Adventures at Table Rock

Amid the bustle of moving preparations and house purchasing, we have been making an effort to get out and enjoy our last days in Oregon. We have LOVED the beautiful nature we've been able to explore while here. In fact, Ben and I were recently reflecting on how little we know of downtown Portland, but how much we know of the surrounding wilderness and outdoor recreation. In fact, we both agree that going into the city stresses us out and we dislike it. Although there are fun things about Portland, we don't like the crowds, the inevitable traffic, or the difficulty parking. An evaluation of how we have spent our time while living here definitely shows that we are country mice, not urbanites.

On one of our recent outings, we took advantage of a rare sunny day to hike in the Molalla wilderness on a trail called Table Rock. Ben had done the entire eight mile trail before, but our objective this specific day was only to get outside, hike a bit, and build a campfire ("and cook s'mores"- Nayeli's request). Because so much of the land in our area is privately owned for farming, one must drive to public land to make a campfire. In this case, we had to go out an hour and twenty minutes, but it was definitely worth it.

Ben took the challenge of building a fire very seriously:

He splintered the wood before we began to hike.

Nayeli is just starting to get too big to carry, so we tried her out walking on this hike. We hadn't been on the trail more than two minutes before she was saying, "I'm tired. Carry me mama". We just had to keep distracting her with treasure hunts and such so she didn't realize that she was hiking. 

Oregon forests are just stunning 

We hiked up until snow covered the trail and made it difficult to continue. By then we were ready for lunch and a campfire, so we found a clearing and went to business.

Ben has commented how difficult it is to make a fire here since all the wood is so wet. I think he felt his manliness was in jeopardy if he didn't get the fire started. 

Teddy helping Ben blow 

 We have fire!

We ate lunch and cooked s'mores over our campfire, then cleaned up and hiked back down. It was a fun little adventure with our family, and we had a great time.