This Culinary Cruise Through the Pacific Northwest Showcases Some of the Region's Best Food and Drink—How to Book

Travel + Leisure

3 days ago

The sun was dropping behind the Palouse Hills as Coco Umiker, owner and head winemaker at Clearwater Canyon Cellars, boarded a ship docked on the Snake River, on the border of Washington and Idaho. It was peak harvest time, but despite the demands of the season, Umiker bounded with energy. In the ship's lounge, she began a talk about how her wine is produced with 'Your one job while I'm talking? Drink!' At which point a number of previously inhibited passengers literally cheered.
When Umiker's wine is poured, drinking is an easy task. For the past 20 years, she's been doing what might, to some, sound like a contradiction in terms: making world-class wines in Idaho. Umiker is most known for her Carmenère, which is rich and slick, 'like a ride in an old plush car,' as she put it. But the wines that stole my heart were her bone-dry Albariño and her Syrah, which is made with grapes grown in the wind-blown soil of north-central Idaho and is so redolent of sage, it's almost savory. Kayaking around Crow Butte, an island in the Columbia River.
These were the flavors that accompanied me and my friend Leila on a weeklong cruise down the Snake and Columbia rivers with National Geographic–Lindblad Expeditions. The ship would retrace the 19th-century journey of explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who went in search of the most direct route to the Pacific from the Missouri River. This new itinerary was designed in conjunction with Food & Wine magazine, a sister publication of Travel + Leisure, and would, along the way, immerse passengers in the bounty of the Pacific Northwest.
I've been writing about wine for more than a decade, though my love for it dates back further. According to my parents, the one time I caused a scene as a child was when they gave me a sip of red at a relative's wedding. 'More wine!' I apparently exclaimed, mid-ceremony. From left: Oregon's Multnomah Falls; passenger Bob Chantigian.
I knew that Oregon's Willamette Valley has been globally recognized for its Pinot Noirs since the 1970s, and that Washington State is now the second-largest producer of wine grapes in the country. But until I met Umiker, wine from Idaho had been a complete blind spot. When she started Clearwater Canyon Cellars in 2004, she told us, it was only the 15th winery in the state. Now there are 65. 'We're riding the coattails of Oregon and Washington,' she said. 'They're not better than us. They're just bigger.'
But on this trip, I'd be immersing myself in the competition. 'Nowhere else can you float through so many world-class wine producing regions,' Umiker said as the captain of the Sea Bird prepared to pull up anchor. The Sea Bird docked in Clarkston, Washington.
As Leila and I drove from the Spokane airport to embark on the ship in Clarkston, the gleaming October trees—towering ponderosa pines, western larch, and black cottonwood—were replaced by rolling fields of wheat, which stretched on and on hypnotically until the Snake River appeared like a gash in the landscape.
I laughed at myself: within two hours of setting off, I was already awestruck by the scenery. I realized that, though it was wine that had lured me to the Pacific Northwest, the trip would be doubling as a sendoff from the States. After a lifetime of being tethered to my native New York City, shortly after we disembarked I would be moving to the U.K. to join my husband, who had started art school earlier that fall. Moving abroad had been a lifelong dream and here, finally, was the perfect excuse to make the leap. River grasses swaying in the wind.
Clarkston felt like an ironic place to start a trip structured around American history and the idea of abundance, given that it was there, in 1805, that Lewis and Clark and their Corps of Discovery came stumbling out of the Bitterroot Mountains, nearly a year and a half after setting off from Missouri. They were starving—they'd resorted to eating beef-tallow candles for sustenance. Were it not for the Nez Perce people, who fed the imperiled expedition and helped them build canoes, it is likely the journey would have ended there.
The ship would retrace the 19th-century journey of explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who went in search of the most direct route to the Pacific from the Missouri River.
We, on the other hand, were greeted on the Sea Bird with hot towels and glasses of cucumber agua fresca. There were just 64 of us on board, including passengers, crew, and onboard experts. Lunch and dinner were seated, multicourse affairs, while breakfast was an indulgent buffet of fresh berries, homemade pastries, local eggs, and thick-cut bacon from heritage-breed Oregon pigs. There were also smoothies after morning stretch class; chocolate-covered blueberries following an afternoon excursion; and hors d'oeuvres during cocktail hour. 'I hope you brought your stretchy pants,' Valentin Coleto, the ship's hotel manager, said during staff introductions on night one.
