Portland 2019: Cottonwood Canyon State Park, Oregon

The John Day River

Before we hopped a plane to Missouri, we had time (and good weather) for one final mini-trip: a two-night camping trip with Gary to Cottonwood Canyon State Park in the desert of central Oregon.

Cottonwood Canyon was once a ranch, but was recently acquired by the state and transformed into a brand-new park full of amazing facilities— lush campsites along the willow-clad John Day River, camper cabins, bike amenities, free bikes to use while you're there, board games to borrow, a solar charging station, showers, and more! The arid hills rise up on all sides, but are widely-spaced to keep you from getting claustrophobic. 

Our first day, we set up camp and hiked the Pinnacles Trail, which took us 4.3 miles (and possibly further, when we consulted the map) down Cottonwood Canyon and sideways into Esau Canyon, all the while paralleling the river. Ravens wheeled far overhead, sparrows chirped from the underbrush, and we saw many deer hoof prints in the sand. The river reflected the yellowish hills and the blue sky, creating an intense melting palette of blue and orange. 

That night, some clouds rolled in, but we were still able to see some stars, including the thick band of the Milky Way. 

The next day, we did an hour-long road trip over the plateau and amongst huge lines of windmills to the town of Fossil. A chatty and helpful woman at the Oregon Paleo Lands Institute Center gave us directions to a field where we could dig fossils in exchange for a small donation to the local high school. We walked through the sleepy town, climbed a hill, ducked behind the high school, paid a fee, grabbed some of the tools in a crate, and began shoveling through the dirt on a hillside in search of fossils of 40-million-year-old pines, alders, and maples.

It took us a while to get our "fossil eyes" on, but once we did, we found a lot! We took pictures of many, but only kept a few. I searched through shards, while Zach chiseled apart layered rocks to find the fossils sandwiched in between.

That night, back at Cottonwood Canyon, we walked a three-mile trail up the canyon, then started a charcoal briquet fire (regular campfires were forbidden due to sparks) and roasted marshmallows. Some rain spat on us, but it never got too bad.

Zach said that the rocks around here look like low-resolution computer graphics because they're just shards.

