Category: Hikes
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Feels Like Home: Another Trip to Big Four Ice Caves
There are some places we go that just feel like home. We’ve been there many times over the years, sometimes multiple times a year. We’ve seen these places in all different seasons and weather. Big Four Ice Caves is one of these places for my family. Aaron took me there for the first time before…
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Book Review: Day Hiking the San Juans and Gulf Islands by Craig Romano
I was fortunate to receive a review copy of Craig Romano’s new hiking guide, Day Hiking The San Juans and Gulf Islands. I’ve been browsing through it often, and found my mind was opened to new possibilities for kid hikes that I hadn’t known about. We tried out two short new trails (new to us,…
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Mt. Rainier Fling Part 2, Backpacking to Snow Lake
In Part 1 of this series, I wrote about our first day at Mt. Rainier last week. This post covers our second and third days, backpacking to Bench and Snow Lakes. We took our time on Tuesday morning, packing up and leaving Cougar Rock Campground. The weather continued to be warm and clear. The Mountain…
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Sheep Lake Backpack
With my son off to teen camp this week, I wanted to do something special with my 8-year-old daughter (she has picked the trail name Queen Alacorn, or QA). She really wanted to go backpacking with me, and was super excited for a Girls’ Trip. But we couldn’t find anyone to come with us. Then…
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Icicle Gorge Trail – 6/26/14
I took the kids hiking at the Icicle Gorge Trail yesterday. The weather report had been worsening all week, and I really wanted somewhere dry, not drippy. So I scrapped plans to go to Longmire and headed east instead. I think I made a good decision – the flowers are amazing right now along the…
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Columbia Hills State Park (Spring Break 2014)
This post is the third in my series about our trip to the Columbia River Gorge for Spring Break. The first was about hikes from the Catherine Creek Trailhead. The second post was about the Vista House and Gorge waterfalls. Future posts will include: Visiting the Observatory in Goldendale [Added 5/31/14] The Columbia River Gorge Discovery Center…
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Vista House and Columbia River Gorge Waterfalls
This post is the second in my series about our trip to the Columbia River Gorge for Spring Break. The first was about hikes from the Catherine Creek Trailhead. Future posts will include: Columbia Hills State Park, including camping, hiking, and viewing petroglyphs (Added 5/28/14!) Visiting the Observatory in Goldendale (Added 5/31/14) The Columbia River…
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Hikes for Kids and Grandmas from the Catherine Creek Trailhead
This post will be the first in my series about our Spring Break trip to the Columbia River Gorge. I’m breaking our outings down into bite-sized chunks. Other posts in this series will include: Visiting the waterfalls on the Oregon side of the Gorge [Added 4/21/14] Columbia Hills State Park, including camping, hiking, and viewing…
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Othello Sandhill Crane Festival and Columbia NWR
The kids and I did our first big road trip adventure of the season on the last weekend in March. We heard about a bird festival over in Central Washington, we had some free time, and we decided to go. The kids had been requesting a trip to the desert, too, and no snowshoeing, please,…
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Another Day in Paradise
A couple of weeks ago, we had the full day on Friday to go for an adventure, and our friend Jessie was able to come along. We decided to do a longer trip to the snow, since winter is going to give way to spring soon, and we have so few days when we can…