Sunday, 01-Sept-2019

Bend, Oregon

 

It had been a week.

Not one of those good weeks, but the opposite – one of those bad weeks.

A busy, hectic, urbanite nightmare of bad traffic and workplace emergencies that all piled on top of each other into a twisted heap of unhappiness. Thankfully, I didn’t have to stay in that heap – Sarah was still house sitting down in Bend, and as soon as Friday was over I escaped the insanity, driving like mad to escape to the oasis of calm.

 

The drive itself was glorious – It was clear and warm, and I left the top down for the whole drive.  I left a bit after work, so traffic wasn’t bad at all, and I even found a driving-buddy car who kept pace with me for a good chunk of the drive.  It’s always fun when there’s someone to dodge and weave through traffic with – especially when the traffic is crazy-huge lifted bro trucks that belch smoke when they try to accelerate… and then get completely stomped by two zippy little cars.  Haha, your fancy de-tuned engine isn’t actually more efficient, and you should feel bad.

(Ed Note: for those who might not know, this is a thing.  See “Rolling Coal” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal)

I did lose my driving buddy south of Mt. Hood though, when I saw a car stopped on the side of the road with their hood up.  I stopped, but thankfully they were okay – it was actually someone waiting for their friend, who had picked up the driver and taken them to a nearby gas station to grab a fill up.

I doubled-down on my good karma gathering when I saw a second car stopped not 5 miles down the road – this time I couldn’t find anyone nearby, and the car looked like someone was just randomly backpacking… Maybe it was an early-season hunter, or something?

Either way, I drove onward to Sarah!

 

 

The hike was on Sunday, after we took Saturday to explore Bend and just relax a bit.  Like I mentioned, the week had been singularly unpleasant, and a day off was exactly what the doctor’d ordered.

Sunday, we headed out mid-morning.  Not early, but not late either.  Our original plan had been to head up Tumalo Mountain, but we found out that the trail wasn’t actually dog friendly.  And since we had both Ollie and Scout (our neighbors dog) with us… dog friendly was pretty critical to the adventure.  So we pivoted, and headed toward the Green Lakes trail, to go and explore Moraine Lake.

Green Lakes is one of Sarah and my’s favorite hikes – it’s nestled in between four major glaciated peaks, and always has glorious view.  Moraine Lake is off that main trail by a bit, and so we hadn’t ever checked it out… Since we were taking it easy with the two dogglets, this was the perfect time to explore a bit, and take the road less traveled.

The hike itself was exactly what you’d expect – we trundled, and did a bit more trundling until we stopped trundling at the lake. We also stopped a few times on the way; beautiful sunlight through the trees trapped us once, and exploring some beautiful rock formations caught us another time.  But mostly – we trundled.

 

I don’t really know what else to write, if I’m being honest.  The hike was lovely, and the views were just as lovely, but the photos really do that part justice… it was a really good hike.  A good chance to get into nature, let the dogs run a bit, and to just rest and relax after a crazy week.