The next day we drove home, and Zach and I quickly shifted gears into finishing up our final packing. But I was very glad we got the chance to visit this slice of Oregon's beautiful desert.

~~~

Portland 2019: Pictures from Yellowstone

Zach and I just returned from a whirlwind five-day trip to Montana, where we visited my brother Christian, who works at Yellowstone National Park (department of inventory— you never think about how many office jobs are needed to sustain a park of that size). Although it rained on and off the whole time we were there, we still managed to get in a few hikes and a bit of sightseeing. Here are some pictures!

The next several pictures are from the Beaver Pond Loop near Mammoth Hot Springs

Beautiful gumweed was growing everywhere!

Driving toward the Midway Geyser Basin in Yellowstone

Grand Prismatic Spring! We had never seen it before. Although we weren't able to get parking at the boardwalk that takes you to the edge of the spring, we were able to hike to this overlook. 

Grand Prismatic Spring from ground level

We drove past this smallish male right after seeing a gigantic bull further up the road (and a stupid tourist standing ten feet away to get a good shot). 

Driving down toward Mammoth Springs

Mammoth Hot Springs!

Looking up a hill toward the mountains swathed in clouds— this was on a hiking trail just outside of Gardiner, MT

Cactus!

Sunset on the Columbia River on our drive home

This Month: Cards, Hiking, and the Way Home

View from Harry's Ridge at Mt. St. Helens National Monument: Spirit Lake and Mt. Adams

Whew, it's been a while since I've posted a general life update! I've been so busy waxing eloquent about our backpacking trips and rambling about random things that I've let several weeks go by since the last "this week" post. 

The most important news is that Zach and I are officially on the last leg of our time out west; we're heading home to St. Louis in just over two weeks, and have been trying to cram as much Northwest into our remaining days as we possibly can. On Sunday we're heading to Yellowstone to visit my brother Christian for a week, and after that we're hoping to do a short camping trip with Gary, as well as see everyone one last time before hopping the plane.

The end of a trip is always surreal, and especially this one. Seven months is a long time to spend time in a place; I still don't quite feel like I can say we "lived" here, but realistically speaking, I suppose we have.

Now, at the end of our time, I keep on struggling with all the things we didn't do, all the places we didn't visit and events we said we'd attend but didn't. But I keep reminding myself that this is not the last time we'll be out here.

In the meantime, here is some stuff we did do over the past month…

Single Candle Card Productions

I've always made cards for people; one of the reasons I looked forward to Christmas, Valentine's Day, and birthdays was so I'd be able to make cards. When I was about seven, I thought it would be cool to draw a logo on the back of my cards, and I chose a single candle, along with the inscription "Single Candle Card Productions" on the back, because that sounded impressive to seven-year-old me.

Fast-forward twenty-three years, and I'd started drawing more consistently. After kicking around the idea for a few months, I finally took the plunge by setting up an online shop and ordering some prints. Single Candle Card Productions was "real!"

If you're interested in checking out my work, hop on over to my Facebook shop. I'd love it if you liked and followed my page, along with sharing any of my posts that catch your eye. (Thanks so much to all of you who have already done that!) And of course, if you'd like to buy some cards, that would be great too!

Hiking Mt. St. Helens

A couple Sundays ago, we hiked the eight-mile out-and-back trail Harry's Ridge at Mt. St. Helens National Monument. I'd seen the mountain on the Portland skyline for years, but never visited up close, and it was a perfect day for a hike: chilly and sunny. I highly recommend the hike; in addition to winding through some beautiful wildflowers and huckleberry bushes heavy with fruit, it took us up on a ridge with incredible views of Spirit Lake, which is lined with the white skeletons of trees destroyed by the blast. 

Exploring Ape Caves

Zach had visited this 2.4-mile-long lava tube as a teenager, and it had been on our to-do list for years now. We drove up to the park with our friends Tyler and Adrienne, and spent a couple hours hiking through the frigid hallway of the lava flow. Sometimes it felt like we were hiking in catacombs (we sang some Gregorian-chant-inspired improv), sometimes like the belly of a whale, sometimes a cathedral, sometimes a chamber lined with enormous eels. The Lower Cave route was smooth-floored and open, leading to a dead end tucked far beneath the surface. We returned to the Upper Cave route, which headed toward the surface and required some serious boulder-hopping and clambering over loose rock. It was the longest I had ever spent underground, and when we climbed a ladder through a skylight out into the sunlight, I felt like Jill emerging from the underground realm in The Silver Chair. It was an incredible place to visit— if you're ever in the Northwest, check it out!

Playing Xfest

Zach and I spent last weekend at the Xfest Christian music festival in Stevenson, Washington, visiting old friends, watching bands play, and taking lots of walks along Rock Cove and the Columbia River, watching gaggles of snow geese dabbling in the water, ospreys wheeling overhead, and huge bevies of California quail scurrying like cartoon roadrunners across the road into the blackberry thickets. We played with Insomniac Folklore on Sunday night, which was a lot of fun, too!

Morning at Rock Cove

Downtime

Since we're going to be traveling a lot the next couple weeks, we tried to take some downtime this week. We went peach- and blackberry-picking with Gary at Sauvie Island, played a house show with Insomniac Folklore, and took an eight-mile walk to downtown Vancouver (Washington) to hang out in the park and read books at the library. Now Zach is finishing up his last few days of work before his vacation days kick in.

Right now, going home doesn't feel real. I'm just floating along, trying to soak everything in, letting the current of events take me wherever I'm supposed to go.

~~~

A Jaunt on the PCT II, Day Three

A mountain with grayish splotches of burnt trees

August 20th, 2019:

I awoke in the earliest watch of the morning, when the sky was gray with a few stars still lingering, to the sound of a barred owl hooting in a tree nearby. I took out my earplugs to hear him better, listening to the rhythmic Who-cooks-for-you, who-cooks-for-you-all echoing across the lake in the morning stillness. Then I immediately fell back asleep.

