We hiked a 4.5 mile loop of the eastern trails from the Strawberry Island (aka Hamilton Island) trailhead next to the ball fields at the end of Portage Drive.
We turned left on the Strawberry Island Loop and headed towards Fort Cascades Drive. We crossed the road and turned left on trail paralleling the drive. We passed the Fish Smolt Monitoring Facility and connected to the loop trail around the Fort Cascades Historic Site, going clockwise on the loop.
We stopped at the Fort Cascades trailhead to take a lunch break at one of the picnic tables.
After lunch, we continued around the loop to a junction with a trail that went towards the Columbia River where we had nice views of Bonneville Dam. We took a trail along the river to the place where the Smolt Monitoring Facility returns the smolts to the Columbia River and stopped to identify the gulls resting on the structure and trying to catch the smolts in the river.
We walked along the gravel drive to the Hamilton Island Boat Ramp where we picked up a trail paralleling Boat Ramp Road back to Fort Cascades Drive.
We crossed Fort Cascades Drive again to the Strawberry Island Loop Trail, where we continued the loop we had started in the morning. We turned on the Viewpoint Trail to the top of Strawberry Island, crossed over and hiked down the other side back to the trailhead where we had started.
Since we were birding as we hiked, we stopped often to identify and count birds, so we took longer than most people to hike the distance. Our bird checklists are accessed through the links.
PRO-TIP: Vault toilets are located at the Fort Cascades trailhead and at the Hamilton Island Boat Ramp.
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