Drive your kids up the Gorge

The Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center Museum offers free admission to kids younger than 6. (Files/The Columbian)

The fish windows at the Bonneville Dam give kids a chance to see salmon up close. (Files/The Columbian)

A window at Oregon Fish & Wildlife’s Bonneville Hatchery offers a view of trout and sturgeon. (FILES/The News Tribune)

Kids love climbing in the cab of the diesel locomotive at the Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center Museum in Stevenson. (Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center Museum)

If you have little children — and little money — but want to have some fun over the long Memorial Day weekend, a trip to the Columbia River Gorge offers low-key, low-expense enjoyment.

Traveling the loop to several kid-friendly attractions takes less than a tank of gas, and lacks the big expense — and high expectations — so easily foiled by toddler tantrums.

Here is an itinerary for an outing of 100 miles or so that will get you home by naptime — and, if you're lucky, before the inevitable meltdown.

Watch the fishies at Bonneville Dam

To get to Bonneville Dam from Vancouver, drive east on Highway 14. Signs will direct you through the security gates and into the Washington Shore Visitor Complex, which is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. At the fish windows, watch salmon migrating upstream. There should be plenty to see. Last year at this time, some 1,500 fish — mostly chinook and shad — swam by the window. Use the charts posted in the viewing room to make a game of identifying the fish. Chinook have large, oval bodies and a black gumline. Shad have a teardrop body shape with a deeply notched tail. Keep an eye out for lamprey, which often attach themselves to the fish window with their suction-cup mouths.

For more information, call 541-374-8820 or visit nwp.usace.army.mil/op/b.

Look at a train (and some cultural artifacts)

Continue from the dam to Stevenson for a stop at the Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center Museum, 990 S.W. Rock Creek Drive. Chances are, your kids will want to check out the locomotive and caboose sitting outside the building. If you can wrangle them inside, admission is free for kids younger than 6. (Adult admission is $7.) If the inside exhibits of baskets and beads fail to capture the little ones' interest, play a game of spotting the pictograph of Tsagaglalal — "She Who Watches" — etched throughout the museum.

For more information, call 800-991-2338 or visit columbiagorge.org online.

Feed the fishies

Double back west on Highway 14 to the Bridge of the Gods and cross into Oregon. (Be sure you have $1. That's the toll for cars.)

Head to the Bonneville Hatchery at 70543 N.E. Herman Loop, Cascade Locks. The hatchery is open from 7:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily. There, you can gape through a viewing window at Herman, the 10-foot-long, 450-pound, 70-year-old sturgeon.

For 25 cents, you can buy a handful of kibble for the thrill of throwing it at the trout and watching them fight over it. You can see why it would be dangerous to stick your finger into the holding ponds.

For more information, dfw.state.or.us.

Feed yourselves

Head back toward the Bridge of the Gods for a bite at Charburger at 745 N.W. Wa-na-pa St., Cascade Locks, 541-374-8477. The Western-themed, cafeteria-style restaurant serves burgers, chicken, pie, milkshakes and other treats. But the real treat is the view — one of the best in the Gorge. Panoramic windows overlook the river, where sternwheelers and barges head to and from the locks.

With your bellies full, head west on Interstate 84 back toward Vancouver. Maybe the kids will fall asleep on the way home.