Our first excursion was a jet-boat ride down the deepest river gorge in North America, the 125-mile-long Hells Canyon, so named, some say, because it's hotter than hell in the summer and harder than hell to navigate year-round. We glided through the rapids, passing between basalt canyon walls flushed red with the native sumac plant. A Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep posed on the lip of an ancient lava flow. Looking at the canyon's intricate rock formations—tall columns, some fanning delicately away from each other—I felt like the earth was letting me in on a secret, turning itself inside out so I could glimpse the naked toll of 300 million years of uplift and erosion. Exploring the Palouse River on a National Geographic-Lindblad Expeditions Zodiac.
The following afternoon, about 80 miles downriver from Clarkston, the Sea Bird docked at Lyons Ferry State Park. The plan was to explore the Palouse River, a tributary of the Snake, by boat, then hop on a bus to hike alongside Palouse Falls. Leila and I threw on waterproofs and climbed into one of the Zodiac boats that are a hallmark of Lindblad expeditions, because their shallow draft allows access to areas the ship cannot reach. Dave Katz, our expedition leader, guided our Zodiac through a channel lined with cattails and willows, beyond which lichen-dusted canyon walls rose up. I noticed a golden eagle cruising along the hillsides, carried by the thermal winds.
'This is one of those environments where the more you look, the more you see,' said Kerri McAllister, the ship's geology specialist. As we drifted down the Palouse, she narrated the landscape: the basalt columns were formed by magma that oozed out of fissures in the earth's crust 17 million years ago. Then there were the enigmas of the tight horseshoe bends in the river and the enormous canyon of Palouse Falls. Geologists realized these formations pointed to monstrous floods from melting glaciers during the last gasps of the Ice Age. It was these floods that had carved out the channeled scablands—terrain that is relatively barren and soil-free, and unique to this region. Passengers of the Sea Bird take in the view outside the captain's bridge.
At that time, the raging floodwater also pushed tons of glacial sediment across the area, which the wind then dispersed. In some parts, that sediment can now be more than 100 feet deep. This, we learned, is precisely the windblown soil, known as loess, in which Umiker grows her Syrah. The same rich earth nourished the legumes served in a hearty soup for lunch a little later on the trip.
That evening, as the boat continued west, my fork sank into a rosemary-infused osso buco made from Oregon's Anderson Ranches lamb that had been slow-cooked to perfection. It was hard to believe that there were just three people working in the ship's galley, but according to the chef, Michael Stork, the constraints of this small ship were an asset. Because he had no room to pre-plate, his dishes never languished under a heat lamp. Instead, every meal was cooked to order, which made the result feel—and taste—more like eating in a restaurant. (It also meant the turnaround between meals was sometimes so quick that the freshly baked bread barely had time to cool before the next meal's service started.) From left: A buoy at the pier in Astoria, Oregon; Right Sea lions huddle in Astoria.
Brad Smith, the trip's sommelier, had to think dynamically, too. The ship's wine list, selected by Ray Isle, an editor at Food & Wine, focused on producers who make fewer than 5,000 cases a year. Since Leila and I were on the final trip of the season, many of the wines originally selected were no longer available. But if we were missing something, I couldn't tell. The subbed-in Trout Blanc from Teutonic Wine Co. in the Willamette Valley, for instance, was stunning, with a gentle effervescence that felt as festive as sparkles on a holiday dress.
That scrappy yet attentive spirit was true of the ship in general. The autumn air was often too chilly to be out on deck, and we used our cabins almost exclusively for sleeping, so the sole comfortable communal space was the lounge. But thanks to the conscientiousness of the crew, the pleasures of a small cruise far outweighed the drawbacks. A few moments stand out: The time when, during dinner one evening, Coleto retrieved a sweatshirt for a passenger whose cabin was on an upper floor. Or when Smith, remembering my interest during his wine lecture the night before, brought over a sample of rocks from the viticultural area we'd been discussing. Watching the staff help a visually impaired passenger down the boat's slippery gangway, I was touched by the lengths Lindblad went to make adventure accessible to its guests. From left: Washington's Palouse Falls State Park Heritage Site; a glass of wine from Dunham Cellars, in Walla Walla, Washington.
