The next best thing to a vacation is a stay-cation, and we enjoyed a mighty relaxing one over Memorial Day weekend. Some friends came to visit from my hometown, and with one of them recuperating from a broken ankle, we decided to pick a short, flat hike to share a local outdoor experience. The Rainbow Falls overlook is about 1.5 miles from the trailhead, making it a perfect easy excursion. Parents ...
Hiking
Hiking Olallie Mountain
In honor of the end of summer, we took a hike up Olallie Mountain on Sunday. Having just been up near Indian Ridge on the other side of the South Fork of the McKenzie, I liked the idea of getting a different perspective and was intrigued by tales of an old lookout tower on the top. We had also managed on Saturday to pick and freeze 10 quarts of huckleberries for the winter and pressed 6 gallons of ...
A Picnic on Castle Rock
Many of my favorite summer childhood memories revolve around evening picnic adventures with my family. My dad would come home from work at the end of the afternoon, bringing dinner with him from town (Kentucky Fried Chicken was a memorable favorite), and we would drive up the winding mountain road just behind our house, enjoying the views as we climbed looking out over the Olympic Mountain range ...
Spring Sights and Sounds of the McKenzie River Trail
May is such a good time to take a walk along a river and see what Spring has been up to. I feel incredibly fortunate to live so close to so many wonderful hiking trails in the McKenzie River watershed, one of which being the McKenzie trail itself. Simply walking along a riverbank is one of the most rejuvenating experiences I have found in the midst of life's busy happenings. I went out on an ...
Hiking the Elwha with Experience Olympic Tours
On my spring vacation back home to the Olympic Peninsula, I had the pleasure of going on a hike up the Elwha River with my friend and outdoor guide, Carolyn Wilcox of Experience Olympic Tours. I had many good childhood memories of hiking the Elwha with family and friends, and was excited to share it with my partner who grew up in the Midwest. Hiking an old familiar trail with a knowledgeable ...
Hiking French Pete Creek
We decided to take a break from working on homestead projects this weekend to get out in the woods on an adventure. Snowshoeing was the original plan, but with all the rain making snow conditions less than ideal, we opted for hiking a favorite nearby trail, French Pete Creek. This trail was where we had gone on our first hike together when we began dating, so it seemed like a fitting getaway ...
Night on Tidbits Mountain
Remember when I wrote a post a while back about hiking to the top of Tidbits Mountain? Well, we decided when we were up there that it would be a lot of fun to sleep up there on top of that mountain, out under the stars. My partner said he had been talking about it for four years and had never done it, so one evening over Labor Day Weekend, after spending the day working out in the yard and digging ...
Hiking Stuart Lake
Summer is winding down with the beginning of school this week for all of us Oregonians, and as we make our way into the fall, I am feeling very fortified with Nature from all of the wonderful excursions we managed to squeeze in during the month of August. A few weeks back we traveled up to visit my folks in Washington, to enjoy some time together seeing their place and all the fruits of their ...
Hiking Matthieu Lakes
One hot August day recently, we decided to take a family day hike up to the Matthieu Lakes in the Three Sisters Wilderness for a picnic lunch and a swim. The kids, being eleven-year-olds, put up some resistance to hiking in to our swimming destination at first, but once we got out there on the trail, they were happy hikers. The trail is an old portion of the Oregon Skyline Trail, and now the ...
Hiking Grasshopper Mountain
Last week saw us out on another hiking excursion to one of the less traveled trails up the McKenzie watershed, Grasshopper Mountain. One of those gems in the back of William Sullivan's hiking books, my partner discovered this trail a couple of years ago when he had tried all the featured hikes and wanted something extra. This particular day, we took our friend and his 12 year old daughter along, ...