ago when it was moving that petroleum barge westward, down river, through the locks at The Dalles. It’s the “Granite Point”. I don’t expect they recognized me as the same woman who took photos of them a day or two earlier, but it was cool for me to see them again.

As I walked back across the local road 206 (you can how little traffic there is on it), in order to get back into my truck, a seriously long train came roaring by at full speed, heading west towards Portland, Oregon.

Besides three engines at the front, it had two more engines part-way through the line of cars.

 Then more rail cars.

Then more!

It took several minutes for the train to pass by. Eventually the last car rumbled by.

I hope you enjoyed this info about tugs and barges and locks. I love boats. 🙂

After all this river and water stuff, I’ve decided that tomorrow I’d like to head south from Deschutes Campground and drive into the farmland to see what I can see. There probably won’t be many trees, nope nope, but there should be some interesting things to see. Stay tuned!

Watching the barges and trains and big semi trucks transporting all manner of freight reminds me of a very deep question that I read on another blog (either “Seasons in the Valley” or “Travels with the Bayfield Bunch”, or maybe it was Lisa/Terry’s old vlog “Together We Roam”). It goes like this … why is it that freight transported by boat is called “car”go … but freight transported by truck/car is called a “ship”ment. Go figure! 🙂

My best to everyone, take care and be good to yourselves. 🙂