Wandering in the Woods

It is six o'clock, the end of a busy week, the first weekend in two weeks without houseguests, and I'm staring into our refridgerator trying to decide what leftovers to enjoy before putting our children to bed early and falling on the sofa with our recent Netflix movie, when Rynn comes running into the kitchen. "Mommy! Daddy wants to know if you want to go camping tonight??!!??."

What is a mother to do? With visions of relaxation dancing in my head I stare into the excited eyes of my five year old. How do I say no? Such began the last twenty four hours (which have felt more like 124) when we embarked on our first family camping outing. I smiled as I watched Jason- the husband who took me to Colorado on our honeymoon, who taught me to cut my toothbrush in half to cut weight in my backpack, who packs out his toilet paper in a little ziplock baggie, who is the KING of low impact- throwing items such as pillows, beer, a cooler, last night's chicken, kids' books and toys, etc.. into the car. Who is this man? I wondered.

One little detail which we didn't really give too much thought to in this whirlwind to get our family out the door to sleep outside was WHERE exactly we would sleep. While we did have a local campground in mind we failed to think through that it was 80 degrees and sunny, Friday night, and the middle of July. Our excitement was a bit tempered when we pulled into the campground to be greeted by a big sign declaring it FULL. Not to be disuaded we checked our handy map and with great focus decided to pursue a tiny little triangle which, according to the map, represented a "campground." To make a long story short, two and a half hours later we were winding our way out of an Oregon forest hoping to not run into a white supremicist. By this time I was on Jason's phone calling the Timberline Lodge up on Mt. Hood. Despite my efforts, I couldn't convince Jason that just this once it might be worth it to get one of their last rooms- a room with one set of bunk beds and a bathroom down the hall. He wasn't to be deterred. Our camping adventure must happen!

Finally, at ten o'clock Jason found a campsite near the road up to Government Camp on Mt. Hood. It was quiet, clean, free, and we were the only people there! After setting up camp in the dark we all fell fast asleep for a precious six hours before the bright summer sun greeted us at 5:30am. The pictures below tell the rest of the story. We all had a wonderful day. We had hot coffee at Timberline Lodge. And tonight, in celebration of arriving in Oregon a year ago, I'm sleeping in my own bed.

Skiers? In July? yep...Mt. Hood is a glacier which means skiing and snowboarding twelve months of the year.

Timberline Lodge...where we almost slept.

View of Mt. Jefferson from our walk on Mt. Hood.....I love this picture.

Rynn practices her mountaineering skills sliding down a snowpatch.

The whole crew...still smiling, for five more minutes anyway.