“Hey, a rainbow!” I, the lone passenger on a Mount Adams Transportation Service (MATS) bus that just crossed the Columbia into Hood River, exclaim.

“Oh, yeah, I get to see those all the time,” the driver responds. “Last week I saw two double rainbows.” My inner 5-year-old is envious. A few hours later I see my second rainbow of the day—it’s not a double arch, but the tally is still pretty cool. While having a beer later at Ferment, where floor-to-ceiling windows wrap around the taproom offering views of the water and the Gorge’s Washington side, I overhear two staffers talk about how it’s been a good winter for rainbows.

It hasn’t been a good winter for actual winter, alas. Out the window at Ferment, I can make out a very light dusting of snow on the hilltops, but I don’t think they qualify yet as snowcapped, unless the cap is a yarmulke maybe. When I first planned this trip to take Columbia Area Transit’s Columbia Gorge Express bus for a midweek Hood River trip, I was looking forward to renting cross-country gear at Doug’s and taking the Gorge-to-Mountain Express up Highway 35 to ski at Teacup Lake. But that route, which usually runs daily through the winter, is weekends-only so far this season for both snow and staffing reasons. So I stayed around town, sleeping in, watching Roku’s Law & Order channel, and taking a hot soak at the new Lightwell Hotel; using my Gorge Pass to take a MATS bus across the river to White Salmon; sampling Hood River’s surplus of breweries; buying way too many used books for someone who has to carry all her stuff home on three buses and a MAX train; and encountering more than my share of rainbows.

CAT’s express bus from Portland leaves seven times per day from Gateway Transit Center. About half the passengers who board with me are heading for Multnomah Falls, and the mom in me worries that their sneakers don’t have a lot of traction—I hope they’re just taking selfies on the bridge and not hiking to the top on this very rainy Wednesday. They need some help buying their bus tickets online; I try to talk them into getting the $40 Gorge Pass, which is good on CAT and other Gorge bus lines for a whole year, instead of two $10 tickets for a single one-way trip. But I think they’re tourists (a few are carrying “Portland”-emblazoned tote bags), so they pass.

The bus also makes a stop in Cascade Locks and then pulls into a gas station a few blocks up Wa Na Pa Street. I don’t think I’ve ever been on a bus when it’s gotten gas before, and unfortunately the time it takes to fill up means I miss my connection to the Hood River circulator, which pulls away from the CAT HQ right as the bus from Portland pulls in. They run every 30–40 minutes, though, so it’s not too long a wait till the next one, which carries me uphill to the commercial loop along 11th and 12th Streets before it descends into downtown.

I check in at the Lightwell, which opened this past fall in a 1904 building on the National Register of Historic Places. Rooms range from “compact” options with windows onto the inner courtyard to spacious suites. My king room’s best view might be from the shower, which has a window that’s frosted at the bottom for privacy but reveals those snow-dusted Washington hills through its top half. (With the bathroom door open I can also see the TV from the shower—should I ever design my own home, remind me to add this feature.)

Were I going skiing, I could pick up my gear the afternoon before at Doug’s, just around the corner from my hotel, and return it the morning after my mountain day if I didn’t make it back before the outdoor store closed. Instead, I stroll around very quiet downtown Hood River, including a few funny little “malls” made up of businesses sharing an interior hallway. Whether timed for the weather or just the post-holiday slump, a lot of shops are on an extended winter break or taking a few days or weeks off to do inventory or some remodeling. I’m the lone happy hour drinker at the Oak Street Pub, a rambling space that feels like it would be frequented by the staff of Horse & Hound, the British magazine where Hugh Grant’s character pretends to work at in Notting Hill. Portraits of aristocratically dressed canines alternate with royal-looking equine beauties, but I know I’m in the US because a) Montana’s Moose Drool is on tap and b) a life-size cutout of Pitbull (the human) reminds people not to set their drinks on the pool table.

I’m definitely not the only person in the Double Mountain taproom at 6pm. The place is packed for the first night of the winter Hump Day Trivia season. The hosts, Double Mountain staffers, say it started four years ago as a way to draw people in during the slow period. I get a little too fancy and answer Holy Roman Empire when the answer is just the Roman Empire, but I absolutely rock the music round: I’m the right age for the early-’90s dance pop theme, even though I can’t quite remember the band behind “What Is Love?” and am a few letters off with my guess of Hardesty. (Has former city commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty ever performed the Haddaway hit at karaoke?) I worry I’ll have leftovers to deal with when I order a whole pizza for just little old me, but the 10-inch Jersey, with Olympia Provisions capicola, provolone, and Mama Lil’s peppers, matches my appetite perfectly. Post-trivia, I check out a storytelling night at the Ruins, an event space next to the old train station. If I stayed a few nights longer, I could catch a concert here. On the main drag of Oak Street, the late-night action is at the Trillium Tavern, where you might strike up a conversation with someone who just moved here or someone whose family has been in the Hood River Valley for generations.

