You Can't Beat That in Everyday Ramblings

So this was our destination yesterday. The Trail Club of Oregon’s second lodge on the flank of our biggest mountain, Mt. Hood.

Plans for transportation and attendance at the hike and dine were in flux all week and in the end due to complications from our run of excessive heat only S and me went from our little group.

The hike time got moved up but because S is a new member and I am not one yet this only partially was communicated to us. We got the time but not the, umm, location.

We are a good team and she has no problem at all asking anyone for directions or help (being the master extrovert she is) and we stopped at the ranger’s station, which was miraculously open at 8 AM to confirm how to get to the lodge.

What is cool is that I was explaining to her on the way up about how the raptor migration was in full swing now and that the Hawk Watch Team were in place on the mountain to monitor it and the differences between a Buteo and an Accipiter (she knows the general raptor common names) and between the different kinds of Accipiters, the Cooper’s Hawk and the Sharp-Shinned Hawk. It has to do with the shape of their tail feathers.

Anyway, in the ranger station they had one of each from the old days when they used to mount preserved specimen birds. And not only could I tell the difference, the ranger confirmed it. It was a relief that even though I haven’t been birding anywhere near as much as I would like I am still retaining some knowledge.

So when we get to the lodge (very very carefully in her low ground clearance Prius) there is a fellow (the literal gatekeeper) there just before us to open the gate in. He thought it was a work party day and in the end while S took a little nap in her car, as we waited for the rest of the hikers, he made some coffee and talked to me for 40 minutes or so about the history and construction of the lodges. I was so in my element!

Happy happy history intoxicated girl.

This lodge was completely built by trail club members starting in 1959. It is primarily used as a winter lodge and folks park down below at one of the ski areas, they bring their stuff in on a snowmobile and they ski up using a towline.

Eventually we figured out the hike was not originating from there and our gatekeeper (who joined the club chasing “a skirt” that he eventually married) found out via his spotty cellphone coverage that we were actually supposed to meet down the mountain at a trail site on the Salmon River on Bureau of Land Management property.

So we went down there and after wandering around taking lots of leaps of faith and employing intuition we found the five other hikers!

It is a well-managed and maintained area that is great for visitors with families or folks with physical disabilities that apparently they are using for lots of school field trips.

There is a wetland with a long beautiful boardwalk and then over on the other side a few miles away a park like area with a volleyball court and a covered picnic area with running water and nice new big grills that you can rent out. There was an 85th birthday party going on as we passed by.

Then we went back to the lodge where I chopped vegetables for an hour and as people arrived we chatted and then we had a big taco dinner. There were only 16 of us so I got to know more about many of the folks there. S organized a big dishwashing crew that was amazingly efficient and then we came home into the startling heat and the setting sun.

We both commented on how relaxing a day it was and as we turned out of the private road I saw a Pileated Woodpecker fly in.

You can’t beat that.

Last updated August 21, 2016