Our 4th of July was pretty low key but that's exactly how I like it! We got up in the morning and made our first real attempt at hiking. Real equipment, shoes and everything! We had to make a slight detour on the way out though because we forgot to get a forest pass, but after picking one up we were on our way. We drove east towards Mt. hood and hiked near Eagle Creek. The trail we were on stretches for 6 miles but the first three are supposed to be the best. So we stuck to that. We didn't track exactly how far we went but it took us over two hours with no too much elevation change.
Again there were tons of people with kids and dogs on this trail. I would never take either on this one as the path gets pretty narrow at times with at least a 50 ft. drop and no safety rail. But that didn't seem to phase a lot of other people! I guess we're still newbies!
This is early on in the hike before the sweatband came out :)
At the point where we turned around there was a little "beach" type area where a lot of people were hanging out. It was a really nice day!
This is Punch Bowl Falls. It's pretty amazing, and a great place to swim. It was way too cold for us southerners but plenty of other people were swimming and jumping off rocks into the deep water.
After hiking we grabbed some food at Char Burger near the Bridge of the Gods. It was a local dive but exactly what we needed.
Later on in the day we had a neighborhood party. I think we were the only people there under 30 and without kids but we ended up meeting a lot of neighbors. So overall it was a good thing we went. There are actually a few people in our neighborhood that moved here from Texas! So that was really nice to find out. It's hard to find people here that can really relate to the differences between here and Dallas. It is a lot of little things, but those little things add up to a completely different lifestyle.
But anyway, I digress... One of the major differences between Oregon and Dallas are the 4th of July fireworks. Usually there is a burn ban in Texas during the summer and the fireworks aren't such a huge deal. We would go to one of the places around town that was setting of fireworks to see the show but people weren't really shooting them off in their backyard much. Let's just say we are not fans of 4th of July in OR. people have been setting them off everyday for a week. They started the weekend before and are still going off this weekend! The dogs are really not happy. At first they were barking and hiding under the bed. Peanut Butter was shaking at some points. On Wednesday night the fireworks were still going until about 2am. By now I think they are so exhausted they are just ignoring it but they still spooked them a little when they went off this afternoon.
Our house is southeast of the city and from our window we look out on the southern suburbs and can also see downtown. So Wednesday night there was a symphony of fireworks going off in every direction. I've never seen anything like it. It was also weird because since we are up on a mountain, the fireworks being set off were going off right about at our eye level or below us. So we were actually looking down on most of the fireworks. These pictures are terrible but it might give you and idea.
This weekend we are trying to get the last of the boxes out of the house and gets some things organized. Tomorrow we are going to find a trail from our house down to Sunnyside Road which is a really busy street near us. The trail supposedly has over 400 stairs to get down our 800 ft. mountain. We are going to a) find it b) go down it and then c) make it back up!
Hope you are enjoying your weekend!
Tasha
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Location:Portland, Oregon
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