We continued west along the Washington-Oregon border and, just as Umiker had promised, soon found ourselves enveloped by one viticultural designation after another: the enormous Columbia Valley, which covers about a third of Washington State and is best known for its Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Riesling; the Walla Walla Valley, once most famous for its sweet onions but now a standout in the wine industry; and the Horse Heaven Hills, a warmer growing region where deep reds like Cabernet Sauvignon thrive.
Our shipmates Phil and Joanne Roudebush, retired veterinarians who have run a wine club in Asheville, North Carolina, for the past 30 years, were particularly eager to visit Walla Walla, now the epicenter of Washington's skyrocketing wine scene. (In 1970, there were only 10 wineries in Washington; by 2001 that number had grown to 100, and today it's swelled to almost 1,100.) The city's downtown alone has more than 40 tasting rooms, all within walking distance of one another. One local said that the area felt like Napa did 20 years ago—bursting with possibility.
On the day we visited Walla Walla, we spent the afternoon in a handful of those tasting rooms: Mark Ryan Winery; the woman-owned Dama Wines; and Mercer Wine Estates, part of the Horse Heaven AVA, which we'd be able to see in the distance the next day while kayaking around Crow Butte, an island in the Columbia River and a popular camping site. From left: The Sea Bird departing Clarkston at sunrise; a shipboard dinner of lamb with black rice and peppers.
After all that, plus a handcrafted scoop of strawberry ice cream from Pine Cone Creamery, I was happily defeated by the time we got back on the ship. But the Roudebushes, who had been tasting wine since 10:30 a.m., were indefatigable, continuing to sip on Smith's chosen wine of the day, poured during the history and wine lesson we took part in that evening. 'We'll dry out tomorrow,' Phil said with a wink.
By the next day, we were sailing along the Columbia River. It was hard to picture how wild this river once was. In 1805, William Clark wrote in his journal that the Columbia was an 'agitated gut swelling, boiling and whirling in every direction.' (Lindblad offers a reading list for its passengers, including a title featuring selected entries from Lewis and Clark's journals. In total, they wrote close to a million words about the journey they endured with their team. I found the book to be an essential companion in tracking our ship's progress.)
Today, the once-rampaging Columbia River, like the Snake, is controlled by dams—the first of which was completed in 1937. The Sea Bird transited eight on its journey, and I stood out in front of the bridge for all of them, except the ones that we crossed in the middle of the night. They were monstrous. The Dalles Dam, for instance, built on the site of what had been one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in North America, is 185 feet tall and 2,640 feet long—a scale that didn't feel human. From left: The ship's wine specialist, Brad Smith, leads guests in a tasting; an ice cream cone from Pine Cone Creamery, in Walla Walla, Washington.
The dams present a thorny issue in the area. In Lewis and Clark's time, these waters produced more salmon than any other river in the world. Now, even with fish ladders and hatcheries, 13 populations of fish in the Columbia and Snake rivers are on the brink of extinction, a devastating reality for the Indigenous communities whose livelihoods depend on fishing. And yet, the dams allow barges to transport produce grown in the fertile soil, and they also provide flood control, water for irrigation, and an immense amount of hydroelectric power. (The Bonneville Dam alone—the last one we transited on this journey—generates enough to supply a city the size of Portland.) In December 2023, the U.S. government pledged to develop a salmon restoration plan in partnership with the local communities and the state governments of Oregon and Washington. Whether this plan will include breaching any of the dams remains to be seen.
We set sail again after a day of kayaking around Crow Butte and continued downriver all evening. Shortly before dawn, we pulled past what seemed to me like the dividing line between the arid plains to the east and the rainy, western Columbia River Gorge: the Coyote Wall syncline. (A syncline, or a curved fold, is what can happen when layers of rock move over time.) Here, the Columbia River slices through the Cascade Range, the North American section of the Pacific Ring of Fire—a belt of tectonic activity that contains 75 percent of the world's volcanoes. 'It's an absolute wonderland of geology,' the ship's historian, Doug Crispin, told us. For the first time since Spokane, we saw trees—ponderosa pine and vine maples, their brilliant reds unmuted by the rain. We were only an hour's drive from Portland. But we wouldn't have known that from where we stood, except for the distant Chevron and McDonald's signs of Hood River, Oregon, glowing through the fog.
