Today didn’t go exactly as planned, but it was fun, nonetheless.

Best Laid Plans

For Day 15 (June 23, 2010) the plan was this:

Today we will be leaving Washington State, where we’ve been for most of the past week, and heading south along the Cascades to Mount Hood National Forest, where we’ll be staying at the Still Creek Campground. Along the way, if we’re feeling adventurous, we’ll hike the Cooper Spur Trail to get a look at Mount Hood across the Eliot Glacier, along with several other Cascades volcanoes in the distance.

What Actually Transpired

So, today didn’t go quite as planned. As we mentioned yesterday, the road on the east side of Mount St. Helens is still closed. So, based on a local recommendation (and detour signs), we took an alternate route a bit further east, between Mount St. Helens and Mount Adams. Things went OK for the first 20 miles, at which point the road switched from pavement to pocked/washboarded gravel. About 10 miles later, we reached a series of snow banks across the road that Kianu just couldn’t get over.
SO…
We had to travel the 30 miles back, and then about 120 – 150 miles out of the way, and take I-5 to Portland, and then back east to Mount Hood. Since we lost a good deal of time on our detour, we decided not to climb to the Eliot Glacier on Mount Hood, but chose instead to climb Multnomah Falls in the Columbia River Gorge, based on a recommendation from Jordan’s friend, Allison Kastner. (Thanks, Allison!) Then, we headed to our camp, taking in the sights of Mount Hood, along the way.

Odometer Start: 38788
Odometer End: 39087
Total Miles: 299 miles

Funny/Deep/Odd/Profound Observations

You will realize how important those orange “Road Closed” signs are when they aren’t posted there to tell you that the road is closed thirty miles ahead by an impassible snow field.

_______________
Jordan: “Does our campsite have running water?”
Chris: “If by ‘running water’ you mean ‘does it have a stream running behind it’, then yes. If, however, you mean ‘does it have a flushing toilet and not a pit toilet full of spiders the size of housecats’, then no.”

Pictures

Here’s a link to the day’s photo album and its slide show.

I also got the videos uploaded to YouTube now, so they’re the appropriate length: