A Day in the Mountains

Nick took off for a week of church camp this morning, so it seemed good to us to have a day of exploring in the mountains. It was also a good reason to go to the new Saturday evening service at our church last night, which was a wonderful service and doubly good because we got to sit with Eric, since that's the service he prefers.

It's all good. We packed a picnic lunch this morning, thinking we would eat it at Clear Lake. As we passed through Sweet Home, we stopped for mochas. Sadly, they were lukewarm, so we returned to the Java Hut. The gal there apologetically microwaved them and returned them. They were warm, a slight improvement. We gave them back. It seemed to take forever, but eventually we received our very hot microwaved mochas and took off. This is not a good way to get return customers. As Will said, (perhaps more than once) "If I wanted microwaved coffee, I could get it at home." Fortunately, our day could only improve after that.

As we were travelling down the highway, Will said something about Iron Mountain and I said I'd like to hike it again one day. Next thing I know, we're headed down the gravel road to the trailhead. You can see our destination at the top left of the picture below.

There are many lovely stone benches where a tired old gal can rest on the way up. Or down.
Once again, I was overjoyed to hike through profuse wildflowers, as well as view amazing vistas.
It is well worth the arduous trek up the multiple switchbacks. The views are great all the way up. Here's part of the view from the top.


Hiway 20 far below. Many people drive it and look up at Iron Mountain Lookout but have never had the privilege to look down from there.


If you look really close, you can see a beautiful Chevy Duramax truck down at the trailhead.
I tended to slip on the loose rock on the trail coming down, and had a couple of heart stopping moments as I caught myself falling backwards and careened upright again. Wrenched my back a bit but at least I never landed on my rear. I asked Will, "Why do you think I'm having so much trouble slipping and sliding?" He said, "Well, you aren't used to going down hill." That was nice. Then he added with a wicked chuckle, "Or maybe you're just clumsy." I informed him that I was pretty sure it was just a problem with my shoes, and that was what I had wanted to hear him confirm.

The weather was perfect, some clouds in the sky but sunshine and about 70 degrees. We were starving when we returned to the trailhead so we ate our lunch at a picnic table there. It was a good thing, because the picnic tables at Clear Lake were heavily used today. We had to go on into the restaurant there and have a piece of warm pie with ice cream. Will had razzleberry (raspberries & blackberries) and I had marionberry. As Will said, it was the kind of pie you hate to see come to an end. Quite delicious.

We stopped at Sahalie Falls and did a little more walking. So beautiful. We meandered on down the road, driving into some different campgrounds where Will and the boys used to go to father-son campout at church, Ice Cap and Trail Bridge. Will was kind enough to stop at one of my favorite places, Belknap Springs, and we walked around a little there looking at the gorgeous flowers. The dahlias and many other flowrs are blooming in the flower border along the McKenzie River.
As we were heading down Hwy 58, we saw a Ford pickup pulled over on the other side of the road with the hood up and steaming water spouting up. Will pulled over to turn around saying, "I just happen to have five gallons of water with me." The cheefully loquacious man bending over the hood was very glad to see him and his water container. Ya know what I mean? This man ended nearly every sentence with that phrase. Ya know what I mean? I was sitting in the pickup cracking up. When Will returned to his tool box and got a roll of duct tape, the man and his woman exclaimed about how prepared he was. The man enthusiastically started ripping off duct tape with his teeth and slathering his leaking hose with it. Will told him he could keep the roll and we got out of there with Will muttering about how he didn't know it was going to be his day to help a Ford.

We ended our fun day out with brupper at IHOP in Springfield. (That's what Eric used to call it when we had breakfast for supper.)

I love weekends.