I woke up a little while later, when the sky was still gray but a flaxen light was starting to paint the rim of the eastern mountain ridge that rose up as part of the bowl that encased Wahtum Lake. Zach and I packed up quickly and were on the trail by 7:15, just as golden light was pouring onto the uppermost trees on the far ridge.

My shins and calves were super sore, and we both knew that the hike today would entail a lot of downhill, as we were heading into the Columbia Gorge to meet Gary at Cascade Locks. The hikes of the past two days had been difficult, and I'd never felt like I'd gotten enough sleep, and that, combined with my muscle aches and the weather growing sticky and warm, made me feel leaden with exhaustion. We walked slowly and took lots of breaks, but I could not push myself harder.

Checking out this huge mushroom!

Although the forests were similar to the ones of the past two days, we wound in and out of distinct ecosystems, such as fir forests where the ground was carpeted almost entirely with waxy, bluish clumps of beargrass. 

Soon we began ducking in and out of burned areas that stretched from the gorge up onto the hills like fingers. I grimaced at the rows of scorched trunks, but Zach reminded me that the forest is supposed to reset every couple decades— and if a single spark from a firecracker was enough to set the entire gorge ablaze, it meant that the forest was past its due. Wanting the gorge to be only lush and green on our terms was pure nostalgia, not actually what's best for the woods.

"Still," I said, "it's sad that there are people around who will never live to see the forest in full glory again."

"But that's just a human perspective," Zach said. "An old forest that hasn't been burned in too long isn't a fire ecosystem in its full glory. Every stage is important. Humans just like certain stages less than others."

I looked around at the blackened trees, which had a handsome ombré effect due to the scorched bark giving way to sun-bleached wood above. Clumps of beargrass and whips of huckleberries were slowly retaking the ashy ground, and among the shards of burnt bark on the ground you could see fir trees half an inch tall, bristling like green stars. Black-and-white hairy woodpeckers flitted between the dead trees, rattling the silence with their pecking. The forest was still very much alive, just not in the way we're used to. The glory of a fire ecosystem is to be what it is, no matter what stage.

Still, I was glad we had hiked the Eagle Creek Trail when we'd had the chance.

The day grew hotter as we hiked back into live trees and started a never-ending downhill that hurt my tense muscles so badly that I groaned with every step (Zach was faring no better, with his knee hurting). Popping some Ibuprofen helped, but it was just a matter of getting through it, switchback by switchback. We got some last beautiful views of Mount Hood and Mount Adams before we disappeared behind the ridge of the mountains that stand right at the banks of the Columbia River: the blue water called to us from a thousand feet below, and we limped toward it.

After a couple hours of tedious and painful downhill, we paused by a spring to gather water and rest our sore legs. Unlike the still warmth of the forest, this cleft in the rock was a channel for cool air, which tumbled down from the mountain heights along with the water. Here we revived a bit, and felt better as we headed toward the last several miles of the hike.

The trail more or less leveled out now, winding us alongside the mountain shoulders, past twenty-foot-tall triangles of volcanic rock, and through woods that became full of familiar plants: cat-ears, Oregon grapes, big leaf maples, licorice ferns. 

We popped out into a gravel parking lot, followed PCT blazes on telephone poles down the road, ducked under a bridge, and came out at a little park right next to Bridge of the Gods, where Gary was waiting to pick us up.

