Trip to Pacific Northwest 2017: Day 7/8

Good Morning

Jeremy’s alarm went off at 6:30am, and I am pretty sure I didn’t even wake up to it. Instead I woke up to Jeremy gently stroking my arm. He had woken me out of a dream where I was training geese to do tricks. I laid sleepily in his arms while I attempted to wake up for the day, and after a bit, we got up to take a shower.

We took our shower, got ready for the day, and headed on down for the hotel breakfast. I had English muffins and the apple danishes again, as I have realized that they are danishes and not strudels. I am no pastry expert. Jeremy had a hard boiled egg, sausage, and biscuits and gravy.

Mount Hood, Oregon

Back on the road we went, this time, towards Mount Hood in Oregon.

Driving into Mount Hood National Forest was like driving into a winter wonderland. Our first viewpoint displayed a mountain with the top half of the trees covered in snow and the bottom half still green. There was an older couple taking photos as well, and when we saw them at the next viewpoint we giggled with recognition. We didn’t see them anywhere after that.

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We turned to go see a lake, but the entire road was covered in icy snow. The lake was blocked off anyway, but the drive was pretty.

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We made our way up the mountain to the visitors center which ended up being the Timberland Lodge. We had originally removed the lodge from our trip list, being unaware that it would be right where we were going anyway. The lodge is the one used for the exterior shots of the hotel in The Shining.

We stopped in the gift store but it really was more of a ski and snowboard equipment store. They had a few gift items but they didn’t interest us enough to purchase them. We even stopped in their cafe, but they didn’t have any food out so we left the building and went back to the vehicle.

We took our time going down the mountain. This was mostly because we had a car in front of us being Jeremy’s speed guard. It was partially because there was snow on the road in some places.

When we got to the bottom of the main hill we turned to go the other direction than the way we had come in. We realized we were going the wrong way, and since there was hardly anyone on the highway with us, we whipped a U-turn.

We headed towards the Columbia River which separates Washington and Oregon. We stopped in some places on our way out of the forest to enjoy the scenery. We put the Columbia gorge as the destination in my phone, but my phone ended up taking us to some random persons driveway. Not exactly what we wanted.

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We drove back down towards the river and hopped on highway 85. We made a few stops along the way along the river. The views reminded me so much of growing up on the Mississippi River. The tree covered foothills cupping around the small towns along the river, these images running along either side of the banks.

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The Evening

We crossed into Washington over a bridge named the Bridge of the Gods. It gave us quite the view of the river. We decided to head back to the hotel to refresh before going on our next adventure. I booked us a massage on our way there with LH Foot Care and Massage for 9:00pm, giving us plenty of time to make the trip back and freshen up.

We arrived to the massage parlor and they set up a private room for us to get a couples massage. I wasn’t expecting this, but accepted it gladly. I stripped down to my little pajama shorts and crawled under the blankets. Jeremy stripped down to his basketball shorts and crawled under his.

We received some pretty incredible massages. They worked our backs, our legs, our feet, our shoulders, our bums, necks, arms, hands, and it was all amazing. This was Jeremy’s first real massage, and he is now hooked. We determined that we are going to find a place back at home to get massages on our free Saturdays together.

We went for a very late dinner afterwards at a place called Shari’s. Jeremy ordered country fried steak with loaded hash browns and bacon. I ordered the sampler with pancakes, hash browns, bacon,and scrambled eggs. We each ordered a macchiato frappe. We also ordered pies to go at the end of the meal. We ordered the Washington Deep Dish Apple, and the cookies and cream pie.

We took our pies and headed back to the hotel, settling in for the night.