August 23
We left for the campground around 2:30pm on Friday.
It's about a 90 minute drive if there's no traffic, but we hit a
little bit and it took us slightly more than 2 hours. We
did have fun on the way racing a young couple in their Civic
back and forth over the course of nearly an hour. It was
clear weather the whole way until a few minutes after Mt. Hood
was in sight. Just as we turned onto the forestry roads,
it started to rain... then pour... I couldn't see more than 5
feet in front of me... then the hail started. It was
insane. But magically, just as we rounded the bend to our
campground, it cleared up and was gone. The campground
wasn't even wet. We rushed to set up, but there was no
rain... just a hint of its existence in the thunder rolling
in. It did start to drizzle a bit, but it was very
slight. We had shish-ka-bobs for dinner that night...
grilled right over the fire, baby! S'mores too! |
This is our campsite. Notice the three tents. |
We celebrated finishing setting everything up with a
Mike's. Eric looks like a serial killer to me. |
Another view of our campsite. |
I really liked this campground. |
We were surrounded by trees all around. |
It gave you a feeling like you were really out there (other
than the Acura parked a few feet away). |
August 24
On Saturday, we had banana pancakes for breakfast.
Then we made sandwiches and packed our backpacks full of other
stuff. We set out early in the day, around 8:30am.
We hiked past Little Crater Lake (which was very eerie) to the
trails around Timothy Lake. Then we did the 13 miles
around the Lake stopping around Noon to eat our
sandwiches. We waded into the Lake up to our knees to cool
off our tired feet at one point. We made it back to camp
around 3:30pm and crashed hard. I think we all fell asleep
for anywhere from 1-2 hours. BIG mistake. None of us
were thinking... and boy did we pay for it big time in muscle
cramps! We had spaghetti and hot dogs for dinner and
played hearts `till dark.
|
A view of Timothy Lake. |
There's a dam there... this was a cool shot, I thought. |
More Timothy Lake. |
This was the highest point in our hike... which was all of
maybe 70 feet higher than anything else. :-) We were
at about 3,000 feet in general though. |
This was taken at about the half-way point of our
hike. We're in a little nook of the lake at the Southern
end. |
Another nice view. |
Oh my god! A falling tree almost crushed my friends! |
See... he truly was amazed at our "large" trees. |
A cow? Yes, a *wild* cow roaming the forest.
There were about 10 of them. Bizarre. |
August 25
We started off the day with some oatmeal and fruit.
We didn't do much but hang out this day. We played some
more cards, took down the equipment, repacked the car and were
off before the 2pm checkout time. Little Crater Lake was a
great campground. So unbelievably better than Fort
Stevens. As close to real camping you can get in a
car. Here are also some pictures of us at the big tree on
the way to the coast. At this point, we had the kids with
us. |
One last picture with a big tree for Eric. |
Eric's standing on one of the roots sticking out the
side. It goes pretty far down... all the ground was torn
out from it falling over. |
OK, this is hilarious. The only water we had came from
a well and we had to pump it.
WATCH
THE VIDEO |
 |
Yup, this is a big
tree. On the left, you can see Amy with her arms
outstretched, Eric next to her, the kids behind her and Jeff off
to the left.
On the right is a shot of the canopy. |
 |
We can calculate the height of the tree from the angle of
their necks and their distance to the trunk. :-) |
Eric found a little path behind the tree. |
And off goes Jeff in hot pursuit. |
I had never been back here, but there was a decent amount of
trail behind the tree. |
Eventually we stopped and decided to turn around. |
After running around the tree, Jarod was tired. |
