Washington & Oregon

Since I had an entire week and a half of from school this summer, Chase and I decided to drive up to Washington for a little vacation. My aunt and uncle live there, in a little town called Trout Lake, not far over the Oregon border, near the Columbia River Gorge. It is an absolutely beautiful area, and Chase and I couldn't wait to get up there and relax and spend some time outside, not to mention eat a lot of my Aunt Janine's amazing cooking.

Our first full day there was pretty rainy, but it was so beautiful because the overcast sky brought out the green so much more. That day we hiked up Multnomah Falls and did a few small hikes around some other waterfalls. I can't believe how many waterfalls are in the area!


Here we are in our rain gear. Obviously not our own, since we live in Utah...but my aunt and uncle were kind enough to let us borrow theirs.

View from the falls of the area below

Chase was really excited when he found this salamander.


Some more waterfalls

The next day we went kayaking on the Trout Lake. It was freezing, really shallow, and had tons of marshy grass that made it kind of hard to paddle around, but still fun.





On our last day, we did a great hike on Beacon Rock where you got a stunning view of the Columbia River Gorge from the top.




Right after the hike we jetted over to Vancouver, WA just because we'd never been there...it was about 50 miles away, so we went there, had lunch, drove around the town a bit, and then headed back to Hood River, OR for the rest of the afternoon.



Downtown Vancouver, and the great Italian cream sodas we had at lunch!






We had fun in Hood River, which is a quirky little town with no chain stores and full of, it seems, windsurfers and Subaru owners (yay!). It was fun going in all the little shops...well, until 6 PM when the whole town basically closed down.

All in all, it was a great trip, even when you add in the part where I fell off my bike (no pictures of that!)