Going Home Early

Oregon 2023 Travelog #7
PDX Airport. Tue, 4 Jul 2023, 11am

We're cutting short our holiday weekend trip to the Pacific Northwest. Not by a lot; we're just going home 4 hours early. But we did throw in the towel on further adventuring today.

It started with not wanting to get up today at the crack of dawn. Dawn's crack is, like, 5:30am anyway. I slept in 'til almost 7, then puttered around while Hawk slept in a bit later. Our plan had been to get up extra early to get in a hike before it gets too hot today. Yes, hot, in Portland. The forecast high is 97°! Yes, that's Fahrenheit, not Kelvin.

Ultimately it wasn't time or temperature that did us in. It was aches and pains. Hawk's back has been touch-and-go since a surprise torn muscle two weeks ago, and both of us pushed it pretty hard the past few days. We hiked 8 waterfalls on Saturday, 3 more on Sunday, and 7 more yesterday. I have a sore on one of my feet now, so I'm hobbling.

Even so I still considered hiking Beacon Rock this morning, a short hike (about 1.5 miles round trip) but steep, with almost 600' elevation gain. I figured I'd hobble and take it slow. But then I decided discretion was the better part of valor. I'm glad for that now as, at the airport, I'm hobbling badly.

Alas we didn't just go from 60 to zero on our plans for today. There were frustrating half steps on the way down to zero. First we figured we'd do a bunch of drive-to or short-hike waterfalls along the Columbia Gorge. There are lots of falls here. But the biggest one, Multnomah Falls, is now on a permit system. Permits were sold out until late this afternoon. Then we figured we'd go for just a scenic drive, but the road was closed. Then we decided, "Fuck it, let's just go home early."

Fortunately "let's just go home" doesn't mean the enjoyment of the weekend is over. We'll get back to the house around 3, which is plenty of time to get unpacked, relax, enjoy dinner, and do other stuff. We've invited a few friends to join us. The plan now is to grill burgers, drink some beer, and play boardgames.

Oregon Trip Wrapup

Oregon 2023 Travelog #8
Back home. Tue, 4 Jul 2023, 3:45pm

We're home now from our holiday weekend trip to Oregon. Although we bailed out early today we still managed to see and do so much the past 3 days. Here are a few thoughts:

Always have a Plan B (and C, and D)

Bailing out of hiking today was a hard choice but the right one. We then switched to a Plan B, which fell through, as did Plan C. We quickly figured out a Plan D of going home early and having a cook-out dinner with friends. As far as fourth choices go, I"m looking forward to it!

Oh, and we had more time than expected to unpack from this flight and get ready to have friends over for dinner... because our Southwest flight actually arrived early. Imagine that!

What I forgot this trip

I've joked many times before that every trip I forget one thing. The one thing I forgot this time was a doozy... almost. I forgot the charger for my computer! The moment I realized the mistake I started thinking about how to ration my computer's battery charge for 4 days. Then I remembered that my MacBook Air can charge via MagSafe adapter or USB-C. Hawk had a USB-C power brick, so I was good borrowing hers twice. Not that I really had a lot of time to use my computer on this trip; we were too busy hiking, driving, and doing other fun stuff.

Blogging backlog

As usual with these trips I'm behind on blogging. I did manage to keep the pace with our epic, 8-waterfall hike on Saturday by combining short video clips I made at seven of the falls into a nice video montage. Posting just one video from so many amazing sights seems anticlimactic, though. And anyway I didn't record as much video at the 7 or 8 waterfalls we hiked Monday, nor the three we hiked Saturday. Oh, and then there's the raptor center we also visited on Saturday. I'll be posting photos from those great trips for... oh, about the next week, I figure.