We collapsed in the car, aching, sweaty, and stinky— and satisfied that we had completed this breathtaking section of the PCT. That night, I slept twelve hours straight.

 ~~~

A Jaunt on the PCT II, Day Two

August 19th, 2019:

I woke up the next morning feeling completely better, although quite sleepy from lying awake so long. I didn't have much time to snuggle into the sleeping bag, though; we were hoping to cover 20 miles today, and our aching legs reminded us that this terrain was more difficult than the section of trail we'd hiked in central Oregon.

Last time we'd crossed the Muddy River, Zach had done gymnastics to clamber across a log, and I had just waded straight through and been grumpy the rest of the day. Five years later, the log's huge root ball had been eroded, making it easier to manage even with a backpack. We inched across one log that was almost entirely overlapped by a bigger log, and although the footing was slippery, we made it in one piece, and started up a steep climb through a fir forest limned with golden morning light. 

Also I got Zach to punch this tree like he's in Minecraft, in order to imitate a picture we took on our thru-hike (see below). He insisted it was far too early in the morning for such theatrics, but accommodated me anyway.

The original Minecraft-punching photo, 2014. Wow, Zach was starved back then. 

The forest today continued to be thoroughly Northwestern: water seeping through the volcanic rock, never-ending stretches of Douglas fir, mushrooms of all shapes and sizes pushing up through the pine-needle duff, scraggly lichen and shag-carpet-like moss coating the trees. We crossed a campground and walked under some power lines, then toiled up a hill to follow a windy ridge carpeted in berry bushes. We snacked on the refreshingly tart huckleberries, the fuzzy-skinned but deliciously jammy thimbleberries, and even the occasional salmonberry even though they're bland. We pressed on for a while, then took a stop at a campsite for a little nap. Although I didn't sleep, it felt good to lie down.

Note the beautiful red elderberry

After a while, though, we were feeling the time crunch, so we hiked onward, following the line of mountains on a fairly level path. We began crossing moraines— fields of rock carried there by glaciers— walking slowly to listen for the telltale dog-squeaky-toy sound of pikas, an alpine relative of rabbits. To our joy, we did hear them, and later that day, we saw movement among the rocks, and a furball the size of a guinea pig hopped up onto one of the stones, its round ears and whiskers twitching. It had been five years since we'd seen these adorable creatures, so we were pretty excited!

Toward the end of the day, we emerged from the trees to an open ridge and a spectacular vista: Mount St. Helens off to our left, Mount Adams looming to our right, and the distant peak of Mount Rainier in between the two. We walked slowly across the open trail, flanked by carpets of heather and clumps of a trumpet-shaped blue flower called gentian. Overhead, huge ravens wheeled, and a pair of some sort of stout falcon took flight from the few remaining trees.

Zach and I walked along the ridge in open-mouthed wonder. "Why on earth don't I remember this?" I asked, and Zach reminded me that last time we'd been here, it was morning and a fog had settled over the nearest ridge of mountains. I was glad we got a second chance to see it in the golden evening light!

If you look closely you can see St. Helens to the left, Rainier in the middle, and Adams right by Zach's head.

Gentian

From there we dropped down into the woods again, and paused at the junction of the PCT and Eagle Creek. On our thru-hike, we'd taken the Eagle Creek alternate because of its legendary beauty and notable features, including a waterfall with a tunnel underneath that you could walk through. Now, that's not an option: Eagle Creek was closed a few years ago after a raging human-caused wildfire. The forest, which is a fire ecosystem, will bounce back, but everyone who loved hiking there was devastated.

So Zach and I hiked on, following the official route of the PCT to see what the twenty-mile section would bring us. Darkness was gathering, so we stopped at a campsite on the shore of the shimmering slate-gray Wahtum Lake. Zach set up the tent while I filtered water and watched an osprey wheel far overhead, crying plaintively. 

That night, I laid back, smiled at the firs silhouetted above us, and plunged into exhausted sleep.

 ~~~

A Jaunt on the PCT II, Day One

Earlier this week, Zach and I were able to do a three-day hike from Timberline Lodge to Cascade Locks! Here's my journal from the trip…

Day One, August 18th, 2019

We woke up late and ate a leisurely breakfast, getting on the road with Gary by about 10:00. It was cloudy in Portland, but once we started climbing toward the peak of Mount Hood, we left the clouds behind and sailed through the winding roads under clear skies. Around noon we pulled up to Timberline Lodge, ready to continue where we'd ended before.

Gary, Zach and I hiked up past the lodge and turned left on the trail emblazoned with a huge PCT emblem, and joined a scurrying line of people heading alongside the mountain. To our left, Timberline Lodge was framed by the undulating blue mountains and the distant peak of Jefferson. Pale lavender Cascade asters grew in evenly-spaced clumps across the sandy ground, forming meadows between the firs.

