Sunday, 12-July-2015

My actual birthday! And for some reason I don’t go climbing on my birthday. Instead, we wake up, make breakfast, and head toward a trail called Salmon River, down south from Mt. Hood.
Why we picked it… I couldn’t really say – Brian and I had looked through a ton of possible hikes, but for some reason this hike stood out. It had a neat name, a good length, and was a pleasant drive away.

So, we filled up our packs and jumped in the car! But, instead of heading right to the hike, we decide to put the wrong address in the GPS, and get lost along the way. Because we’re cool like that.

And then once we get there, we notice a small sign mentioning that you can’t buy a parking pass at the trailhead. Instead, you have to head back into town and buy a parking pass. So… we crankily drove back into town. But we bought coffee and donuts, and it was ‘kay.

The hike itself? It was actually really pleasant. It followed a river, for the most part, and was nicely Jurassic. That’s a term now, by the way. Means when a hike transports you back to the age of the dinosaurs; the huge ferns, tall trees, and velociraptors hiding in every patch of shadow.

I mean, that last part is an assumption on my part. But I’m pretty sure it’s true.

But so we walked. We talked. We passed a few other groups of people exploring. I don’t know what else to say. Hikes are not really very good for talking about… One of the reasons that I want to read/watch that movie “Wild”… I seriously can’t see what could hold an audience for that long.

Then we got to a small slab of rock alongside the trail. With rock climbers! But we didn’t have any gear. So we just watched and cheered them on for a few minutes, before moseying on our way, deeper into the prehistoric jungle.

We even stopped to skip stones, before turning back and heading home. On the way we did stop into a “snow pulloff” thing on the Mt. Hood approach, where we bouldered around for a bit, and I even gave Brian the chance to practice driving a manual transmission car, even though I thought I’d learned my lesson when I let his brother stall the poor Mustang out half a dozen times in the Jordan’s Furniture parking lot…

But Brian did ok, and the car survived another day. Long enough to get us back to Hood River, where we had a delicious dinner at the Mesquitery and excellent wine at… a place… with wine? I don’t remember the name. But it was tasty.