Friday - Joe didn't want to leave this area without seeing the lodge on Mt. Hood, so that was our agenda today. We took a little different road through the forest to get to Hwy 26, then drove up to Timberline Lodge. Much to our surprise, it was in full swing, with skiing, snowboarding and hiking all going on.
As we walked through the first building, we spotted some pretty fancy snowboards leaning again the wall. And we said hello to Smoky.
After we walked through the buildings, we got our tickets and rode up the ski lift to the landing. There was another ski lift that went to the upper level where there were slalom flags set out, but we didn't have access to that. We could watch them, and the snowboarders come flying down off those slopes.
We wore our sweatshirts up there but we didn't need them -- it was balmy. No wind, warm, absolutely beautiful. Lots of people flying around, and the chair lift was busy. We found a couple of rocks in the "dry" area and watched the people for about an hour. We were right underneath the upper chair lift, and sometimes snow would fall off the skis and it us. I thought someone was throwing snowballs at us.
We had a great view of the valley below, even though it was a little hazy today.
The lodge from above.
We like to ride the chair lifts during our travels and have done so a few times -- Ruidoso and Albuquerque come to mind -- but this may be the first time we have actually had to walk on snow. And it was a little tricky. Slippery, and our feet would hit a soft spot and we would sink down about 6 inches. This was a fun trip and we loved watching all the activity up here. And we managed not to fall on our butts.
We saw one family get off the lift dressed for some other kind of activity. They had on sandals and flipflops. I don't know if they ever got past the area just off the lift.
But they dd throw a few snowballs.
We found out how good our timing was when we came back down off the lift. A bus had arrived, and there was a long line waiting to get lift tickets. There was just one family of 6 in front of us when we bought our tickets.
We drove back down the mountain, looking for lunch. We went into the ski resort town of Government Camp just down the road from this lodge. We expected this town just to be a wide spot in the road, probably a little dumpy or a ghost town. We were wrong. It was a ski town, with lots of businesses about skiing. They even had a ski school going on. Some of the buildings were chalet-style, it was very clean and touristy. There was an alpine slide just as we came into town. We found lunch at a taco shop, enjoyed sitting outside, then went in and out of a few of the shops, but we weren't much in the need of ski equipment or apparel.
We ended our day here and headed back to the campground. We had decided earlier to come back to Wamic to this little pub for pizza tonight, so we stopped there and checked it out. We found out they have a few slot machines too. So when we came back for dinner, I won enough to cover the cost of our meal. A rare event! As I waited in the parking lot for Joe, I got a couple of nice shots of sunset over Mt. Hood.
We spotted two deer on the way to the restaurant, one a nice young buck, so on the way back, I was on the lookout. I finally spotted one back in the trees.
Just down the road, we spooked another one, this one had 3 babies. You could still see the spots on the fawns. We only got a picture of one of the babies. They all disappeared into the brush like magic.
As we got to the turnoff to the campground, Joe decided to go the other way and drive around the entire lake. It was about 8:00 p.m., prime wildlife viewing time. We saw a total of 28 deer tonight!!! Some had bedded down, but some were still on the move. That was exciting. Too bad Andrew and Catalina weren't with us because some of them were out in the open.
The Brundiges ventured out on their own today -- they made the drive into The Dalles, did a little shopping there, and drove back down through part of the Fruit Loop. They didn't go with us because we usually make too long of days, but we beat them home by about 2 hours. But they opted out of dinner and cards -- Collins was ready to call it a day.
I did manage to avoid the 4-mile hike today. Joe had accidentally left his credit card at the general store in Wamic this morning when he stopped for a soda, so we had to get back there before they closed. Fortunately, they had put it aside for him. We move over to Washington tomorrow, cross the Columbia River, so we are
looking forward to that. It will be our first time in the state of
Washington, another state to check off the list.
ss
No comments:
Post a Comment