We did a nice ride around Trillium Lake today.  There’s a boardwalk that leaves the trail to visit the meadow adjacent to the lake:

The weather was great, and we were treated to fantastic views of Mt. Hood:

Here we are thundering through the woods:

Upon our return, the RV in the distance:

We went back in late afternoon for some fishing.  The kids caught three, and we kept one, a 9” Rainbow Trout.  The views were keepers too:

Gut Shabbos!

Today I rode my bike from the RV up to Timberline Lodge.  It was 2200 feet of climbing over 7 miles:

Trish and the kids drove up to meet me, and we played in the snow.  We had driven from late Autumn at 3400 feet to early Winter at 5600 feet:

Timberline Lodge was a CCC construction project in the 30s:

The fog began to clear and we could see the summit of Mt. Hood, 6000 feet above us:

We decided to go snow shoeing.  Once we were a bit away from the parking lot, all we could see was the mountain:

Returning to the RV, we were surprised to see that it’s still Autumn down here!

When we first arrived, the kids found a see-saw someone had built out in the woods:

Here we are on our private (and abandoned) airstrip. The inconvenience of having no-one to bother for a cup of sugar is more than compensated for by the peace and quiet:

Today was our first day of home schooling.  Our son and I did a math exersize to figure out how many mishnas we would have to learn daily to complete the entire Mishna by his bar mitzvah.  We then learned the first 12 mishnas.

Here’s our daughter working on her math:

After lunch, we headed out to do some letterboxing.  We found four of them in short order:

At the last letterboxing site there was a sign explaining the view.  This can only be described as typical Oregon weather:

Tomorrow we’re supposed to get the first sunny day in the last two weeks, so hopefully we will actually be able to see the mountain itself.

On the way out of Wood Village towards Mount Hood, we stopped to visit McMenamins – Edgefield, a 1930s era poorhouse converted in the 1990s into a hotel.  Edgefield sits on 70 acres and has its own garden for its restaurant:

We had the overflow lot more or less to ourselves:

We visited the glass blowing shop, where the artist was fashioning a drinking glass:

The watertower is the tallest structure at the hotel:

The interior of the hotel itself has been maintained in its 1930s interior, so much so that the hotel rooms share a common bathroom just as the original residents did 80 years ago:

There’s also a pottery shop (closed today), a brewery, and a winery.  It’s a very interesting place!

We also did our first letterboxing attempt at Edgefield, but I’ll let Trish talk more about that:

Leaving Edgefield, we drove up to Mount Hood.  We are dispersed camped near Trillain Lake, on the southern slope of Mount Hood. The National Forests usually allow camping in campgrounds for free if they are “closed” for the season, so we first tried going to Trillain Lake campground, since the source I had seen said that it closed on 9/30. When we got there, the campground host told us that the campground would be open until 10/6, and that once it’s closed the gate is locked. Since the campground is open, we would have to pay $20 a night, so we settled for a nice clearing a few miles from the campground which is actually an abandoned airstrip. There are no services, but that’s fine as we are completely self contained in our RV, and you can’t beat the quiet solitude!   See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.