After a good night’s sleep, a very scenic shower, and some Law & Order episodes (should I tell my husband that I think of every hotel stay as “my date with Jerry Orbach”?), I take a MATS bus across the river through Bingen, Washington, and then up the hill to White Salmon. I hop off near the library, where the $1 books in the Friends of the Library sale room turn my casual walk around town into a rather weighted-down rucking experience. My bag only gets heavier at the Book Peddler, where a “Let’s Hear It for the Ladies” section has me paging through a biography of poet Stevie Smith, and where I wonder how many “Ban Bigots, Not Books” magnets I need to buy for friends. Fuel for this workout comes in the form of a black sesame mochi doughnut at the plant-lined Nativ Café and a breakfast sandwich stacked with squash and ricotta salata at White Salmon Baking Co. Like several downtown Hood River businesses, some places are closed for vacation or even the whole season. Tea Lyn’s is in the middle of a remodel, with a seating area on the way for enjoying some of its teas on-site. For now, I marvel at the pretty wrapping on its pressed discs of tea for sale. 

I see that first rainbow of the day when I take the MATS bus (its fare is covered by the Gorge Pass) back to Oregon, and my second as I’m crossing a footbridge over the Hood River’s namesake body of water near the county history museum. The museum is closed for the season, but its Instagram is full of some excellent old hairdos and reminders that learning opportunities abound even in winter. Also along Hood River’s waterfront, pFriem Family Brewers is closed for four days for “annual maintenance,” but Ferment is open, as are Solstice Wood Fire Pizza and Camp 1805 Distillery and Bar, where the design inspiration appears to be the Coleman lantern.

For dinner, I take the Hood River loop bus uphill to 12th Street to try Big Jim’s Drive-In. A milkshake-and-burger joint born in The Dalles in the 1960s, Big Jim’s opened a second location in Hood River in 2024, taking over a similar spot called the Ranch that had closed a few years before. I’m still a little full from my White Salmon treats, so the $2.95 Baby Burger, a January special with a two-ounce patty, is just the right size. 

A few blocks north on 12th, the taproom at lager- and cider-focused Working Hands Fermentation is the locals’ Thursday-night trivia destination, just as packed as Double Mountain the night before. This event costs $5 per person, but there are lots of prizes, even for last place. Tracy Chapman’s “New Beginning” proves too deep a cut in the music round, stumping everyone, but a lot of the room nails the song from High School Musical. A round on identifying airlines by their tail fin graphics has me dreaming of a similar version for local bus agencies, since I’ve been consulting their schedules online so often—though I guess that might be a little niche.

On Friday morning, after a hot soak in the Lightwell’s basement pool, a few minutes in its wood-lined sauna, and a few cups of Proud Mary coffee in the lobby, I add to my bag of used books with a stop at Artifacts: Good Books & Bad Art, where I’m tempted by jocular Dan Quayle postcards and antifascist bumper stickers. I look through upcycled flannel shirts with record-cover patches on the back at the sweet-smelling Wyatt Moon Mercantile and vintage tees and wool jackets at Ice Cream for Crow.

I’m afraid to enter Oak Street’s Waucoma Bookstore lest my bag, in which I’m also toting the snow bibs and long underwear I didn’t end up using, gets even heavier. As I stroll the quiet streets, I realize I could have filled my whole non-ski day shopping for clothes and candles instead of books and baked goods. Or I could have spent the afternoon climbing: Brimstone Boulders, a climbing gym in an old church, still has the church’s “Rock of Ages” stained-glass window adorning its facade; the gym rather brilliantly recasts the religious iconography in its logo showing a hand holding on for dear life. I wonder if the hymn with that title plays as you climb. But the gym doesn’t open till 3pm, and my bus back to Portland leaves at CAT HQ at 2:30. I’ll have to take another trip sometime and find out, in addition to the ski trip I still want. As I told the likely tourists on the way out, the Gorge Pass is good for a whole year, after all.