We decided to drive up into Washington today as it was a weekend and a lot of the hiking trails were likely to be pretty crowded.
There's a really cool drive into the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. Highlights from the day included seeing a cow elk cross in front of us and then Julz caught a glimpse of a couple more elk off in the trees including a small bull with his horns still in velvet-it was way cool!
Unfortunately we didn't get any pics as Jen only caught the south-bound end of the north-bound elk and the ones in the trees were moving away at a pretty good clip-the Big Nasty is pretty noisy and probably scares everything.
Here are some pics from today:
This is a Jay that was sitting outside the Toad this morning. He flew up in the tree to eat whatever he found on the ground by the picnic table:
Here's Mt Adams before we crossed the bridge into Washington:
This is the view going over the Hood River Bridge over the Columbia River:
Here's a closer view of Mt Adams from just outside the town of Trout Lake, Washington:
We then decided to see about hiking around the Conboy Lake Wildlife Refuge. The day was really hot and the majority of the hike was across what used to be the "lake" and the Boys were getting pretty heated so we ended up cutting the hike short and drove back out. Along the way, we did spot this little chipmunk sitting on a burnt stump along he road:
We also spotted this mama deer with her two babies but we didn't get a picture of them:
Driving the Forest Service roads through the GP forest, we came upon this waterfall just off the road that we had visited previously - still very beautiful!
This is the one (and sometimes 1.5) lane road out of the National Forest - Jen got a little nervous as we didn't have cell service up here and you don't see many other cars so we hoped we didn't have any problems with the Big Nasty - we didn't!
Here's an even closer up shot of Mt. Adams:
The Boys were excited to cross the bridge back to Oregon though:
Sun shining over the Columbia:
Tomorrow, we head west toward Detroit Lake and the Hackleman Old Growth Forest.
