Lisa’s Birthday at Rockaway Beach, Mar 14th

I guess the title says it all. Being Lisa’s birthday, I planned a surprise party/stay at the beach for the whole weekend. After the long planning process, we headed to Rockaway Beach in the Oregon Coast on Friday 13th. The house I found was very nice with enough room for 15 people. Best of all, it was in front of the beach with an incredible view of a couple of rocks out at sea. As the night got closer on Friday, the rest of the group started to show up so we spent the rest of the night just fooling around. On Saturday, after a very nice breakfast that Christine made for all of us, we went for a walk on the beach. As you’ll see in the pictures, it was rainy and windy the whole time. Once we got tired of getting drenched, we walked back in to the main road in Rockaway to walk back to the house not without stopping at a couple of antique stores, joking around a bit and finding Zoltar!! Yes, we did make the wish to be big, but we didn’t get it, I guess we forgot to unplug the machine. Later that day we just enjoyed some board games, old movies and a nice BBQ. Sunday weather was no different, so after breakfast, we cleaned the house and left.

Carry your own meat hike, March 1st

In most of the hiking group day hikes, we end up going to a bar or restaurant after the hike to enjoy some well earned food and drinks. With this in mind, I thought why not make it even more rewarding by actually carrying what we were going to eat, so I arranged with Lisa to do a BBQ up at Nesika. After making sure there was a grill at the lodge and that Lisa was going to be there for the weekend, I planned this hike where all were requested to carry whatever they wanted to grill up at the lodge. This was even more rewarding as the trails club allowed us to take our dogs for this particular event. We started on a rainy Sunday morning from the Multnomah Falls lodge up the trail. After the first part of the ascent, where you turn up to continue on the Multnomah basin and get out of the paved portion, the trail turned into mud. Further up, we saw a lot of blow down, debris and snow on the trail which made this a bit more difficult than usual. Right before getting to the forest road that goes to the lodge’s parking lot we found a “trail marker” that Lisa left for us the night before. You’ll see her artistic abilities in the pictures. Once at the lodge, we met up with Lisa and Aaron who had the BBQ already going as well as the fireplace inside the lodge. Being a rainy and cold day, that was very well welcomed. The BBQ was great and everybody did their share. After a short rest and warming up session in front of the fireplace, we started our hike back to the cars enjoying the waterfalls with all the extra water from the rain. After that fun hike, instead of going to a bar or restaurant, we went for ice cream!

Snowshoeing at Mineral Jane, Feb 28th

You can’t say I didn’t warn you that I was going to be in this area again. Contrary to normal behavior, this trip was a last minute decision so I went out with Sara and Charlie, her mini mutt. The first part of the trail was the same I did a couple of weeks back when I took a group to Barlow Ridge. Contrary to that trip, this time, once we got to the T intersection, we took the other direction staying on the Mineral Jane going towards White River. If Barlow Ridge was amazing, this side actually took the frosting (it actually looked like frosting for the most part). The whole trail was constantly changing from being surrounded by tall trees to small open areas with clear views of Mt Hood. As you will see in the pictures, weather did not cooperated that much but still the views where really great. The last portion of the trail was really interesting as we where bordering a creek that has a lot of fallen trees that you can see by the snow that crosses from one side to the other. Since we didn’t have a destination planned, at some point we decided to stop for lunch in an open area where we had some really nice sandwiches while taking on the views. I don’t recall the sandwiches as much as Sara laughing at me when some snow fell from a tree and hit me on the head while eating. After recovering from that, we headed back on the same trail, which seemed to go up hill all the time, just in time to avoid the rain.

Walking with dogs at Sauvie Island, Feb 21st

After two years here in Portland, it was about time I went to Sauvie Island. This island is located where the Willamette and the Columbia River meet. This particular hike was on the northern side of the island so the water you see is from the Columbia River. We met early at the Lucky Lab and drove from there to the wildlife viewing area. Originally I thought this was a rather small island with some beaches and trails, but I was wrong. There’s actually some farm land and small neighborhoods in the island so it’s quite big. After a long drive on the island, we got to the parking lot. From that point, we followed the shoreline, walking on mud most of the time, all the way to the Warrior Rock Lighthouse where we had a light snack while enjoying the views. Being in the north side, the views are quite nice since, among other things, you get a clear view of Mt St Helens. You’ll see in the pictures that it was a great group with a bunch of dogs that had a great time.