This past weekend, Brady and I were able to go camping in the Gifford Pinchot forest near Mt. St. Helens. I guess we like adventure because our trips never turn out the way we expect them to! We wanted to stay in the "Lower Falls Campground" because the trail head to the three Lewis Falls were right on the campsite. We left a little later than expected on Thursday because it was raining and we wanted to wait it out... bad idea. We got to the campsite and all of the sites were taken! We drove further up the road, found a gravel side road and kept driving... (this is the part in scary movies, where you yell at the character to stop what they're doing and go back to safety!)... I was nervous this whole time saying we shouldn't be so far into the forest alone, but Brady convinced me otherwise and we found an open area that had a fire pit made. We set up camp, made some yummy dinner (steak and potatoes) and sat around the campfire. I got increasingly more worried and paranoid. I kept hearing things out in the woods and said, "did you hear that?" or "what was that?" about fifty times. We even sang church hymns to try to make me feel better, haha! Finally, we heard a distinct, loud growl from the trees and I said, "What was that?! We are NOT staying here!" So, we packed up our stuff (tent, air mattress, and all) and left. This was at 9:30 pm.
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| I was so scared, I couldn't even smile :( |
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| Brady made an awesome dinner and burnt himself in the process! |
We finally found an abandoned campground at 11 pm. This is totally Plank style to set up a tent in the dark. It was kind of a creepy place. The general store was closed and out of business but still had merchandise inside. I think Brady was more uncomfortable there than he was with the wild animal back at the other campsite.
We left there pretty early the next morning and headed back to Lower Falls Campground to hike the 5 mile round trip hike to see all three waterfalls. They were all really pretty and Brady even got to jump off one... kind of :)
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| I got attacked by a bee... stung three times and cried like a baby! |
When we got back to the campsite, a spot was open so we set up camp for our final night. We played Phase 10 and I beat Brady pretty bad ;) The next day, Brady had planned a hike for us to do. It was supposed to be a 6 mile round trip... but, it turned into 14. We were hiking along and felt like we had gone a lot further than 3 which would have been our turn around point...but then two mountain bikers came along and told us we had another 2.5 miles to Craggy Peak (our destination) so we thought, "hey, let's do it... we can take lots of breaks and we'll be fine." So we kept going and we saw lots of different landscapes. It was fun to see so many wild flowers and we picked wild strawberries! They were so yummy! We finally made it to our lookout but the mountains were half way covered by clouds :( It was a little disappointing. We could see half of Mt. St. Helens, and about half of Mount Adams... there was another mountain we saw, but we weren't sure which one it was. The last half of the hike was pretty hard... our legs were tired, our feet were aching and I just wanted to be at our car. I jogged the last little bit because I knew my car was close... I was so happy to see it :) It was a beautiful hike, but we will plan better next time! (I think I said that last time when we hitch hiked through cougar country).
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| We saw this rib cage on our way up and made me a little nervous... I'm so wussy :( |
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| I love our matching socks and boots... we're so cute! ;) |
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| Brady was frolicking through the meadow |
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| This is Mt. St. Helens |
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| This was our turn around point and we weren't in the best of spirits |
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| Mount Adams |
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| Brady's sock line from all the dust |
Brady made a good point that if our activities were normal, they wouldn't make good stories and we wouldn't remember them. :)
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