Mt Hood, Portland, Hood River

On Saturday we drove to Portland. We met Sara and Audrey for beers and munchies, our first "see old friends" stop of the trip. It was great! After two weeks of just the two of us, it was so nice to hang out with people at a bar in a city and feel a little bit like "normal". We'll probably rearrange our trip going forward to have more people in it, even though we do like the nature stuff too.

Sunday we spent randomly driving around Mt Hood National Forest. The ranger station was closed and we had no map, so we just picked a road and drove. We stopped at the Dog River trailhead for a ~5 mile hike up along the streambed. The folks we met at the bottom before and after the hike said it was mostly a mountain biking trail, but we only saw one hiker while we were walking. It was pleasant walk, though we had to cut it a little short since we didn't bring enough water for a longer hike.

After we came back down, we decided to keep driving toward the peak. We turned off randomly to the east (away from Mt Hood) since it seemed like a good idea and there was a suggestive sign about an alpine meadow. Unfortunately after that the signage was damaged, removed, or just plain wrong. We wound up on some roads that we couldn't continue along due to the rocks and trees along them, and wound up backing down two roads since we couldn't turn around either.

After a while of the back and forths, we just parked the car along some random trail and started walking. We found a sign, maybe someone can figure out where we were?

Three miles from the Fifteenmile Campground. Ok, sounds good. We did see a biker on the trail, so it must not have been too far in the middle of nowhere. The forest was very strange. The trees were all, or mostly all, dead. No fire damage, just dead trees. Not sure what that was about, but it made for an interesting looking forest. After some walking, we did find a meadow; must have been that one the missing signs were pointing to. The dead trees allowed lots of groundcover flowers to bloom, very pretty.

On our way back we got a few pictures of Mt Hood. Gotta say, Mt Hood is just prettier than Mt Rainier. Oregon wins again! Stopped in Hood River and wandered around until we found Full Sail. Got a beer sampler, a beet salad, and the beer/cheese soup. Yum! Watched the kite and wind surfers scoot along the river. Hood River would be a nice place, we should move here. Map Link.