Round-Trip Distance: 5.8 miles, plus 2 miles at Multnomah Falls.
We learned a bit from our first trip. One being that we hoped to find a little different scenery from the heavy fern forests we had been used to hiking. So on the other side of Mount Hoods Rain Shadow is a place called Tygh Valley. Just outside there we went backpacking in the Badger Creek Wilderness. It was our first wilderness trip.
We hiked to camp #4 from the book, One Night Wilderness: Portland, by Douglas Lorain. It was warm and dry and we saw a ton of butterflies, 3 deer, and had great access to the water for the kids to play. I also broke down and bought the kids fishing poles. We didn’t put anything but the practice fish on the end (which Noah lost on the other side of the river), but they didn’t care.
After our experience with the freeze dried food, I decided to venture out a bit on my own and found the website dirtygourmet.com and made a mean macaroni and cheese with broccoli. Oh my goodness, you would have thought I was feeding the kids candy. I still haven’t mastered the backpacking stove and had a lot of times the stove went out on me, but it was really fun to try. There wasn’t much wind and there wasn’t any rain, so the biggest pressure was hungry campers.
Noah was obsessed with smelling every flower and Isabel discovered she was “THE SUPER HIKER” and she made up a whole story that she had super powers and saved animals.
One the way home the kids wanted to stop by Multnomah Falls. When we stopped and climbed to the first bridge, Noah asked if we could go to the top. Will and I looked at each other astounded, since they had just hiked out about 3 miles, but since there are a bunch of switch backs we said, “why not”. We asked the kids at each turn if they wanted to go on or go back and try another day. Noah was all for going on and had to encourage his sister once to keep going. We made it to the top and you wouldn’t have thought we had hiked a mountain. They (and we) were so proud. It was an amazing trip!
Alltrails TrailGuide: http://alltrails.com/trail/us/oregon/badger-creek-trail
