Busy times - Visiting with friends and lots of hikes

The same old story... we are once again behind with our posting. Who knew we would be so busy after retirement 😁 Or perhaps this will be the norm for us. We are having such an incredible time, it's hard to squeeze in work. Anyway, let's take a look at some of what we have been up to since our last post.

We arrived in Oregon at Mt Hood RV Resort which is one of the Encore properties included in our Thousand Trails membership. 

The park is very nice and incredibly large.  They feature an indoor pool and spa, an onsite cafe and bakery, and two full-time communities, one of which is comprised of tiny homes. Each of these is impeccably maintained and looked to be very nice places to live. 

The park also connects to a set of trails that follow along the Salmon River and continue into a federal preserve nearby. The preserve has camping, bathrooms, a marsh trail and even an underwater viewing area to watch the river activity below the surface. All very cool.

While at Mt Hood we did some incredible hikes. It seemed as though you could turn down any side road and find a trailhead.  We hiked to mountain lakes, waterfalls and massive forests. We visited Mt Hood and found they snow ski all year there.  Wow!

Next, we actually left the RV behind for 5 days and visited Scappoose OR with friends Don and Claudia, and Randy and Tammy, staying in Randy and Tammy's home.  

They have an amazing home perched on the side of a mountain, with views from their deck of Mt Rainer, Mt St Helens, Mt Adams, and Mt Hood. Amazing! 

While there we were treated to a couple of beautiful hikes and tours of the local area including downtown Portland where we sampled Voodoo Doughnuts (twice) and some incredible rooftop bars. 

It was also great catching up with Don and Claudia, our dearest friends from the RGV.

Shortly after that, we met with Bob and Pearl, one of the first Youtube channels vloggers we began following when preparing for retirement.  

A little over a year ago we met with them for the first time in the RGV and have stayed in contact ever since. They have a great YouTube channel called The Next Exit (https://youtu.be/FWAZ3P3eCaU) and are very entertaining and informative. Since they knew us when we had the big bus, they were quite intrigued about our move to the new "baby" RV.. They taped an interview with us about the transition and may post a video about our change.

After that, we officially left the mountains and headed for the coast. We are currently staying in the northern coast near Pacific City.  

We are walking distance from the beach with a nice trail.

The beach is open for vehicles and we have taken the jeep down once for sunset. 

They allow campfires on the beach, but there is no driftwood so you have to purchase firewood.  Somehow that seems wrong.🙃

While here we have visited the Tillamook Creamery, hiked to some beautiful vistas and one lighthouse. Everything here is incredible!

We are here through next Tuesday and then head to our next stop a little further south but still on the coast. That move will be only 50 miles so I guess that will make up for the last move which was 200 miles ;-)

Factoid: Since April we have hiked just under 500 miles and ridden our bikes over 25 miles (according to Fitbit)

Thanks for reading, The Next Hundred Miles.

Heatwave and our final days in Washington

As you can see from the above, we are finally feeling the heat of summer (in the Pacific Northwest that is). We actually see people in shorts and virtually every RV has the ac running. The temps are brutal but we will survive 😁. 

We started the week with a visit to the Boeing assembly plant. No pictures were allowed on the tour so you will have to trust me that it was very cool. I can say we got a glimpse of the newest 777X which has composite wings. They fold to allow it to get into existing gates with it's significantly longer wings.

Cindy's elbow is doing better so this week, in the heat 😁, we managed to get some hiking in.

For our first hike of the week we returned to a place we visited together about 10 years ago after an Alaska cruise... Snoqualmie Falls and the famous Salish Lodge which is built over the falls.

We hiked to the base of the falls which we had also done the first time we visited. Somehow the 900 foot elevation change in a half mile seemed a bit tougher than I recall ☹️

The pic above is where we stopped by the river to sit on the rocks and have a picnic lunch.

Next we went to the towns of Index and Gold Bar. There we hiked along the Skynomish River.

Hard to tell now, but in the spring and early summer the run off has this area about 10' deeper and most of these rocks are under water making these class 4 and 5 rapids. 

On the opposite side of the road from the river are sheer granite walls that are a famous climbing area. If you enlarge these pics and look closely you can see some climbers.

After we left that area we headed to Wallace Falls SP. We decided to hike to the falls. 

According to the map at the trail head it was 2.1 miles each way on what was listed as "moderate" trails. I can only assume the term moderate has some age and fitness level associated with it. It was not moderate for us 😗

The trail climbed 1100 feet from the base to the falls which felt like it was straight up the whole way. This was by far the most strenuous hike we have done to date, but it was worth every step. 

The picture of us at the falls does not begin to expose how beat we were. By the way, I neglected to mention that we parked about a half mile outside the park with a significant up hill hike to get to the base of the trail. Still we agreed it was absolutely worth it. 

We now leave Washington ...

for good on this trip and head into the Mt Hood Oregon area. 

This drive is about 5 hours so will slightly overshoot our goal of 100 miles at a time, but that's how it happens sometimes.

We still love the new RV. We stopped to fuel and it only took $36!  We averaged 14.2 MPG on the trip to Oregon through the mountains. Love it!

That's it for this installment of The Next Hundred Miles. Thanks for reading!