Hiking with our Family in the Oregon Mountains

The day after the wedding, the bride and groom planned a hike for the family that was still in Oregon. So after a lazy morning with bacon and eggs for breakfast, we headed towards the Top Spur and Timberline Loop Trail. We were in no hurry, because we were waiting for the clouds (we have seen every morning) to clear.  We had a fun group of eight hikers this morning.

We need to introduce our group. We're not sure how this happened, but we didn't have a picture of the bride and groom together facing the camera on the entire hike.

The bride's Mother was talked into taking this hike against her better judgement. Patti hasn't ever been on such a demanding hike, but we assured her that she could turn back at any time if she didn't like it. She was a trooper and never turned back. She did great!

Our oldest son, Luke . . .

and his wife, Jordan, and their daughter, Carter, were in our group of eight. Their son, Eli, stayed home with the other set of grandparents, so we didn't have all of our family on this hike.

Of course, Mark and Denisa enjoyed hiking with this group of people that are so special to us!

It was a bumpy ride in the cars to the trail head, and we found we had to park a half-mile down the road. This was a popular trail! 

We were about a half-mile down the trail when we met a woman with noticeably blue teeth. She pointed out that we were almost to the section of the trail with lots of blueberries. That was music to Denisa and Carter's ears!

She was right! We started seeing bushes loaded with blueberries right after she alerted us.

These are some of the prettiest wild berries we have seen in a while. We were spending so much time picking and eating berries that we forgot we were hiking up a steep trail.

This was a "lollipop" trail--meaning that we first hiked the "stem" and then hiked a loop or lollipop top. This loop opened out of the forest for what was supposed to be an iconic view of Mount Hood. But we couldn't even see Mount Hood, because it was completely covered in the heavy cloud cover.

So we made ourselves comfortable, and decided to just wait until the clouds cleared.

We waited for more than thirty minutes, and quickly took pictures when the clouds parted enough that we could see a glimpse of the mountain behind them. At least we got a peek at the peak of Mount Hood.

We finally gave up, and our group of eight headed on around the loop and away from the viewpoint. We felt a little defeated as we continued around the loop.

Even with no magnificent view of Mount Hood, it was a good hike. We even had a little blue sky starting to show up behind us. Denisa looked back to take a picture of Mark on the ledge of the trail.

After the viewpoint, we were once again in the forest, with Carter as our trusty hiking leader.

In this section of the trail, the blueberries were replaced by huckleberries. Much the same size, a huckleberry is more purple and is more tart in taste.

We even found salmonberries, and Blake was picking the ones harder to reach.

Carter was picking little "fruit salads" and delivering them to all the members of our hiking group. This fruit salad included blueberries, purple huckleberries, and three of the yellow salmonberries. Who wouldn't love to get a nice trail snack delivered in that little berry-stained hand?

While some of us were concentrating on wild berries, Mark and Luke and Jordan decided to make another dash around the forested loop just  to see if the clouds had lifted.

We were so glad they did! The clouds were parting, and they could see the top of Mount Hood clearly! So they ran back to tell the slower-hiking group the good news.

So we all headed back around the loop to get that view. The clouds continued to lift, with more clear pictures of the grandeur of Mount Hood. This iconic view was why this trail was so popular.

We were glad that Patti got this view, as the reward to hanging out with this crazy group on this hard hike. She got to wander into God's wonders with us on this day.

We were all smiling about that view as we made the hike back. The clouds hadn't defeated us after all. We stopped for a picture of the signpost that shows where we intercepted the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail. This trail runs along the highest portions of the Cascade and Sierra Nevada mountains, but it would take a little detour to get to that view of Mount Hood.

We were accompanied by more of the Tortoise shell butterflies that seem to be everywhere this summer. 

We finished the hike with five miles and 1,089 feet in elevation gain. That included some extra hiking back to the viewpoint, and Mark's detour up a summit trail. Patti agreed that it was a good hike, but we're not sure if she wants to hang out with these hikers all the time. She opted out of our evening plans for some reason.

Since we stayed at the wedding venue, we stopped to check on our trailer on the way back from the hike. We were glad to see that the battery was at 97% with a little sunshine making it through the trees this afternoon. Then we all met for dinner, followed by smores at Luke and Jordan's Airbnb. It was in another picturesque location, with the Sandy River flowing right behind it.

The water of the Sandy River was fed by the snow that was just now melting off the mountain tops. The outdoor temperatures merited wearing a jacket for Denisa, so you can only imagine how cold that river water felt this evening.

Their rental included a sauna. So they would get hot and sweaty in the sauna, then run down to the river for a cold water plunge.

Their screams were our evidence that the water was ice cold! Mark and Denisa didn't feel the need to experience it for themselves.

Jordan got the award for being able to stay completely submerged in that cold water the longest.

After that cold water plunge, it was time to warm up around the fire pit. The embers were just right for toasting the marshmallows we brought from the trailer.

It was a beautiful evening, after a great day with our family in Oregon.

Mark and Denisa are used to traveling alone together to beautiful places. But after traveling for a month to get to this location, it was so nice to have a reason to spend several days with our family in the Oregon mountains near Mount Hood!

Wedding Day!

Our summer travels were all centered around one event in one place and one day.  While we traipsed across Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and California--our real destination was always Oregon. And our timing was always determined by this special day. It's the wedding day of our son, Blake, and his bride, Jamie. We were honored to be there for "the first look" photos on this special day.

