Weekend in the Wilderness

I'm sitting here with my cup of caffeine jolt this morning and my sore, rubbery legs. We had quite the adventure this weekend! First of all, thank you for all the well-wishes (especially since you know that tent camping isn't usually my speciality.)

You know that famous quote, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." Well, that might be a slight exageration on both sides, but it did have a little bit of the good, bad and ugly. But all in all, if I were to pick an adjective, it would really lean more on the positive...such as beautiful, fun, exciting, adventurous. And yes...tiring.


Lil Cherub helps by carrying load on her trike In case you're curious about "where"...the camping trip was near Estacada, Oregon. It was incredibly large and gorgeous state park which none of us had ever been to before, so it was fun to discover it! In fact, it is amazing how so many of us can side-step such wonderful destinations so close to our own hometowns. Like the people you hear about that live next to the Grand Canyon but never go.

Once we arrived, we staked out our little claim of land in the designated area and pitched our tent...and what was nice was that it wasn't in the usual camping area, but the day area, so that it all seemed a little more rustic.

The organizers couldn't have been more friendly and both hubby and I were extremely impressed with the fellow campers. They all were such mannerly polite folks, either young families or quiet adults and it was a true pleasure camping with all of them. (We have some rowdy neighbors living near us, so it was so refreshing!)


There were crafts for the kids, a demo on how make fire rubbing those two sticks together, and on Sunday, a couple fun games- one where the kids got to pretend to be salmon swimming through all the obsticals...they had a blast!

Oh- and sleeping in the tent was wonderful. Nice and warm and comfortable on our little mattresses as the crickets sang around us.

There were no showers, however. NO SHOWERS. But we did our best to clean up, deciding to not worry too much about perfect hygene and just be stinky pioneers.

Before leaving the park, we sat down at the picnic table and read one of the stories from our girls' children's Bible. We then thanked the Lord for this beauty all around us that He created. Since we weren't going to church that day, it was our little family devotion out in the open air. Although it lasted only ten minutes, I was hoping to instill the importance of remembering to honor God no matter where we are...but it blessed me, too.

Afterwards, we rode our bikes do the river where a few of our fellow campers were already enjoying wading around and catching crawdads. It was so beautiful there and the water felt so nice and cool to our overheated feet! Already the temperatures were climbing to 90. Finally we tore ourselves away and headed to our next destination- Mt. Hood! Notice chipmunk peeking on railing

I had only been there in the height of snow season, so this was a new experience for me...and it was incredible. The scenery that unfolded before us was wonderful...and when we reached Lake Trillium, the sight before us simply took our breath away. My words can not aptly describe it, so hopefully the pictures will give you some sense of the beauty. But even these probably can't truly capture it!
And the butterflies! I had never seen such a large population of butterflies in all my life, fluttering through the air and landing in clumps on the shore.

We spent the remainder of the day wading in the water and hiking through the scenic trails surrounding the lake.

So...where's the bad stuff I eluded to earlier in my post? It was in there, sprinkled throughout the weekend. One or two misunderstandings between my husband and I (all was forgiven)... a slight burnt finger as my seven year old touched her hot marshmellow with tears following... and towards the end of our hike around the lake, the girls began running and my four year old fell and got new owie on top of her old owie...resulting in MAJOR tears...had to clean up owie, followed by such shrieks that all of the wildlife ran for higher ground.

As our weekend began to come to a close and we headed back down the mountain, though, we talked about our good and bad experiences and we all agreed that the good seemed to outweigh the bad, as we each named our favorite times. The little adventures we did, the hurdles we overcame, and the astounding natural beauty we encountered all served to give us an incredible weekend experience that we all will probably remember for years to come.

I know that I will.