Lets Go Chasing Waterfalls!

 Really does it take much to be spontaneous? NO! Not really.... I was thinking Saturday at 11:45pm how lazy I was all day that I really needed to make Sunday active. I had gotten ready to eat breakfast with a friend at the Hawthorne Street Cafe, Saturday morning, then proceeded to take a 3 hour nap, cleaned my house and ate a huge burger with WAY too many fries at Five Guys Burger. Besides cleaning my house and enjoying the company of two of my best friends, it was not a productive day.

So how do you plan a random adventure in the PNW? Well.... luckily the whole outdoors is like a huge playground. Anytime of the year in Oregon. A few text messages and I had a small group convinced to go on a local hike. Search engines helped me pick up a few ideas, and definitely what was too far. To check out last minute hikes look at: http://www.portlandhikersfieldguide.org/wiki/Main_Page or Trails.com was helpful as well: http://www.trails.com/activity.aspx?area=14659. I got a little frustrated and decided to drive a little further East to the Columbia Gorge. (I plan on buying a hiking book at Powells) There really is endless places to hike off  Hwy 84 and everything I have seen is breathtaking. Like waterfalls... I really need to start counting and labeling all of the falls I have now hiked to.

Our small group enjoyed Latourell Falls. Its about a short 2 mile loop that goes to the upper portion of the falls, which you can walk behind. Like everything in Oregon, it was breathtaking. And the mossy green on the trees is gorgeous. Easy hike, easy on the eyes and a great way to get out of the city.

GET INVOLVED! Working with the Street Youth of Portland

I first noticed the large amount of street teens in Portland, when I was invited to a dodge ball game somewhere in the parks in Southeast, in 2008. They gathered there every Tuesday during the summer to catch up, hangout and enjoy the game. It was one of my best memories from the summer. They had collected lost balls, balls that get thrown out, that are tattered and worn and its a rough game. Yet thrilling at the same time. Everyone I met was inviting, friendly and felt like we had all known each other for years. I have never discovered again where this little gem of a game was held and I regret not writing down the parks name. But the issues of this street family has not gone unnoticed.

I have been involved now for almost a year in Transitional Youth. Its a program that works to reduce youth homelessness in the Portland. I serve twice each month serving meals at an outreach center in downtown Portland. It has opened my eyes to the issues people living on the streets deal with each and every day and gives me new perspectives on my own life. Check out the video below, for more information:

Wishful Wednesday- Top PNW Destination

Photo via: http://travel.latimes.com/daily-deal-blog/index.php/crater-lakes-volcano-7162/

I want to pick top choice destination places, on my wish list. Crater Lake National Park is definitely one of them. But I think I will take this adventure during a weekend after the snow melts.....

Hurricane Ridge= Beautiful, Rope Tows…Never Again!

Hurricane Ridge is a gorgeous part of the Olympic National Park to visit on a clear sunny day. You get some great views of the Olympic mountains and its only about a 20min drive from Port Angeles. The last time I spent time in this part of the Olympics was in 8th grade and we enjoyed snow shoeing. I prefer this over snowboarding.

I am still regretting my decision to snowboard up the intermediate hill using a rope tow (the Poma side was closed). I will stick to chair lifts from now on thank you very much. As my left shoulder three days later still feels like it was ripped out every time I go to lift or pull something. Although, chair lifts are not an option at Hurricane Ridge. I really wouldn’t recommend Hurricane Ridge for skiing or boarding. I thought rope tows were only for the bunny hill….but oh no. Being “goofy” on my board I was recommended to hold on to the rope behind my back. So your left arms gets jerked with the first grasp on, and then you have to quickly grasp with your right.. and the first attempt ended with an immediate fall. They were kind enough to let me back on. Then as your gaining elevation, the rope moves up, then down and after I ran into a tree well, I realized you need to steer as well. WAY too many things to think about for the uncoordinated.

I was so annoyed at running into a tree that I undid my bindings and hiked my way to the top. After taking a much needed breather and taking in the view, I overheard these “ski jocks” laughing about the boarder who biffed it coming up the lift… yea they were referring to me. I thought to myself, “I board real mountains….with real lifts.”

But if you live out in the middle of nowhere, like my friends who live in Forks, WA, the $22-27 dollar lift tickets are quite appealing. Maybe I will return in the summer and take in the area without snow.

