Lucky Number 13!

On July 10th, we celebrated our 13th anniversary with dinner out, complete with a chocolate-covered bacon ice cream sundae. (It's actually reminiscent of bacon dripping with maple syrup from your pancake plate as a kid. The sweet and salty and fatty all work together...until the chocolate wears off. Then, it's just chewing on a hunk of bacon and wishing you could get back to your sundae.) We topped off the evening with a trek in the woods. We've always wanted to hike Silver Star, a mountain that's directly east of us. It's a popular hiking spot because it's relatively close to Portland and offers 360 degree views of 5 volcanoes in the Cascade Range. The night before our hike, Jeremy read up on which roads to take in. The morning of our anniversary, I researched the various trails and decided which one we should try (the shortest, most direct route sounded good to me). As we drove, Jeremy turned off at a different point than I was expecting. He said he'd read that this was the "good road," and the other route up was terribly rough. I shrugged. When we got to the trailhead and I saw the sign, I realized we were at the Grouse Vista Trail, which (and I quote), "is considered the most difficult of the three [trails]." Great! Well, we smiled and started off, determined to have fun anyway. It was a gorgeous evening for a hike, but there was a summertime haze over the landscape so we weren't able to see far. The trail was very steep and forested for the first while before opening up into a beautiful meadow. The indian paintbrushes were just starting to bloom, and the evening light was perfect. We hiked until we went up and around Pyramid Rock (third picture), then decided that was as far as we wanted to hike that night. We saw Silver Star in the distance and knew we'd never make it there and back before the sun set and it got dark. We climbed up onto Pyramid Rock and enjoyed taking in the view (notice Mt. Hood peeking out of the haze in the last picture). We made our way back down to the trail and returned to the trailhead. When we got there, we looked at the trail map and felt VERY discouraged. As the crow flies, it looked like we had hardly done any walking, but we knew we'd had a good workout on that steep section. When I got home, I looked it up and it turns out we actually went in 1.5 miles before turning around, so we were halfway to our destination and we'd had a vigorous 3 mile hike. Not so shabby as we thought at first. I am determined to get up there on a clear day sometime and get to the top. We'll just need to give ourselves more daylight to work with. 

Since we made good time on our way out, we had a few minutes of daylight left, so we stopped and had fun shooting our handgun. We had forgotten ear protection, though, so we only fired one magazine apiece. Jeremy also gave me an anniversary gift - a bike rack so our whole family can bike together! Yay!

I am thankful we had the opportunity to get out in the woods together. I am also thankful for my awesome husband and the blessing of being able to share life with him. Thank you, Lord!