I think I slept in again.
And I think I just ate breakfast in my van before even going into the house. I don’t remember for sure, but that’s what I think happened. Been too long now. (I’m writing this on October 6th while looking back.)
I believe we spent the morning mostly just chatting– Tish and Craig and Maya.
I believe I fed another round of rice cakes to the chickens. Two packages down, three to go. 😅
I won’t be around for the last three, though.
Maya took off around noon, so we said goodbye to her. She needed to drive north back up to where she lives north of Seattle.
Craig and I toyed with the idea of lighting the piles of brush that they had on fire, but we decided not to. Instead, we decided to take a little trip over to the river and just enjoy the scenery and the river and whatnot (Craig, Simon [my nephew], and I).
So we packed up some things–foods to munch on, towels, camping chairs, swimming suits (for some), and we brought along Rory, the family Wolfadoodle, and we headed off to the river!
We stopped off at one little place that Craig wanted to show me before heading to the main destination. It’s cool to see a little bit of the country so close to Portland. Portland is just a hop, skip, and a jump away, but it didn’t take very long to get out of Dodge, so to speak.
The part of the river that was our destination was just before a section of pretty rad rapids that Craig has run during the higher water season.
Since the weather was chilly, we were the only ones in that little spot of river. We could see another gentleman fishing upstream a little bit, but where we had parked ourselves on the rocky the shore of the river in front of a sort of natural buildup of water before the next Cascade of rapids, we were alone.
It was really good for Rory, I think, to be out there. There was some concern bringing him along, but it turned out to be fabulous.
We all sat on the Rocky shore taking him beautiful view, munching on the food that we have brought– for me, it was granola bars and chips and salsa.
I took a little dip in the ice cold river, which was so cold that it hurt after not too long. 🙃
I found a dead either absolutely massive trout that weighed probably 10 lbs? Or maybe it was a salmon of some sort. Not sure. It was a lady fish with lots of eggs still inside. When I picked it up, eggs started to pop out into the water.
We hung out on the shore for a little while, and then we decided to go walking down the river, sort of boulder hopping– The kind of hiking that I’ve done my whole life, and my favorite kind. 😊
It was fun to watch Rory bound around the rocks like he been doing it his whole life. I think it was really good for him to be out there and enjoy a different setting. He was, as best I understand, basically a rescue dog, and it seems like he’s really learning and growing.
After we finished up there and went back to Tish and Craig’s, We ate some leftovers for dinner, chatted for a little bit, and then Mom and I loaded up the van and bid everyone goodbye.
Our next destination was Mount St Helens, so we headed north, not on the main highway, but on a smaller highway through foothill neighborhoods and then just forest. It was dark, but we could tell that it was still beautiful. Driving down the road with trees hanging over on both sides such that it was almost as though we were driving through a tunnel.
It was that way for quite a long time. 😊
I had found a forest service campground a ways up past where we wanted to go the next day, but it was the best place we could find, and it wasn’t too far away from what we wanted to see. It was the lower falls campground, Just southeast of Mount St Helens.
Once we arrived, we found ourselves nearly alone. There was one other campsite that was occupied, but it was also a much bigger campground than the Clearwater Falls campground we had stayed at by Crater Lake.
We managed to find a camp spot that was once again directly across from the bathrooms, so that was good, and we went to bed with the same arrangement as we had at the Crater Lake Campground, with my mom waking me up if she needed to use the bathroom in the middle of the night because we were in Bear country.
And that was the day!
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 