The winery that impressed me most, Syncline, was named after this dividing line. A biodynamic Washington producer, it is also one of wine expert Smith's favorites. He paired the brand's Grenache-Carignan with an apple- mostarda pork chop one night, and its Gamay Noir with a lunchtime garlic chicken salad. Both were exquisite, but I was particularly partial to the Mourvèdre, grown in the Red Mountain AVA—one of Washington's smallest appellations—which tasted like an explosion of lavender and rosemary. Touring Hells Canyon in a jet boat.
We spent our sixth day at Oregon's two-tiered Multnomah Falls, the most popular natural attraction in the Pacific Northwest. Mist as thick as liquid nitrogen at a magic show appeared to move upward from its base, but what struck me most was the density of the greenery. As I climbed switchbacks along Larch Mountain and huge raindrops pancaked onto the ground from the fern leaves above, I noticed that every inch of tree bark was covered in moss.
Back on board, Leila and I stood out on deck, soaking in the scenery—and the rain that had started coming down in earnest. The awning of the ship's bridge barely provided cover, but we didn't even consider going inside. We were being ushered through the Columbia River Gorge, whose jagged cliffs were thick with evergreen trees and vibrant yellow maples, which contrasted perfectly with the gray-green water below. Wineglasses in hand, we stood in awe of the ominous-looking Cascade Mountain Range. A bald eagle swooped so close we could see its yellow eyes. (Miraculously, the duck it was trying to catch escaped.)
The scenery kept getting more dramatic until well past Beacon Rock, the imposing hunk of basalt on the Washington side of the river that had impressed Lewis and Clark, who wrote about it, I learned, on that same day—October 31—more than 200 years ago. Leila and I tried to imagine how they must have felt racing to the Pacific before winter closed in. The Snake River at night.
I felt the ocean before I saw it. The tidal swell just outside Astoria, Oregon—the oldest European-American settlement west of the Rockies and once the salmon-canning capital of the world—made the boat lift and lower gently, like a chest inhaling and exhaling.
For one of our last excursions, we boarded a coach that wound through the forested landscape before pulling into Cape Disappointment. It was given this name because a seafaring explorer before Lewis and Clark had thought this spot offered false promise of precisely what, in fact, it turned out to be: the place where the great river of the American west collided with the world's largest body of water.
Just south at Waikiki Beach, the ocean seemed angry at the river's intrusion. Leila and I stripped off our socks, rolled up our pants, and ran toward the gray, menacing waves. It was less cold than we'd guessed it would be, or maybe we were just filled with adrenaline. We danced in the foam; it was only the unmistakable undertow that kept us from plunging in fully. (I'd also promised the risk-averse expedition leader I'd save 'diving in headfirst' for the realm of the metaphorical.) A cabin aboard the Sea Bird.
From the sea's edge, the colors of the beach appeared to have been stripped away: the clouds hung low and the sand was nearly as black as the towering cliffside behind us. It was as though we were inside a black-and-white photograph, happily dislocated in time. William Clark could have been writing about Leila and me when he observed his team at almost precisely this spot, in the thrall of the Pacific for the first time: 'beholding with astonishment the high waves dashing against the rocks and this immense ocean.'
At this point, we had a day left of the trip. Still to come, there would be sea lions piled under the pier in Astoria, creamy Willapa Bay oysters, apricot-inflected Syncline Grüner Veltliner, a coffee-infused rack of lamb, and the splendor of autumnal Portland, where we would disembark. But in that giddy moment, there was only this timeless confrontation with a great expanse. It felt like a sendoff gift that would carry me into the chapter for which I'd waited so long.
Weeklong Columbia and Snake river cruises with National Geographic–Lindblad Expeditions from $3,500.
A version of this story first appeared in the September 2025 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline "In the Course of Time ."