Old Memories and New Beginnings to Small Town Delights

Fun story, I was always in love with Sunnyside Beach. Especially during low tide when you could walk all the way down to the opening of Chambers Creek. With my adventurous spirit, I decided that going to just the train bridge wasn’t enough, I had to see the other side. So with my crazy sidekicks, we discovered multiple ways to get across the creek. This included seeing how far we could walk across the creek during negative low tides, or sometimes this turned into having to swim across the top of the water and screeching at what could possibly touching our feet. Seaweed, kelp and other creatures are frequent in the Puget Sound. At other times, when the weather just wasn’t quite right for us to skim across the frigid waters we would climb up to the train bridge. Look both ways, listen for the sound of a train whistle and run across. Or at least I did, until I was safely on the rocks on the other side. Train tracks make me nervous and we would get hollered at by the railroad employees if they saw us. Such rebels ha-ha. The beach on the other side was always amazing, a sand shore that you could wade out into without it going above your knees and a sand dollar paradise. Our own secret cove and with an old gravel pit nearby, exploration could take hours.

But in recent years, the old gravel pit we used to sneak into as teens has turn into this strange, Scottish themed golf course. The new favorite pastime of my mother and I is to walk the trails or enjoy the view while sipping wine from the restaurant above. It’s a place that truly captures the beauty of the Puget Sound, but they have also opened a gorgeous bridge to my secret beach. That is no longer much of a secret, if it ever was. This makes me happy and sad at the same time. Who knows how much this is going to turn into a crowded beach or another busy Sunnyside. Although, it is much safer to access this part of the sound, the adventure no longer exists. But it is also no longer considered private and this means the wealthy on Sunset beach cannot complain when we are walking on the opposite side of their club house. Because this is now a public beach. Which makes me smirk, just a little.

Bike Roadways Clear of Cars- Count me in!

As I was trying my best to fall asleep the other night, I was reminded of what I wanted to do this weekend and hollered through my closed door to my roommate, “Hey, You want to go for a ride this weekend?” For this Sunday is Sunday Parkway in Northeast Portland. I have recently enjoyed some of the fantastic bike events held by various organizations in Portland and this is definitely an event I want to check out. From 10am- 3pm this Sunday, city streets in Northeast will be shutdown to walkers, bikers, children and anyone/anything that is NOT a car! The route will connect to four parks and I guess there will even be food, music and activities mixed in along the route. I am stoked! I have recently convinced my roommate that biking is the best new sport in the world and she needs to try it out! She has followed suit with my enthusiam.


I also just bought some fresh Oregon strawberries from the farmers stand near my work and it just reminded me I really need to check out the Portland Farmers market and maybe take a trip out to Sauvie Island and see what Kruger’s Farm has growing. Fresh local food is so much better than that stuff that comes from California. The strawberries literally melted in my mouth and made me wish for summer to come faster!

Its supposed to be 70 and cloudy this weekend. So I am hoping the weather holds up as I have lots of adventure plans in store!

A little helping hand goes a long ways from a Mother’s Day Card

So I could have bought a card, that would have been stashed away in the junk drawer… and I could have bought flowers that would have died in about a week… and I could have spent money on another item that my Mum probably doesn’t need. But instead I took on a giant…a hillside to be exact. I hope all adventures this weekend, involved Mums, as mine sure did. It was a lovely weekend in the PNW and a lovely weekend to tackle the horrid Salal bushes that were weeding up my Mum’s hillside below her deck. This involved two days worth of chopping up roots with a pick axe, avoiding horrid looking spiders, trying to ignore the buzzing bees and getting into fights with blackberries and ivy that were mixed in. After much sweating, grunting and falling over I sure got somewhere with the hill and I felt a big achievement to offer my Mum this gift and saved her a lot of money from having to hire a landscaper. Of course I didn’t do it all alone, I made sure to give Mum the small jobs like picking up dirt/twigs and telling her to rest when needed. We were a good team and it was a good Mother’s day. Of course we enjoyed some of the local luxuries like the Chambers Bay Grill. The clouds were coming in, threatening to ruin the sunshine we had worked in all day but we got an appetizer of BBQ flat bread and a refreshing glass of wine to cheer in the work we achieved that day. To top the weekend off, I dragged my tired self up and made a delicious dinner of Orange Chicken. This is a fantastic recipe!

All my muscles are feeling the burn this week, but man it was achievement I am sure proud of.

What was your Mother's Day adventure?