butterflies and snowboarders

We went up to Mt. Hood for the first time yesterday, and it was really cool, even if the hiking wasn't exactly what we wanted.

It is a lot different than going to mountains back east. We were driving up through big green mountains and foothills and then you turn the corner and MOUNTAIN! Snow covered, bigger than everything around, impresssive.

When we pulled into the parking lot at the lodge, we were surprised to see tons of people with skis and snowboards gearing up. Yup, there is skiing on the fourth of july out here. We had brought jackets and such thinking it was going to be a lot cooler up there, and NOPE. It was high 70s easily and just tons of sun, no shade.

We ended up walking up a trail right up by one of the ski slopes, it was weird to see people skiing in shorts lol. The trail we walked on wasn't at all what we wanted, no trees, didn't really go anywhere, no fields of wildflowers, but it was still pretty cool.

We left there and we were going to go hiking down at the bottom of the mountain, but you need day passes to park at any of the trail heads, so we just headed home (and promptly fell asleep with the pup). But we know what we need to now. There are tons of trails around the base of the mountain, and they are only about an hour away from us. Next time we are going to get a daypass and hike out to Mirror Lake.

It was a neat way to spend the fourth.