Mountains in Oregon

Our neighbor to the south...OREGON! (Yes, they have mountains there too!)

July 28-29, 2001

Just like another Oregon roadtrip... this visit to Oregon began with a concert trek, this time for Depeche Mode. The concert was GREAT! I can't say enough. The NIN concert paled in comparison. Poe was the opening act, quite a surprise, actually. She was great, too, but DM was... magnificent. :)

The concert was Friday, and we stayed in Portland on Friday night. Initially, the plan was to head up to Hood Friday night even, but I couldn't find any hotels/motels that weren't super pricey (and had vacancies). That worked out okay, though, it meant we could go crash after the concert (without causing harm to people and property).

Saturday morning we got up, checked out, and headed towards 'the' mountain. My quest for early morning coffee took us to Peet's. I had heard of it before (as a Oregonian thing), but had never tried it... I was surprised at how delicious it was! Knocks the socks off Starbucks. So, Canada has fish and chips (and donuts, I suppose) and Oregon has coffee! Woo-hoo!

After stopping at the grocery store and getting up to the mountain, it was already the afternoon. We brought our newly acquired camping gear, with the thought of trying it out. We went in search of a campground... found a great campsite, put our ticket on the post, and headed up to Timberline for gift-shop and a visit. We ended up staying a while, having a couple of beers, and watching the mountain appear and disappear. Eventually, we headed back down to our campsite, only to find that our ticket had been taken... so we went in search of the host site, which was in another campground miles and miles away. We got everything resolved, but there was almost another hour gone.

We proceeded to set up camp... of course it was raining. We set up hurriedly and jumped inside the tent and waited for the rain to stop. Fortunately we didn't have to wait long. In about 10 (?) minutes the rain stopped and we emerged. I was just waiting for the rain to return, but it never did! What luck!

Paul made a fire. Problems? Well, we had wood, but forgot about the paper. Luckily I had picked up a Oregon tourist magazine... so we used that for paper. Paul got the fire going, I was truly inspired. I know I couldn't have done it. As an aside, the smoke always seemed to blow directly into the tent. Oh well, at least the bugs weren't bad (were there any bugs?). :)

While the fire was going, we had a wonderful dinner of Top Ramen and Hot Dogs (really Polish Sausage). With our bellies full, I'm not sure what we did next, but eventually we settled down and went to bed.

I woke up in the middle of the night (nature called) and made my way to the campground facilities (a single port-o-potty). It was almost light outside... with stars! The sky was clear, and it was amazing. I could even see the milky way. I don't remember seeing the stars like that since I was a little girl and my dad lived in Ravensdale. I tried to wake up Paul for him to see them, but it was no use... he was a zombie.

We woke up pretty early in the morning... before sunrise. Early enough before sunrise to head up to Timberline to watch the sun rise on Mt. Baker. It was chilly, but the car was warm. We never did see a ray of sun hit the mountain, but the color show in the clouds in the valleys to the east was very nice.

After watching the sunrise, we headed back to camp. We packed up, and headed out. We chose to take the long way home (the non-I-5 route). This would take us through Hood River, by many waterfalls, by Mt. St. Helens, and then finally home. A full day (and a lot of miles) indeed.

We headed North and East to Mt. Hood Meadows. After the sunrise, the clouds moved in pretty quick (and hung around for the rest of the day), but it was good driving weather.

From Mt. Hood Meadows, Hood really begins to take on its conical shape... you don't see it so much from Timberline. The ski resort was closed, so this was all the further we could go (a locked gate).

At the Meadows, there's a waterfall (surprise, surprise).

This is Umbrella Falls. It was a nice, short walk from the road and a good break from sitting in the car.

After the falls, we hopped back in the car and headed up to the campsite that we were originally going to head for, Cloud Cap Campground. But, not having been camping before, we opted for the first campground that we liked. (I'm glad we did.)

The road up to Cloud Cap is a bit difficult. It switchbacks a lot, and on the turns there are large (baseball-sized) loose rocks... like gravel with an attitude. The straight-aways are nice dirt roads, but the turns are just aweful, as you slow down to 5 mph and even then have limited control.

At a big, scenic overlook turn, we stopped to find Wallalute Falls. It was much easier to see in person, but here it is... If you follow the valley up from the bottom towards the left, it curves to the right, then back to the left, then goes straight up and there's a light white spot. This is the top of the falls.

On the little spur trail (which is actually not even a trail) I had to stop and giggle, because there were chipmunks all over the place. Paul thought I was just giddy at the sight of the falls. Silly boy.

	Just before another turn, there's a clear view to the North. We walked down a little boot-beaten path to a fenced overlook. We could see Mt. St. Helens (left), Mt. Adams (below, foreground), and Mt. Rainier (below, background, a white blob in the center of the picture).

Cloud Cap is a very nice campground, there are also several really good trails that start there. It's a must... someday. Just past the campground there's an old lodge that's no longer in operation. If the clouds hadn't been so thick, we'd have seen more of the mountain, but even still, I managed to get my flowers in front of the mountain shot...

Another really cool thing from here is that under the clouds, looking to the east, you could see the grassy plains of Eastern Oregon.

After heading back down the windy, rocky road, we left the Mt. Hood mountainous area and headed towards Hood River. We made a couple of stops along the way...

We did an extended search for Punchbowl Falls, and finally found it and Dead Point Creek Falls after nearly leaving the area in frustration...

Punchbowl Falls	Dead Point Creek Falls

We didn't stay long and kept moving... we lunched at a brew pub in Hood River and eventually crossed the mighty river and arrived back in Washington.

As I was driving along the WA side of the Columbia River Gorge, Paul spotted a waterfall off the road. I turned around and we stopped... only to find that that falls was indeed in "the book." This is Dog Creek Falls.

Next stop? More waterfalls! I'm not sure how we eventually found the right roads, but we did, thankfully.

First, we found Big Creek Falls. There's a short trail that leads to the falls, but there are natural wooden benches all over the place. Are the locals THAT unfit? Hmmm. I'm not sure what the deal is, but the falls sure were pretty.

After that, we went in search of two falls very near each other less than a half mile in on a river trail. We went across the bridge from the parking area and headed right (upstream) we walked for almost half an hour along this flat trail, when we finally figured that we'd gone far enough and that there were no waterfalls. We headed back, disappointed. When we got back to the bridge, we noticed a trail heading downstream with a sign that read "Falls." Okay, so we were idiots. That's okay. It was a nice walk. We headed down the correct trail and found the falls: Curly Creek Falls and Miller Creek Falls. Curly Creek was neat, as it has a natural arch across the falls just above the pool between the two sets of falls. Miller Creek was mostly hidden, but that's okay.

Big Creek Falls	Curly Creek Falls	Miller Creek Falls

After this we headed up to Mt. St. Helens... the Windy Ridge side. I hadn't been up this side before, and was surprised at how different it is from the Johnston Ridge side. It was windy and cold, so we didn't stay long, but I'll definitely be coming back here to do some hiking. We saw Spirit Lake, yes, still (partially) covered with logs left over from the 1980 blast.