Right after that photo was taken, we saw that we were sharing the woods with a doe and her little spotted fawn. That seems to be a good omen!

We also spent that special day with a special ring bearer, who loved her new dress and first high heels.

While more pictures of the bride and groom were taken in the shadow of Mount Hood, we spent our morning with the bride's mother and sister decorating for the wedding and reception. The forest provided a beautiful back drop, and it also provided some of the decorations for the tables. We cut ferns, Queen Anne's lace, and picked up pine cones for the tables.

Right before the wedding, it was time to get the groom's boutonnière attached to his new suit jacket.

Every wedding needs a few hiccups, just so you have good stories to tell years later. One of the hiccups was that the local bakery forgot to bake the wedding cake that was ordered months ago. When the bride called to confirm when they were delivering the cake, there was a long pause on the other end of the phone. Then they started baking. It wasn't exactly what they had ordered, and it was late, but we did have wedding cake.

Our granddaughter, Carter, was glad to find out there were two ring bearers. They became good friends before the day was over.

It was fun to have all our kids in one picture. Our other son and daughter-in-law joined the bride and groom in this photograph.

We were blessed with perfect temperatures for this August wedding. We were also blessed with blue skies, since we didn't have any wild fires in this area.

We were so very happy for this special couple, so it was a blessed day in many ways.

After the wedding and the meal, we had some dancing on our forest dance floor. We planned our summer travel around this place and this day, and it was so worth it! Happy wedding day!

Welcome to our happy place!

This was the last morning that we had this alarm clock showing up in our bed at about 5:30 a.m. Our grandaughter was still on central time, and she pointed out that it was already 7:30 there. That was the time we were hoping to wake up this morning. But we cooked breakfast and headed to the highway a little early, because the trailer was still hooked to the pickup on this overnight stop.

We had planned a stop at Newberry Volcano Park, but google maps gave us bad directions and we were already past it by the time we realized it. We didn't back-track because we had other stops to dump our tanks and fill up with water for our next longer stay, and we were anxious to meet up with some other relatives. This was our last travel day for a while, as we were making the final drive to our main destination this summer. Our timing this summer was determined by the wedding of our youngest son, and the destination was determined based on the wedding near Oregon's Mount Hood. We drove the last 142 miles, and needed to stop for lunch. We didn't realize that most of our drive would be through an Indian reservation. Our only choice for lunch was a food truck that had one thing on the menu--Indian tacos. The Twisted Teepee food truck had been busy for the past week feeding firemen fighting the wild fires. Here's a picture of our lunch view.

We found the first smoke of this trip as we drove through central Oregon. We could see gray skies with faint outlines where we should be seeing mountains ahead of us. We saw fire crews cutting down burned trees close to the highway as we passed.

The landscape changed, and the skies got clearer as we neared our destination.  We soon got our first view of the area that brought the bride and groom to choose this place for their wedding. We loved the clear view of Mount Hood as much as they did! We also noticed that the trees here were remarkably healthy and green. After seeing so much pine beetle kill in other parts of the country, it was so nice to see healthy forests.

We will be camped in the middle of that healthy forest. We parked the trailer in the Camp Creek Campground, run by the national forest service, and hosted by one of the best volunteers we have ever met.

With its moss-draped trees that towered above us, we agreed with the camp host who said this was her "happy place." We had a surprisingly large site that included an open area with a picnic table and fire ring.

Because of the high fire danger, we will not be using that fire ring during our stay. This flag was in our fire pit, and we thought it was interesting that the message wasn't in English.

We got to teach Carter about some of the wild berries that were surrounding our camp site. She got her first taste of a thimbleberry, and promptly ate all the ripe red ones on our camp site's bushes.

Later, our camp host gave us a tour of the entire campground, pointing out more edible plants that we weren't familiar with. One of her favorites was the sorrel. We thought it was just a large three-leaf clover. But when we picked one and tasted, it had a nice lemony flavor that would be a nice addition to salads.

Denisa's favorite was the orange huckleberry. We have probably seen these tiny berries before, but wouldn't have tasted them without the guidance of our camp host.

While she called them orange, we think they look more red.  We have tasted huckleberries many times, and these were even better than the purple ones!

Our last new berry actually started as a tiny white flower lined up on a horizontal stem.

Our camp host showed us the next stage--green salal berries dangling from that stem. But don't eat them yet!

They aren't good to eat until they ripen and turn black. While they were edible, the salal weren't our favorite berries.

We got the trailer settled in for its six-night stay with no hook-ups. This was the longest amount of time for it to depend only on solar power to keep the refrigerator going. And some of that time it would be unsupervised because we were staying at the wedding venue. After a month of traveling, we were ready for the wedding! We moved into the Airbnb, and took the longest shower we have had for the last month. Then our son took us for a tour of the wedding venue. It was beautifully green, and this was their "happy place"!

Later that evening we were at a local grill--Bigfoot Growlers--enjoying dinner with other guests that had arrived for the wedding. Denisa and the ring bearers were dancing to live music here in Oregon.

Our granddaughter, Carter, had been traveling with us for the last four days. This day her parents arrived and she stayed with them. They took this nice sunset picture of Carter at their rental that was situated on the Sandy River, with Mount Hood peeking over the water. This area was so beautiful, and we understood why the bride and groom chose to get married here. It was quickly becoming the "happy place" for us as well!