Camping Trip, Part 3: A Walk in the Woods

After our morning by the river and lunch at the campsite, we took a drive on the main road through the Mt. Hood Forest.  It was partly exploratory and partly to get Holly to take a nap.

When we finally arrived at our chosen destination, a little hiking trail that led to a beaver pond, Holly had had a bit of the nap in the car but was still pretty sacked out.  Damon carried her along the trail, still sleeping, and eventually found a spot to recline himself.  Just beyond him you can see the pond with the trees from the opposite shore reflected in the water.

 

The path we took came along the side of the beaver pond that is to the left of this picture, and then it eventually wrapped around to dead end at this giant log.  We found the beaver dam, but no beavers.

 

Then we set off along a couple more fallen trees and then up a slope to return to the path.

I wasn't too nervous as we crossed the first tree. That's water to the right, but fairly dry land to the left:

However, this log bridge made me fairly nervous that someone was going to fall into that green murky water and I was going to have to jump in and save them.  I came last, very cautiously, with Holly.

 

Everyone made it. Whew!

 

Then we had to make our way up a slope back to the path, and this time we headed in a different direction, rather than wrapping back towards the beaver pond. 

The forest was full of fallen logs that criss-crossed each other and led over small ravines.  They made great jungle gyms.  We had a great time climbing up and down and over.

 

 

The best part of this was that when we left our campground after lunch and got in the car, we told the kids we were going for a bit of a drive and that we'd go on a hike.  They whined a bit, complaining that they didn't want to hike and just wanted to hang around by the river or the campsite.  As we drove back to our campsite in the late afternoon and asked the kids what their favorite part of the day was, they all answered, "The hike!" It really was a great one--more playing and goofing around than actual hiking, mind you, but we loved it.

The next day of our trip was Sunday and we spent the morning doing another easy nature walk on the paths around our campground. Then we drove out of the forest and into one of the closest cities to attend church.  We had a late picnic lunch at a scenic overlook before returning to camp, where we relaxed, read, and played games until dinnertime.  We had actually expected rain showers throughout the day on Sunday, but only got a few sprinkles, so that was a nice blessing.

On Monday morning we took our time breaking camp and getting in the car.  We drove home by a different route than we had taken Friday afternoon, basically going up and over Mt. Hood instead of around it.  We stopped for lunch at a cafe in Government Camp (where there was still snow on the ground) and then poked around Timberline Lodge (where people were skiing AND we ran into a Utah friend of mine who now lives about 40 miles away!) before finally rolling back into White Salmon, unloading, showering, and doing some laundry.

What a weekend! It was a lot of work, but a lot of fun. I would have appreciated about 10 more degrees in warmth, flush toilets, and sinks for hand and face washing, but all in all it was a great camping trip. I'm glad we made the effort and did it. We don't camp a lot, but I always think we should do it more. We certainly are lucky to live in such a beautiful part of the world and there are so many more campgrounds to explore!