We paused at the edge of the Mount Hood Wilderness to fill out a permit, then joined the long line of people hiking into the wilderness. Although we've certainly hiked in more crowded places, it felt anything but wild out here, and we had to constantly stop and step off-trail to let people by, or say "excuse me" and power past slower walkers.

After a couple miles, the crowds began to thin, and as we delved down into a valley and crossed a little stream, only a few hikers remained. 

Gary had previously suggested that we take a little detour onto the Paradise Park loop, a trail that hooked up with the PCT in this section, and we agreed. So instead of continuing on a flat trail among the trees, we turned to the right and hiked between thickets of huckleberries and red elders toward the timberline. 

Before long the trees began to clear, and soon we were in a landscape dominated by meadows— and such meadows! I gawked, unable to believe the sheer beauty and diversity I was looking at. 

Thickets of purple lupine, spikes of bright red Indian paintbrush, clumps of Cascade aster, little sunbursts of arrowleaf groundsel, spikes of Cascade Canada goldenrod, white flower-clusters of American bistort, shapely leaves of green false hellebore sticking out like florists' decorations, and a bunch of other flowers I couldn't identify: all forming the most gorgeous gardens I could imagine. None of the meadows were uniform; each one was shaped by the slope it was on, and lines of color marked where streams flowed down and encouraged new flowers. On the dry meadows the lupine and asters reigned; along the trickling streams, pink clumps of purple monkeyflower and scattered subalpine mariposa lilies became dominant. I floated through the flowers in a dream.

See how the drift of yellow flowers indicates a stream?

After a few hours of hiking, the trail rejoined the PCT, so we said goodbye to Gary and parted ways: him back along the loop, and us forward into drier and more forested terrain.

We hiked down the mountain, ate peanut-butter-chocolate wraps at a campsite near a creek, then set out onto a boulder field to cross the Sandy River.

Even here so near its glacial source, the Sandy River is a raging torrent of opaque water. Zach and I approached, looked at some thin logs laid across the river— right at the water level, slick and shiny— then tried to find another way. There wasn't one, so we took deep breaths and approached the makeshift ford. It was less than ten feet to cross, but the water looked deep and dangerous. A wrong step could get you soaking wet at best and a broken bone at worst. 

Zach went first, inching across, and then I followed, my legs trembling the whole way. Then we laughed in relief on the opposite bank, tried to find the trail through the unmarked boulder field, and ducked back into the forest.

It doesn't look like much, but it's a torrent!

Hooray, we made it!

We ended up taking a short detour that we'd taken before, to see Ramona Falls. I'd remembered the falls as being pretty, but when we approached, I was shocked to find yet another feature that I'd remembered smaller than it was. The 120-foot face of black volcanic rock rose up through the trees, laced with an incredible embroidery of falling water. Zach and I gaped.

We traced our path through the woods, which were flooded with stripes of golden evening light. We stopped to talk to an Australian woman who was visiting the Northwest for the first time— beautifully dark-skinned and full of friendly joy, she was soaking it all in and happy to share the wonder.

This part of the trail was particularly scenic: a carpet of moss rolled over everything, trees grew out of boulders and rotting logs, mushrooms pushed up silently, slugs made a slow-motion slither across the trail, and the sunlight filtered through the fir trees.

The bridge and person are considerably closer than the falls, making it look smaller than it is. 120 feet tall!

Unfortunately, around this time I began to have stomach trouble— not enough nausea to keep me from hiking, but enough to be unpleasant. By the time we stopped at a nice campsite along Muddy Fork River, I was more than ready for rest.

Because of my roiling stomach, I wasn't able to go to sleep, but I tried anyway, putting in earplugs and closing my eyes. I drifted in and out for a while, and as the woods grew dark I noticed that the trees around us were faintly illuminated. My half-asleep brain couldn't figure out why, until I craned my head back and saw a bright white light shining through the woods far away. I thought it was a headlight at first, until I realized that it was actually the moon. So I laid awake in the moonlight and marked time by watching it rise, slowly, slowly, through the trees.

~~~